Well, let me pipe up about my Costco bagged bulb/roots experiences over the past few years. My gardening obsession is with Hostas -have 70+ at this point- and I never fail to buy a few bags of them @ Costco if they are either varieties I do not have as yet, or they're ones I can easily sell in my annual spring plant sales. I have 4 new varieties potted up in my greenhouse as of about 10 days ago. Yes, I have had several batches of HVX infected roots and there has never been a problem returning those for a refund. The key here is of course recognizing it in the first place, which I can and do. Must say I've become a bit of a nuisance perhaps in some nurseries as I point out infected stock to them..... And I've had my share of mislabeled plants where the contents do not match the description. I ALWAYS pot up my new Hosta acquisitions, so they are much more easily scrutinized during the course of the first growing season. Lilies are another favourite of mine and yes, you will encounter incorrectly labeled bulbs, but, the price is right... I have had some problems though with perennials like Heucheras and Echinecea from them. If you buy them too long after they arrived at the store they will have sat at too high an ambient temperature for too long without being planted and you may well find nothing much comes up out of those roots. Tuberous/root perennials from any bare bagged display are best purchased and planted as early as possible IMHO, if you wait too long their viability is seriously impeded.

Wow. First time home owner here. I bought a really old house that I knew I would need to put a lot of work into which, for me, meant a lot of money because I am nowhere near a DIYer. First up was the kitchen. I had the kitchen measured, went to Lowes and bought a bunch of cabinets. Then I interviewed about twenty different handymen and contractors before I found one that I liked to install them. I had no idea how to work with a contractor but I did know how I wanted my kitchen to look. He allowed me to buy some things and he took care of the rest and I was pretty pleased with the final result. I asked him to quote installing the master bathroom and not only was his quote very high, his finishes were also not broken out and I suspected they were basic builder finishes. While looking for another contractor for the bathroom, I started accumulating things that I liked from Craigslist, eBay, thrift stores and online suppliers. By the time I found a contractor, I already had the majority of the materials I needed. I explained my vision for my bathroom and showed him all of my materials. He was absolutely fine working with what I had. For the remaining items, if I didn't have a preference, he would buy it but if there was something specific that I wanted, I would buy it for him to install. Anything that was the least bit questionable, he would look at it before I bought it. It is certainly taking longer due to scouting out materials but he understands that this is not a builder bathroom and has bought into the vision. Now that I've been through it, I wouldn't work any other way with a contractor. I stayed in touch with the first contractor and while we both agree that he would have had the bathroom done by now, we also agree that I wouldn't love it as much as I will when it's done because he wouldn't have allowed me the kind of flexibility that this contractor does. That was a very long winded way of saying that I agree with what was stated up-post in that if you can find a contractor that will allow you to purchase materials and you clearly establish who is responsible for what, it can work out quite nicely.

My dad's living will has some rather generic information about what he would want done. Then there's the important stuff. It specifies that my stepmom is to make any decisions for him if he is unable to do so. It then specifies that I am to make the decisions if she is unavailable/unable to do so. If both of us are unavailable, my oldest brother gets to decide. In reality, any decisions would be family decisions, but in case of any conflict or disagreement, there is a legal piece of paper that clearly spells out who he wants having final say. Just assuming your spouse will be able to make decisions for you isn't very reliable. Although it's probably not the most common problem, remember Terri Schiavo had a husband the whole conflict was that the rest of her family disagreed and even though courts ultimately upheld the husband's right to decide on her behalf I'm sure the whole situation was pretty horrible for all. I don't know that having a living will naming her husband (assuming that's who she would have named) would actually have mattered in her case, but it couldn't have hurt. The more likely situation though is an accident that involves both spouses so the spouse is unavailable or incapable of making decisions. If you have one adult child, one parent, one sibling, etc down the line of legal next of kin in the order you'd like people making decisions for you, maybe you're ok, but if you have multiple people with equal rights under the law (or one in there somewhere who you wouldn't trust to be able to make the choices you'd prefer), it would probably be a good idea to decide ahead of time who gets the final say, who comes next, etc, make it legal in a living will, and let the family members know about it. Not only will that make sure you get the people you want making your health care decisions, it could make things easier on your family in a difficult time to have those decisions made ahead of time. Of course you can't predict what you want done in any imaginable situation, but you can predict who might be available and reliable to make those decisions on your behalf. I have no idea what's in their actual will. I'll probably be hobbling around a nursing home in a walker anyway by the time i might inherit anything (my parents were babies when they got married and had me, and my stepmom's a decade younger even than them), so I can't see why i should care.

I could be wrong but I read in the original post that the 4 y/o is a she, not a he. Nic25, this is a real dilemma for you. If, indeed, her mother is dead set on alienating these kids from you, in all likelihood, as Sylvia wrote you on 7/19, they will be alienated from you. On the other hand, occasionally efforts at alienation fail because, as JNM wrote, sometimes as kids grow up, they begin to see the disconnect between what they have been told and the reality of their own experience. Ultimately, you have to know yourself. Stepfamilies are not for sissies. When you have one parent actively attempting to sabatoge the household of the other parent, lots of hurtful things occur. It takes a VERY thick skin; you have to KNOW whatever the kids may say is not about you, but the result of a pathological dynamic between two people who couldn't figure out a way to live with each other before you ever came along. You and your BF/future DH absolutely have to "have each other's backs." This doesn't mean your BF needs to choose you over his children; it just means he needs to understand where his children's behavior is stemming from. The kids are victims in the war between the adults. The thing with wars is they only go on as long as at least two parties engage in them. This means your BF has to emotionally detach from his X and deal with her strictly on a "business" level. Stick to the legal agreement reached in the divorce; be as amicable as possible; if the X wants to play games with the agreement,document, document, document and let the lawyers handle it. If you are a sensitive person whose feelings are easily hurt, you very well may want to take several steps back and really do some soul-searching. It may be that a man who already has children is not the ideal situation for you. That's OK. It isn't a character flaw or a reflection of your worth as an individual. I would ask myself, "Is this what I want my life to be if this is what life is going to be like with my boyfriend and his children?" If your answer is "yes" and you think you are up to facing the challenge of living a life with constant negativity from his children and their mother, then I encourage you to begin working to strengthen your internal reserves of patience and perseverance. You will need them. If your answer is "no," then for your sake, your BF's sake, and, most of all, the sake of his children, you need to gently and decisively, remove yourself from their lives and get on with yours. I do not envy you this difficult and painful situation.