We are also of the camp that brand names/more expensive clothing is preferred because it lasts longer. Janie and Jack, Gymboree, Osh Gosh, and even Merrell shoes hold up WAY longer than things I find at Wal-Mart or the military BX. That being said, we don't pay retail. Second hand and clearance rack at the outlets are where we do our shopping.

It all depends on how quickly you plan on doing something with them (and how humid of an environment you live in, actually). If you think you can get them all processed into jam, consumed, baked into a pie, etc. within the next day or two, leaving them out on the counter should be okay. If you are going to need a few more days, I would put a stash in the fridge. We picked 15lbs a few weeks ago and the ones on the counter lasted about 2 days and the ones in the fridge were really fading by about 2 weeks.

Isn't it so funny, though? I am the same way! I keep on thinking, "Maybe this one will come a bit early!" Who am I kidding. :)

38 weeks today with number 4! Due June 28th, though I am fully expecting to be late because, well, that is the trend in our house so far! We don't know the gender, nor have we decided on names yet. :) Congrats to all the other mommies!!

This sort of thing happens to me after a stomach bug too. It seems to take weeks for my digestive system to get back to normal. Even though I could stomach food without being sick, there was always still loud digesting and excess gas all over...just one big no fun time, really. Milk and eggs were one of the very last things I could add back to my diet, even weeks after "recovering". I am guessing that these bad viruses strip the stomach and intestines of the enzymes and good bacteria needed to process the variety of foods in a normal diet. Hang in there! It should clear up soon!

I live in a higher cost of living area, and the zumba class nearby charges $5 an hour. It is a bit of a fun loving, let your hair down and go all out class, but it is so much more comfortable than one would think because the class is filled with people of all sizes and fitness levels, and everyone is laughing and having a good time. While it might seem intimidating at first, it is really neat to be with so many people who are all having fun dancing and working out together.

I used to have this happen to me before my pregnancies, and it turned out that I had some fibroids, which caused the quick and dirty onslaught of menses, and any bleeding that happened outside of that related to "relations" was due to a friable cervix (yes, friable! It means that it bleeds easily when bonked around a bit). :lol:

:lurk5:

I am a sucker for Jim Brickman instrumentals and older Yanni songs. Those two artists light a fire under my tushy to take on the world with my shoulders back and head high!

Oh thanks!! I would have missed it!

Ohhhh, that is tempting! I remember seeing all the great warranty stuff that Kia offers. How great that they replaced your burned out bulb without any questions or trouble!

Oh yay for you! We haven't quite made it there yet, but we will be getting rid of years (aka boxes and boxes) of either boy or girl clothing once this current baby makes his/her appearance in a few weeks. Part of me is sad to see the clothes go, but that decluttering part of me is a bit excited to move it on to another family.

We traded in a Honda Accord for a Toyota Sienna almost 2 years ago and haven't looked back since. We were debating an Odyssey van, but read all over the net that it was having transmission problems, so we went with the Sienna instead. LOVE IT! Spacious, regulates temperature well, fits 3 car seats across the very back row (which an Odyssey can't easily do). When we run this one into the ground, I am thinking we will go buy another one.

I would totally vote for a Mac Laptop. In short, we have owned a variety of PC brands, all of which had a hard drive fail or some major component break shortly after the 1 year warranty. Our HP laptop even caught fire, and all HP told us was too bad so sad and that the laptops will do that if you don't keep it dusted properly (????). The HP was our last PC computer, which had us running to try a Mac. We own both a Mac desktop and laptop, and they are both fabulous. The laptop is preferred because of the portability, but otherwise they are essentially the same. They are a bit more expensive than lots of PCs, but the money is well worth it.

To me, "fake" food is something that is made with "food sciences", so most prepacked snacks, cereals, etc. aren't real food. On an even more detailed level, I would think that taco shells purchased at the store are not "real food" at its fullest. Ideally I would make my own taco shells with my own ingredients.

I am the person who voted that it is a requirement, but there is much background behind where we are now. The kids never ever used to drink juice. I was almost on the other end of the spectrum, not even allowing juice by virtue of the fact that I never bought it. Then the kids started catching colds and this that or the other as they got older and were exposed to more kids. I was introduced to Emergen-C which I really thought was great and we got into the habit of having an Emergen-C with breakfast every morning, including the kids. The incidence of colds/fevers, etc dropped and it was really great! In October of this past year, my youngest at 12m old went into anaphylaxsis from peanut butter. In the months following, I did tons and tons and TONS of reading about food allergies, why they are more common, how they might be developed, etc. As a result, our family has changed the way we eat dramatically. We stopped eating all prepackaged food, almost cold turkey and starting buying as much local/organic everything as possible. We do still buy flour, baking soda, and ingredients like that, but if we want to eat something, we make it. Snacks are fruit, breads are all homemade, and if we can't make it, we pretty much don't eat it. So, as a result, the Emergen-C was pulled from breakfast and is now filled by orange juice and sometimes apple juice. It is served with breakfast, the kids love it, and it is just apart of our eating habits now. As an aside, we still have a long way to go with our food adjustments. I would love to branch out and learn to preserve, dehydrate, make yogurt, grind our own wheat, etc. but boy oh boy, I will be the first to admit that sometimes there just isn't enough time in the day! But, the changes we have made so far seem to have been nothing but beneficial for our eating lifestyle and health. Hubbies BP and cholesterol levels (hereditaraly high) have dropped significantly (and we eat lots of red meat, so it isn't a vegetarian thing) and I have had my most fit pregnancy that is nearing its end (38 weeks! Yahoo!). So, long story short, yes we "require" it, but it is really because it is apart of our daily breakfast eating habits. And the kids don't have any complaints! :)

Ohhh we use lemon basil in all sorts of our cooking! In chicken dishes, pasta dishes, sauteed with fresh greenbeans, in mashed potatoes, with roasted veggies, really anywhere you can think of adding it for a bit of a lemon flavor. It is fabulous!!

Agreed on all accounts! We only paid a smidge of our principle down on our Vegas house, but that is the way it goes until slowly but surly, more and more goes to the principal while less and less go towards interest. Gotta love amortization. As for how much the rent our house in Vegas runs, this past year we rented it for the amount if the interest of our mortgage, while we are still forking out some each month but it goes towards the principle part of the mortgage. So all we are really doing is buying time, with someone paying for the cost of borrowing the money and we stash every penny into paying down that principle. This past year we were able to send in our tax return, which turned out to be about 1% of our remaining balance. Haha! It is going to be a long time, but I know that we will make it work in the end somehow.

I can totally sympathize! We did this too in 2004 when we bought our first house. We had an 80/15/5 which means we had a normal mortgage for 80%, a second higher interest rate mortgage for 15% and we put down 5%. PMI is only charged on the first mortgage if it is higher than 80% of the value of the home at the time of the sale. The second loan is not considered a "mortgage" in legal terms--it is a home equity loan used to pay part of the mortgage. That is how the OP was able to avoid paying PMI. Anyway, in the end, we ended up putting every spare penny into the higher interest rate loan to try and pay that sucker off, and we did make a sizeable dent. We were able to sell the house before the market crashed to badly, but if it makes you feel any better, we bought a second house and are now very very stuck with a net loss of over 200k (thanks Vegas housing market!). To rub it in more, we had to move due to employment relocation, can't refinance to a lower rate because we don't have equity, and have to try and find renters. We were able to get renters for this past year, but we were just told that they won't be renewing. So, we chug along and are going to look for more renters. We won't stop making payments or let the house go into foreclosure because it is against our personal values to walk away from a responsibility we agreed to. So, my best advice is to keep chugging along, get that higher loan slowly and surely paid off, and know that this too will end. The housing market WILL turn around (absolutely everything in an economy goes through ebbs and flows. It might not get to as high as when you bought the house, but it will turn around. People will buy again. Things will look up.) and before you know it you will have that second mortgage paid off and the value of the home will be such that you can refinance or even sell. I know it stinks and all the what ifs and if we could change it ideas keep popping in your head, but we are right there with you. It is what it is and we will make the absolute best of it. In the end, it will work itself out. :) Hang in there!

All of my kids had/have the same songs. I sing "The Rainbow Connection" (from the Muppet Movie) and "The Wedding Song" (Peter, Paul, and Mary). Occasionally I throw in "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (Pete Seeger) and "Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)" (Billy Joel).

My husband and I both went through college on an AFROTC scholarship not too long ago and the processes hasn't changed much. Fill out the application as though you are filling out a college application, send it in, and you will be notified if they are interested in doing an interview. If your son is asked to interview, you will go to the nearest college that has an AFROTC detachment and meet with one of the cadre members (leadership/professor active duty member in that particular detachment). A few weeks later you should find out if you are accepted for the scholarship. Two notes: 1. You need to annotate on your application which schools you are wanting to attend. You have to be accepted to both the school AND the ROTC program for that school for the scholarship to take effect. 2. The application asks for a major preference. Most of the majors are some form of engineering, with a few math and one random catagory of "non-technical" (re: liberal arts). If your son is given a scholarship, it will be for a specific major, or in the case of "non-technical" it will be for any major not listed in the application. If your son gets a scholarship for electrical engineering and wants to change it to mechanical engineering while in school, he will need to sit down with one of the cadre members, work out a plan to ensure he will still graduate within 4 years, and submit a change request. It typically does go through, so marking down on the application what you want isn't completely binding. Good luck!

My daughter had a tough time with breaking her S sound habit, and she was also right around 5 years old. She could do it when prompted, but that was about it. What we ended up doing was having her read a page of her book aloud using the proper S sound, but she only needed to do it when she was reading out loud to us. It took about a week or so and then she started doing it outside of reading and within a month it was all gone. Good luck!

We very recently moved from West Cobb, over in Marietta off of Barrett Parkway, and absolutely loved it. It was peaceful and quiet, yet very close to any sort of shopping, restaurants, highways (75/575), etc. Harry's Farmer's Market (which I think some of the PP were talking about) is over in East Cobb, but it took us MAYBE 15 minutes tops to get there. How exciting for you! Have fun house hunting!

I think that kids at ages 6 and 7 aren't quite to the "boys are gross"/"girls are gross" stage, where you see a gender split in the kids at recess or parties or things of that nature. They probably really enjoy each others' company and are mimicking their affection the same way they see their parents or siblings do so. I would say, one thing about kids that are homeschooled is that they don't get the exposure to the teasing, the expected norms of behavior, etc. that they would get if they were in school. I would be willing to bet if your daughter was in school and walked around holding hands with this kid that the other kids would tease them and sing the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song. Your daughter would be mortified, confused a bit because she wasn't THINKING that holding hands was even in the same realm as the kissing tease song, and wouldn't dream of holding his hand again. HAHAHA! I just posted this and saw Jean's mention that the thread was way old. My oh my, I shouldn't post so late at night. This is a good indicator that it is time for me to go to bed! :)

Abkjw01--my daughter sounds a lot like yours, which is why I am apprehensive to send her. She will certainly give some of those teachers a run for their money, because she is ready to give a pretty solid argument for all of her "out of the box" thinking should she be told she is "wrong"! It is great that so many of you agree that it wouldn't be detrimental to give it a shot and just pull her out if it isn't working out well. I would hate for her to lose her spunk, which I think is one of my biggest issues with sending her, but I am sure if that sort of thing happened, a few months back into homeschooling could get her feeling normal again. Thank you for your words of experience and advice! I will throw them into the mix when DH and I sit back down and try to figure out what to do. (Bostonian--as a funny aside, I asked my daughter today if she would be okay going to the school even if it meant that she didn't get to do all of the outdoor science exploration and activities we do. Her response: "Oh, that's okay! We can just do it like we always do, just after I get home in the afternoon." Nice.)