how’s the local school district though?

It’s a nutcracker! Sweet!

God you should see the Easter basket setups kid get these days. I don’t remember any of my friend pulling goods like that in the 90s, so I know it has to be a new thing. I mean some kids get pile bigger than most kids do for Christmas!

I love experience gifts vs. physical gifts. We’ve been trying to do more things like that in my family. Lots of concerts, plays, and baseball games. So much better than another freaking coffee cup.

I feel like we give so much out of obligation...

Yeah, the kid toy machine is a sausage grinder of “hafta”. I have seen his peers get sad/envious of other kids’ toys. Maybe I haven’t yet been subjected to something as huge as the “NES pressure” we subjected our parents to.

And then Grandma swoops in, buys them everything they want because “it’s my job to spoil them”, and you are back to square one.

Positive feedback. However, in the spirit of the “BRC isn’t enough” theme, I recommend commenting on the availability of more advanced courses.

I have actively pushed away people asking “what does he want for Xmas”, by telling them “whatever keeps him moving, outside, or helping around the house”.

There are a lot of things that we’ll lie to our kids about as they grow up. Lying about a jolly, benevolent type whose mission revolves around giving gifts to people isn’t the worst thing. And learning that Santa isn’t “real” isn’t as painful as you might think. The key is to not overpromise or use him as a threat.…

What strikes me is how, to our standards, small and modest the Christmas haul was for kids until well into the seventies. Everybody knows the story of how Laura Ingalls got an orange and a penny and thought it a hoard beyond price, but well into the sixties you got maybe ten gifts, counting everything from relatives.

Man do kids get too much stuff. Adults too of course, but we’re much more of a lost cause. With kids, there’s still a chance to shape their expectations differently. I’d like to know the environmental costs of all this stuff- particularly the cost of the oh, 85% of said stuff that kids could happily live without once…

My birthday is three days after X-Mas. Close enough!

Think of it like this: the carpets are just as dirty as your hardwoods, except you can’t see the dirt and it’s harder to clean.

I love it! Already your apartment building is doing a much better job at surviving than Rick and his crew are. (They hadn’t even tried planting anything in Alexandria last time I watched.)

The thing about the Walking Dead, is that all of the characters are stupid (ALL OF THEM), and the plot is dependent on keeping them stupid (because zombies are slow).

Sorry you are wrong, the unseen heros are the people, like me, who build all the booths and install them in 6 days with 24hr/2 twelve hour shift to complete it. Those girls show up at the end and do some rehearsals. I see the show floor and a hotel room for a week, we rent vans to take the guys back and forth. Maybe…

Because heels make your legs look fantastic. Being in heels really makes your calves stand out and also forces you to adopt a good posture in order to maintain balance.

When my daughter was going through her “terrible threes” and would fire up a tantrum when I denied her something, I would tell her that she had a choice. “You can have no cookie but have a happy Daddy, or you can keep screaming/crying and still have no cookie, but also have an angry Daddy. So, you choose: (here I…