Our 17 year old son is almost done with his week of $20 meals. He’ll be guest-posting here soon to share his impressions of how the week went. Next up: our 16 year old daughter and one of our 13 year old sons. I spent yesterday afternoon toodling around to various stores with them....
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Today I am sitting thinking happy thoughts.  Saturday we had the joy of hanging out with all our kids.  Dinner was teriyaki chicken and rice, guacamole and chips, and fruit salad, with apple crumb pie and ice cream for dessert.  Dolphin Tale was the movie.  I’d been looking forward to seeing it for awhile...
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~~ Our 17 year old was the first one to shop for his week of food.  Since he can drive, he did the shopping solo.  We decided to let him share a few items with a sibling to be able to pay decent prices.  Those items were: a gallon of milk, a pound of...
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Preparing teens to feed themselves without going broke
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We had a lovely weekend of various activities including getting together with all our kids.  Our daughter Amanda is 5 months pregnant and feeling her baby move lots, and our daughter Erika is only 4 weeks from her due date now. I had the utter fun of sitting with both of the Saturday night...
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I wrote recently about the way that we’ve responded to our kids night needs, and wanted to explain our reasoning behind not letting our babies cry it out as a method of sleep training. I want to start by saying I am NOT sharing our thoughts to guilt-trip anyone who made a different choice...
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Not long ago a reader wrote asking me how I’ve handled issues with babies and sleep.  For starters, I was blessed to have the example of a great mom, who nursed her babies long-term, slept with them at night, and generally modeled relaxed loving mothering to me.  Her example made it second nature for...
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Our power bill has been creeping up lately. Granted, rates increased not too long ago.  But in looking at the breakdown that compares this month this year to this month last year, I saw we’re also using more kilowatt hours/month.  Since we’re already doing lots of power-saving things, this information displeased me. Nearly every...
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Writing with Gypsy Mama this Friday on the topic of ‘Vivid’. ~~~~~ It’s been a hurry scurry morning, one where we rushed from breakfast to car to a musical performance to the grocery store, with me all the time reaching a hand out to my little 7 year old. “Come with me. “  “Hold...
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One of the boys who managed to avoid the illness last week has a fever and a headache this evening.  I am sick of sickness around here, and thinking of buying massive quantities of veggies and fruits and juicing us all like crazy.  Except I have also been listening to Dave Ramsey and so...
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