Okay...here goes nothing! I went and read back all 18 pages that I missed.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I move and am between internet connections for who knows how long.
I took a page of notes in an attempt to hit the main things...between the notes and mutli-quotes, I hope I got it all!
DONT DO IT !!!
We did christmas two years ago ( well when I say we I mean Colin cooked and i ran around like a headless chicken ) and it was the most stressful afternoon of my life.
Never been so close to a nervous breakdown .....
LOL about Thanksgiving Dinner...My mom is vegetarian and allergic to seafood/shellfish. I have NO IDEA what to do about both Thanksgiving dinner and about her eating in New Orleans.

I'm not going to worry about it until about mid-November LOL.
How is "the boy" feeling? I saw he was not well.
Bethany - How are the moving plans going?
They're rolling...we sent in an apartment application on Friday. Now it's back to waiting. We still need to book the truck; we still have the Penske reservation we booked when we were planning to drive down; we need to modify it and also book the freight one. We are also packing. My DH packed up a large portion of the kitchen this week. He left out 2 plates, 2 bowls, and 2 cups, along with some pots and pans and stuff. What he did pack was the stuff we don't use as often.
I can't wait to hear about your
Disneyland trip. Did you say you take a big DLR trip/family reunion every year?
All this talk about butchers made me dream about going to a local butcher for getting a job doing insurance claims for them

What a weird dream they had their aprons on and all this meat was all around I did end up getting the job plus a date
Hahaha...that sounds like my kinda dream!
I'm coming along but with 2 major surgeries in a row it a long slow boring recovery. It has given me a new awareness for people with disabilities.
It's ok it was a while ago. Just a slow recovery after a back fusion in Nov and a total hip replaced in Mar.
This thread keeps my mind busy reading it and trying to keep up.

How are you feeling now? That's a lot to deal with. Don't beat yourself up on top of it!
I need to ask for some prayers, if you guys don't mind. My dear friend called last night. Her DIL went into labor the night before Mother's Day. She was 28 weeks pregnant. They tried to stop the labor but couldn't, and little Claire was born in the early hours of Mother's Day. She weighs almost 2 pounds and is breathing on her own, so far. However, many things could go wrong, and they are all worried. Any prayers or good thoughts you could spare would be welcome!
How is she doing now?
I think you are the first person I have ever heard call Boston clean. And yes, there is a lot of Irish blood in Boston. I am glad you had a good time.
Greg is doing well...he is in a Florida swamp right now completing the last phase of Ranger School. If all goes well, he graduates next week.
It WAS clean...at least what I saw of it. We were staying by MIT and so we were mostly in Cambridge, but the Freedom Trail area was pretty clean. My mom was laughing at me because we were walking around Harvard and I said "It smells funny up here....like trees or something."
Glad to hear Greg is doing well. How are you doing with what he does? I'd be a hot mess. And I see now he's going to be jumping out of planes?

The swamp would be scary enough. What is he doing? Wrestling gators?
Now we are going to have to get Bethany to rate our cities cleanliness!

If you're mind is like a sieve, mine must be a colander!
I don't know what a sieve is, but colander sounds like mine lately!
Let's see....Minneapolis was also freakishly clean. The thing that struck me as odd there was that invariably, we got strange directions when we asked the locals for them. They'd go on and on explaining how to get somewhere, then at the end we'd realize the place was across the street and down one block.
Denver...pretty clean. LA....ehhhh not so much. NOLA...it's ok. FQ smells bad though. NYC....

Absolutely disgusting. My curtains are stained from the air and I've bleached the OUTSIDE of my fridge more than once to get black grime off it.

And once I saw 2 bloody hand prints smeared across the wall of a train station...they stayed up for at least a week.
Laura- Clean isn't the first word I would use to describe boston, but when you compare it to other cities I guess it is. Paris and NY are not the cleanest cities I've been too, but when I was in Germany and Switzerland- they know how to keep a city clean.
Ahhh....Switzerland.

That is one of the few cold places that I like.
How is the job going? I saw you went back to work. Also, sorry about having to deal with your inlaws.
Funny thing, she has not had the treat for a birthday before so yesterday she was raving about the "thick thick brownies that Cameron's mom made for his Birthday!" "Nana, they were so thick! And they were shewey! And they were crispy! How did she do that all at once, Nana?"
Welby told me that her wine store has the juice to make Ice Wine if she wants.
Brownies defy common sense.
I thought ice wine had to do with the grapes freezing on the vine during a frost.
I know Kady will be fine with her weight but I am not used to her being anything but thin. When she was 5 1/2 and diagnosed with food allergies she was only 28 pounds. It is exactly two years later, and she is 54 pounds. She almost doubled her weight. She didnt look like she was a healthy weight before at all. Now she does. Her doctor said she is solid with muscles in her legs because she does gymnastics.
Wow she was really tiny! Every year we have to measure the kids at work for their cumulative records and I think most of the kids are in the 70-100 pound range, although some are much smaller. I think the smallest I had was 36 pounds. These kids are about 6 1/2 though. Glad to hear she is a more healthy weight now.
And congratulations on her First Communion!
just a quick fly by here. Our power has been out all day, making my getting ready a pain. Not fun packing in the heat. Now it's off to the airport!
I hope you're off having a great time! Your comment about packing in the heat reminds me that I should do some work in the hallway here today. It does not have air conditioning (only the bedroom and living room here do), and I think I'm going to quickly run out of cool days!
I remember what I was going to ask- how do I add the vacation countdown to the bottom? I searched the other day with no luck, but I did see Kathy wants to be my friend, sorry that took forever! I'm pretty clueless here.
If you click on any of those tickers, they will take you to a ticker website. You can follow the directions on them (i.e. "pick background", "pick marker", "enter date of event"...) and then at the end it will give you a code (it should be a code that says for 'boards' or 'forums' and I think its an IMG code) to copy and paste into your signature section. (Click on "User CP" on the upper left of any DIS page and then on the left side it will have some links...one is "edit signature".) Hopefully this helps.
Thanks all for the congratulations for DH. I still don't think he can believe he won't have two jobs...it has been almost 15 years.
Vickie, Maria, Aimee & Laura- add me to the list of rotten DIL, well at least in their eyes and they have never even met me.

Don't get me started, very long story. It still floors me how stubborn people can be. I just can't imagine ignoring my beautiful DS when you live right next door to him. At least he has one set of sane loveable grandparents who treat him wonderful. Imagine, they do not even know we are expecting again. I could go on and on but I won't.
Congratulations on DH's new job!
That is crazy that they live next door and don't know you're pregnant and you are coming due very quickly! And I am glad to see that your Emma Update was full of good news!
Who asked about Bethany...she has been posting on the NOLA thread. Sounds busy looking for an apartment and packing.
Yes...the NOLA thread moves only about 1/4 as fast as this one; I still was barely able to keep up with it this week. I did want to check in somewhere this week to keep my sanity (or try to....didn't work so well...) and to let people know I was still alive.
Laura, Bethany has been around. Her school has not closed & she is being stressed out on a regular basis just being there. She is just busy.
Thanks for the update...I had three different kinds of headaches this week. Who knew that a headache could cause the INSIDE of your mouth to throb? I had a migraine on Wednesday, a sinus headache on Thursday, and then a mystery-type headache on Friday that mysteriously disappeared within 30 minutes of leaving work.
There are now 6 schools (not mine...*sigh*) closed up here for swine flu. An AP at one school is in critical condition with it. I don't know if the strain is getting more severe or if he has another medical condition. One of my kids went home on Friday at lunch with a temp of 103. The nurse usually sends the sick kids back to class to wait until they are picked up. This time, she sent another student to retrieve his things and he waited in her office.
Alexis is doing better, right? And how are you feeling after the virus, shot, and fall? And when does Angelina hear about the job interview that sounds like it went well? Is it a local job....seems odd they did a phone interview if it's local?
Oh and I had to laugh at you drooling over supermarkets because I was doing the same thing at the supermarkets I was in on the Westbank. Flat floors...wide aisles...fully stocked....smell clean (not like dead mouse)....
He did great! He had his first confrontation with a coach over a call and he seemed to enjoy it, I guess it feels like payback time for him.

He's doing a double header on Sunday. I'd love to go watch him but how do I attend a game and cheer for the umpire?
I was going to ask you how the umpiring went...glad to hear it went well. LOL about the enjoying the confrontation!
Okay....
Zipuzee and
Weluvdisny - I didn't see you enter the thread, so WELCOME!!
EJ4Disney - How are you holding up? I know you've had a rough stretch.
Aimee - Good luck with the WW; I hope you're feeling better!
FormerCastMbr - How's your mom doing? And did I see A's head is better? That sounds like a nasty hit if the stitches on the ball left marks!
NEVERENOUGHWDW - Sorry to hear about your inlaw issues too. How long is that Transatlantic cruise of yours? It's coming up pretty soon!