1.You have to be rich to afford one parent to stay home. Actually no, we all need enough for food and shelter, then we spend what is left on other things….in our case with careful planning there is enough to go on trips to DC and museums and science centers, and more but I would be home regardless, so long as there is food on the table and shelter, I stay home, the rest is further down the priority list. If you are putting anything above staying home besides food and shelter, than just be honest, it isn’t that you can’t afford it, it is that you choose other things first.

2.The wife has to stay unless you are nursing (and even then you would pump to leave the kid at daycare, just pump to leave them with Dad) There is no particular reason for mom to stay over dad, that is purely a personality issue. Pick the one most likely to play all day. (As opposed to cleaner or teacher see next myth) (though you also need to make sure the one working has a salary that covers the food and shelter)

3. All you do is clean and teach Are you kidding that’s what the kids are for! What do you think they do while I type up silly lists! (Actually they nap, oldest is goofing off, quietly) However, if you do not like talking to kids for significant stretches of time, if you do not enjoy watching a child discover reading, or flowers, or bugs, or trees, if you cannot stand the thought of changing diapers and reviewing proper teeth brushing techniques yet again, if hearing a person chew with their mouth gaping open after being told to close it for the millionth time makes you lose your lunch (anybody got a cure for adult relatives with this problem?), if hearing a story about a giant truck for the tenth time makes your blood boil, and the thousand ‘kids’ who eat a googolplex eggs, etc. then kids might not be in your best future whether you stay home or not. If you do chose to stay, and you are about to smash something…. send them off to play with something and go take a break, no one said it was even good for kids to be interacted with 24/7…they need time alone to process. Not only naps, but also time to play while adults err, clean (Or maybe something more interesting, but common, cleaning does need to be done sometime)

4. Children need other children unless you live on a remote location with only you your spouse and kid, they will get other interactions, many much more useful than a room full of same age kids. No offense intended to the 3 year olds in the world, but well lets face it, they are in the minority…most of the people in the world are over 3, and most adults spend their time with older people, so knowing how to get along with a 3 year is a rather limited skill that my 3 year old doesn’t have to learn. (Her big bro never did, she on the other hand is very social) I would like to suggest the opposite of this is true, children need to spend more time with a variety of people of all ages, and less with their age-mate peers.

5.you will all get sick at the same time while I have not done nor seen a fancy medical study, I have heard from many stay home families and all out the house families….if one kid gets sick they all do, in or out of the house, the common cold is common for a reason. Misc, genetic traits and hand washing habits can help, but the short version is, unless you quarantine a kid you all are going to get it (and who wants to quarantine a kid with the sniffles…. poor bored kid)

6. One parent home equals always home, how boring yes it certainly would be! Fortunately this myth is easily disproved, pick up a copy of available classes at a large library (nature center, science center, museum, whatever), check out how many are during normal ‘working hours’ who do you think goes to them? Yep, houseparents. We are not always home, and the degree of home or out is totally up to the individual parenting style/personality.

7.And I am saving the best for last home kids are healthier/sicker, watch more/less tv, get sick more/less, smarter/slower, clingier/more independent, more mental health issues/less…etc truthfully, the studies I have seen for either side of any of the above(and you can find an expert or two million on each side, for or against) showed mostly the same….like the drink being oh so proud of 56%…really home or away it is still up to the adults in charge, whether that is mostly mom or dad, or well chosen care givers (or not so well chosen) kids are a product of their interactions (and lack therof) Until the age of ‘formal education’ home or away, kids statistically average about the same. (And if you want to talk myths of home education, well that is a whole “nother kettle o’ fish”, but in short

statistically we win)

* a googgolplex is a one followed by a googol zeros, in short a really big number, and a delight to small boys. and no firefox doesn't recognize it.

So since he is working from home he will be paid (course the whole delay in paperwork is a bit irritating....hope that gets smoothed out soon)

But since he didn't take at least 7 days off (consecutive) the day off for surgery wont be paid for....one day off wont kill us, but it is irritating to know that because he is back to work quickly he wont be paid.....punishment for trying to get back in the game fast....you would think the punishment would be reversed...punishing those dragging it out.

All I want is unsweetened dried cranberries to eat...hopefully for less than 10$ a pound..why is it so much cheaper to sweeten them?

Apparently due to a paperwork error, again he will not be paid.

Which means right before the lowered pay due to time off for recovery (doing fine, bit sore, bit tired...and bored) there will be a delay ion cash flow. I am so glad I didn't pay extra on the car, and that I don't drive (can't go spend money anyway)

My husbands surgery is today, he will not be back to work for at least a week...which means no pay.

Which you would think I would have planned for....

But nope, didn't consider it till yesterday.

Fortunately I was about to pay extra on the car when I thought of it.

And didn't, so that payment is still in the account to cover bills. Plus he will get one more pay before the mortgage is due.

I wonder if workman's comp will pay him eventually or if it is a total loss?

So that check he didn't get, it was rolled into the next week...and since the check was for more, the taxes taken out were more! leaving us with less than 2 weeks normal pay....


Not cool...not going to break us, but one more reminder of how annoying the government is...

lable TV sets

In an article mentioning that FCC is requiring retailers to label TV sets, I came across the why...

....without a special converter box -- these TVs will not receive signals through antennas once broadcasters switch to the digital format.

I have a feeling that our set a hand me down from Gma isn't digital (in fact I think it is from the 80's..did they even know about digital then?

Since we have no cable, we only use the rabbit ears, and I really don't think those ears from the 70s accept digital signals...we wont have TV after 2009...

Considering we have watched 2 hours of TV the last 3 weeks (lost and the time before/ right after lost) I don't think I will mind much...not that I don't want a fancy flat screen digital whatever thing. (mostly cause flat screen should be up on the wall, taking up less space!) Just that I would rather own my house and car than a TV....

Besides the TV works fine for video...which is what the kids managed 2 hours of this month.

I got smart, I took the pictures today and I am posting them today, not taking any chances of them disappearing to the black abyss of my husbands hard drive.

Unfortunately no great pictures of the kids, but I have sunflower shoots, and a worm bin.

The kids read about a 'sunflower secret hideout' and they wanted us to plant one, I am not sure it will live but I let them try, we even bought good dirt for it....


The rocks are to keep the dirt from washing down, my backyard is mostly a hill.

You know there is an amazing amount of beauty in one tiny shoot...


And here is a whole row of them, some a bit to close, which is what happens when you let a 1 year old help you plant!


This is it folks, not fancy, not pretty...and from what I read, might not make it. I have plans of moving it to a less wet spot, hope it helps.



On a financial note.....all the dirt and seeds came in under budget last month. mostly cause the worms and bin were free .

I don't have all of them, or prolly even enough to keep this batch alive, but I found a cool kid friendly site with all sorts of information about worms and worm binds

worm fun

Along with cool games there is the 'how to'

how to

Course it suggests screens to keep the worms in...which we don't have...and I so am not letting them in the house!

And there is a cool part by part picto-screen-thing, with all sorts of technical words...clitellum

I have high hopes the screens are not that necessary....

We have worms...in a bin in the back yard..they are supposed to eat garbage....food waste and such...

I was on my way to the store to buy a bin and then call some contacts to get worms, when my contact said she had a bin and the worms and all ready for me, just swing on by and get it.

very cool since my husband did not want to spend the money on worms.

I still have to call my wonderful friend and ask her what on earth I am supposed to do with them now that I have them.....

First the guilty confession ... I Sim, as in I play the Sims 2 I know it isn't even a game, and it certainly isn't useful, and yeah it wastes electricity, not to mention brain cells, but I am here to say, I have learned some things.

1. Once you have had fun there is no point to watching more TV so fill up and then move on.....and to fill up that fun in the shortest amount of time, you MUST have the same giant flat panel, M4E, Low Mess screen that all your neighbors have.

2. There is no point to going to school, job useful skills are only learned outside of school.... though all children must go to school, just so they and their parents, can get the 'jumps' each day after they bring home the coveted A+....then they can go about learning to cook, and/or other job useful skills.

3. Speaking of those skills, the better cook you are the longer the meal will last, so no meat box helper I guess.....though if you want to learn to cook (or anything else) it is faster to read a book than to actually practice cooking......and more fun to make chocolate (which helps the lobster thermador somehow.)

4. Starting kids younger is better, potty train your toddlers, then point them to educational blocks, xylophones, and rabbit heads...yeah, apparently banging that rabbit head is very good for future politicians, and important to do in toddler hood as aside from golfing there is no other way for a child to improve Charisma.

5. And when your teens are about ready to become adults ship them off to college, not to learn anything, just to buy time where life is cheap to work on those skills, or not.....college doesn't teach you anything, it is how you spend your free time that does.

6. A more expensive fridge may not hold better food, but it does make the room look cooler......and amazingly no matter what you buy you can make turkey or mac n cheese from it!

7. Once you reach your life's ambition, you are permanently happy .....Now if I could only find my and my families life ambition panel so I knew what it was......

8. Speaking of that ambition, half the people are getting married or having kids to appease their parents ambitions not their own......fortunately having MIL move in to take care of the rug rats is easy and nets you big ole chunk of change when they do! (and so long as you keep em busy no nagging, mostly)

(wrote this before I read the new contest..., so I came back and changed the title, though it's not very useful info here, it is the best I will get to, sorry)

I took lots, I took some3 good ones, I would love to share, I even sat down now to put them online for you...and they are gone...I have a card but no pictures...Someone emptied the card and didn't give me the pictures....

And the only other adult in the house would be...my wonderful picture stealing husband....

So maybe another day.

I read Ferns 365 day goal, and I while I have no real ability with a camera to improve, I do love pictures of my kids, and lately I have to been taking anywhere near enough, so I decided to aim for one each kid at least a week.

I am hoping to take some good ones that I can post as well as ones for family.

And being digital the whole project is free, I love that in a hobby

I had no idea it was that hard to find a place the gives clothes to girls!!!

I finally got smart and stopped looking at charities, and started looking for orphanages, and again I had no idea how hard it could be to find an orphanage!!!!

There must be a secret that I just don't know.

I finally found one, and I called and asked if we could donate specifically for clothes, and got the names of two girls and an address to send the money to.

As soon as I got off the phone I told JC and she was very happy (course she doesn't have to hunt up a checkbook address an envelope and all the other paperwork!) Then I mentioned to my son he still had money leftover and he asked if he could find a boy to give it to. So here we are having to call back to get boys names and find out if I needed to send two checks or not.

I tell you it is hard to give stuff away!

I think I want the kids to draw a picture or two to go with it and I hope this adorable desire to share grows with them.

My husband was offered a chance at a free class through work, well through some people who work in the same building anyway.

He at first declined because three very late nights a week is a lot to be away from family, and one of those nights is GMC's Cub scout night.

Then he went to a meeting with his bosses boss, regarding some 'restructuring'. Now in general we worry a little when this happens but mainly rely on the fact that all the nearby managers like him (and often fight over who gets him for work) so even if one account goes away, there will be another.

This time there are no nearby managers of other accounts, he is currently in a separate building for the client, not for his company. Which means nearby managers might like him but it is more than a simple transfer of files for him to switch jobs. So this time, we felt he should
A. get in good with the company offering the class, and
B. get a piece of paper or two saying what he can do.

He has had other offers of free classes, but he never wanted to spend weeks reviewing what he knew, this one is on cisco (sp?) servers stuff, and he knows a lot but not all, he needs enough info to not be bored (we hope).

The catch is he has to drive (back to work, he is normally home for 2.5 hours before the class starts) and he is missing for a lot of time. Plus I am not sure if the test is free or not, if not we can use some money that we would be sending to the car for it.

I really don't know how he did it, but I know he spent his ebay sales money on some fancy tools and now I have my date! the drive is shot though so no laptop, but I can suffer on this..so long as my husband and I never want a computer at the same time...which he has been amazingly patient and working on his other hobby (miniatures) while I play at night...I really have the greatest husband on the planet

Now to stop procrastinating and 'merge' the new checkbook and old....

When I get around to buying I usually want it right now, and Ebay, first you have to wait to see if you won (did not win viewmaster reels for GMC .) Then you have to wait for it to ship (still waiting for Veggie tales book .)

I can handle the wait for shipping most times, but the wait and fail to win, I hate!

Now we are scouring the pages, waiting for some non movie reels and it is not going well. I so wanted that set with the carry case for reels!

But on a plus note we are getting a shirt from ebay for GMC dressy and white, I really prefer my boys to own one, for more formal occassions.

Every year we try to look for something little for our nieces, but if we miss no big, they are a bit old for the toys that abound.

This year we needed to look for egg hunt stuffers and we hit the jackpot.

For roughly $15 we got tons of eggs, and cool mini mazes (25cents for 6), some stickers, bendy toys (18cents each), erasers(25cents for 6), stamps (25cents for 6). Gigantically full bag of stuff!

Not quite enough for a whole church hunt, but some of the kids are allowed candy, and will want it, so we only got some. and we are pputting a portion of it to the family egg hunt. (gma's)

We also found some cool things for us, a silver and gold egg . I am a kid when it comes to some things, I think they are way cool eggs.

The only thing I would like to do without is the garbage, there was a gigantic bag of garbage from all the wrapping 6 to a pack and we got 10 packs...

We also found a gift for my BIL and my daughter, and a couple stocking stuffers. Still under budget for Misc. for the month.

I made that old checkbook on excell, adn the calendar and the budget, so why don't I do it again (because I am lazy .)

Ahem, I stopped being lazy!...ok fine, actually I decided to hunt up the checkbook that I emailed to my husband which had at least the basic information, obviously missing some info for the checkbook (like two months worth) but at least the lists of bills, and formulas were there.

So I pulled it up, pulled some bank info for up to date amounts, and checked off my list of bills paid ect.

Turns out all the bills are paid for April, only waiting on two more trips to the grocery store.

And another tidbit of information apparently the no OT checks are lower than we thought, which means some revamping of the budget is in order .

On the plus side I know how much money we can spend when we do finally make it to the store.

Oh and after my work today, I emailed the book back to my husband..just so we have it

I dunno...I need my hardrive...If I had it I would know what bills are still to be paid this month, and which have already been paid (most are automatic, so not like a late fee is emminant) I would know how much is paid off on the car, how much to send extra...and how the EF is doing...

But I don't so I don't....

Nothing, nope I know nothing..

And it bothers me, not just bothers enough to rant yet again about it, bothers me enough to not want to get stuff done...why scrimp and make a totally scratch dinner if I don't even know where the debt stands?

Isn't that pathetic, of course saving loot is important even if you can't quantify it...but....well being the rediculous person I am...I don't wanna!

(course dinner is egg salad so not like there is a way for me to be lazy and spend money on it, good thing too)

Not only do I have no idea what "Sidebar Link Border Bottom Background:" is I have no idea what color "#80002B" is...

And to top it all off I am color challenged, I have to see it to know if it is passable or not. (knowing good from passable is not an option..sorry)

So in short I think I aught to stick with the basic blue here...though I would prefer a deep green tint, cause my favorite color is green, preferably with a hint of red, cause my hair is red...

I tried Ba's links and found a scheme I like dark green with a hint of red, but..I don't know where to put the colors! all well and good that I know what color is what I still don't know where to put it .

Not only do I not have my hardrive, I don't have a way to print today!

Sigh, so not my tech week (err month?)

I will get it back though, it is just attatched to my husbands computer, and I don't know how to use it.

First I have to say I am so proud of myself, I am not by nature a garage sale or ebay looker, but I knew that my son was interested in viewmaster reels so I looked and found a reasonable lot and he agreed, Daddy bid (heh gotta use up daddys money so he stops bringing so much stuff in!)

Then I asked my daughter what she wanted to do with her money figuing I could search ebay for her as well.

"I want to use it to buy that cord GMC wants"..sooo cute! but he already 'bought' the cord and had money leftover to buy the reels.

I told her this and asked again what she wanted to do with her money:

"Buy clothes for girls who don't have any"

SOOOO cute! and we have to oblige! I just don't know how...I need a trustworthy organization that specifically gives clothes to girls..any suggestions?

Way back in January we found that gift normally priced 50, for only 15, yesterday was my sons birthday so we were all set to give it to him and wow him with it.

And his Grandmother from Pa gave him almost the exact same gift. Ours was a 3 in one set of chess, checkers and the dice game from pirates of the carribean. Hers was just chess. We snuck out hte box of chess and snuck in our box, and in essence gave him nothing for his birthday.

But you know with all the stuff he got from relatives for Easter and his birthday, I don't think it is too terrible that he didn't get anything from us.

We were handed cash to replace the chess set and Gma will be taking hers back, and we will let him buy something with it...some of it.

Because insisting on 'some to church and some to the bank' is more about not having too much junk comming in than about anything else.

And over the course of the weekend with gifts comming I discovered my son thinks you can't split bills. He recieved 2 dollars as one gift and said there isn't anything left to spend (one to church one to the bank)! I thought it was cute, and he has a point, we are lazy so we do tend to send a whole bill rather than split it down to change. (always with a result of more to the bank, never rounding down!)

Soap, we went visiting once long ago (only had one kid at the time) and I smelled the soap my Grandma used to use....Niether my husband or I had any particular preference of soap at the time, and I imediatly told him to go buy me that brand when we next ran out.

Unfortunaly the soap was worn down, and the name was no longer on it. And grandma died long ago, so I can't ask her.

I sniffed in the store but couldn't find it. So I shelved the idea for a time.

Then today, I took a shower, and found it. In my shower, I had put a 'new' bar in yesterday. 'new' beacuse it was sitting in my dresser 'drying out' I was testing the theory, and it changes the smell of Ivory soap...Dunno if grandma used Ivory soap or if she dried hers and it smells the same, but I am happy I found it.

I just sat down and paid a bill. No I don't have my hardrive back, so I do not have my checkbook..instead I peeked on Ing to see what I had and well...trusted it.

Now I have been using ING and my checkbook for a bit now, and they nearly always agree, see if I tell ING to pay a bill, on the same page as my account 'statement' is those bills scheduled, and when they are scheduled for, so I know the money it says is in there is there and will be till those other ones come out.

Bad part is the pay is still auto deposited to the 'old' account, which means there isn't plenty of money, so no extra can go to the car yet, but good news is I can instantly transfer from the ING savings to the ING checking if I need to while waiting for it to come over from the other bank.

I love ING's easy access a simple design with all the info right there.

The only thing I would ask for is a way to go straight to the checking oiverview from paying a bill instead of a two step click, but then I am lazy

Oh and never believe that 'spending power' always remove the 1K credit line, it is not good interest, and I wouldn't want to pay a bill on credit!

Well since I brought up Oath of Swords yesterday I had to go look up the thrid in the serise, I had read 'War God's Own' but not the next, on my search I found a website with all kinds of free books!

Baen free library

In the explination for why on earth Baen is offering some books free for online reading Eric Flint offers some very nice reasons including my favorite financial reason:

3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.

I have long thought if more things were easonably priced, less people would be interested in free versions, I will gladdly pay a couple books for a hard copy (well um soft cover) of any book I want to rearead more than once. Especially if I can never find it in a library, and serieses I hardly ever find in the library.

'War God's Own' by David Webber is an exact example oif that, my Sister In Law found it online (back before I had internet) and printed it out for us to read, I loved it, and several months later bought my own copy.......

This is a good time for a computer to be broken, or rather the last 4 days were I borrowed and read Eragon and Eldest for the duration, I am now done, I would like my computer back....

If you are interested in dragons, fantasy, elves and strange creatures, epic struggles, and well failed missions. It is a good read.

If you are looking for a book with nice neat tied up ends..these are not the books. I finished with more irritation than love for the next book. Dude still hasn't avenged his dad from book one, and this book just added more to his tasks!

Though honestly it isn't a half bad book...and while I think it could use some editing help, far to often in Eldest the wonderful descriptions cover 5 minutes of fantasy time in 5 minutes of reading, leaving the rest of a 3 week journy with no page space to describe!

I think the 2 books would have been better served as at least 3, if not 4 to get to this point, or else Paolini should have ditched half his world.

Trying to cram the history of elves, man, ra'zac (insectlike monsters), riders, dvergar (dwarves) dragons, and urgal (large man like horned monsters) into such a short space along with three different romances (the hero, his cousin, and his dragon), plus the epic battles, betrayals, and miscelaneous comments regarding life, faith, and community, is a bit much for two (albeit thick) books.

But, they are good books, and cool battles, thoguh not half as good as David Webber writes, He can make a space battle interesting, and write wonderful sword play (Honor Harrington novels and Oath of Swords)

In short, I am nitpociking, because the author is a homeschooled kid..well 20 something so not quite a kid, but still. He was homeschooled, I should love his work, instead, it is just...good enough.

And that is yet another reason why I should keep my comments to myself, too picky, always wanting more...I don't complain about J R R Tolkien, why would I complain about Paolini?

Same reason I complain about my kids, they I can change. Tolkien is long past changing Middle Earth.....Of course I have a right and obligation to work on my kids,(Speaking of complaining about my kids, my youngest still has an 'accident' (potty training) a day sometimes two, my middle girl can't keep a 6 from a 9, and my oldest, well he is still my behavioral handful...sigh)anyway a 20 something bestselling author..he can do what he wants and I have no right to complain, besides his editor prolly told him no one would stick around to read 6 books of one riders journey (humph, Drizzt won fans over like a dozen? books, I think readers can handle 6)

Now see what happens when I can't balance a checkbook or update payoff charts? I babble on about books! I need my hardrive back!

PS did you know you could read Webbers books online?

Wind Riders..so I guess I am not out of books .)

So apparently I missed April Fools this year, I didn't even notice it was the first till today when I came on line and found yesterdays feed from Jeffrey's blog, I seem to have missed pink and green....I suppose I shall live.

Speaking of my broken computer...I need it, no not the computer, the hard drive..remember I said I put my checkbook on the computer..well...that would be the broken computer..wonder how much money is in the account....

'Holy week' we have company to feed, eggs to die, and apparently church to go to...See somehow I ended up with the task of filling the nursery with staff...a strange job for me as honestly I do not like other peoples 'I want my mommy' kids.

But I do see it as a task that needs done..so off to call around or something...

Of course all that information like who does what when is on my harddrive... Did I mention I need that hard drive?

Today for lunch we had, as usual, leftovers to nuke.

After hands were washed, kids were seated and oh so patiently waiting, I opened the door of the microwave and pulled out the container... and then watched it fall to the floor. OOPS

As noodles and broccoli crashed to the floor covering 3 square feet in a saucy sticky mess, I actually thought, cool.

No not that the leftovers were that bad, actually they were good. But it is cool that we can afford to replace the meal. I simply scraped the food up into a pile, and put it aside while talking to the kids about replacements.

We had alternatives, from waiting 20 minutes for mac N cheese, to nuking those easy macs the Grandparents sent, to whipping up a batch of spaghetti or beans, we had options.

Given the state of hunger we went with super fast nuking a veggie and making PBnoJ. But isn't it amazing, I didn't have to feed them food from the floor to prevent starvation, and we am not looking at starvation later in the week to make up for a lost meal. We just had a couple sniffles over the lost food, and a wonderful discussion over how blessed we are to afford enough food to make up for a clumsy momma, and moved on.....

We learned a wonderful lesson from our lunch off the floor, but I don't plan on repeating it anytime soon!