Here is the thing I worry about down the road, even assuming imports were TOTALLY safe. This is dependence on other countries for a very basic need. Food. You would think our present energy situation would throw up the red flags about depending on countries across the world for our basic needs. But, obviously it hasn't. What happens when a sector of a country's production faces a competition with a cheaper product? They can't compete, and they shut down their operation. First the farmers faced this with large corporations and many gave up their farms, now they face it with imports. Actually, food production in America now is being increasingly owned from the field to the the market shelf including all points in between by fewer and fewer gigantic entities. And if (a theoretical supposition) they find they can make a better profit buying in some of the necessary ingredients to their product offshore, then putting their American Trademark on it..........would they? Then the family farms get gobbled up into development and is GONE FOREVER. This makes it harder, and harder for a country to fall back on its own resources if they are ever faced with an economic or natural disaster or war situation with their offshore suppliers. IOW you pay what they want, and you take what they give. In a perfect world, the risks for such thinking are minimal. We don't live in a perfect world.

Hi Jim: That's a great idea .. putting a Christmas tree in the front porch. I thought about it, but held back ... our weather is so rainy & icy in zone 5a. My brother is a dermatologist & skilled surgeon. Acne treatment shifted from chemicals to expensive laser or light treatment. The acne drug, Acutane, has been linked to birth defects, and suicides in teenagers. There's Nicomide-T, a derivative from Vitamin B, for an expensive acne treatment. Brewer's yeast is cheaper to treat acne, since it's has all the B-vitamins. I did extensive research on Brewer's yeast since I plan to give that to my kid for her teenager acne. University of Maryland Medical center has a good review on Brewer's Yeast, known to help with diabetes, high cholesterol, plus preventing colds & flu. Here's an excerpt from below link: "At least one study has found that brewer's yeast may improve acne. Another linked it to a reduced risk of a second skin cancer. And one large, preliminary study found that taking a specific kind brewer’s yeast product (EpiCor) may help prevent colds and flu. Brewer's yeast is often used as a source of B-complex vitamins, chromium, and selenium. The B-complex vitamins in brewer's yeast include B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B5 (pantothenic acid), B6 (pyridoxine), B9 (folic acid), and H or B7 (biotin). These vitamins help break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, which provide the body with energy. They also support the nervous system, help maintain the muscles used for digestion, and keep skin, hair, eyes, mouth, and liver healthy. http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/brewers-yeast#ixzz3MBHc8Nct I have been taking Brewer's Yeast for months. It was a God-sent when I was bed-ridden from my severe allergic reaction to Cantaloupe. I was so inflamed, but the brewer's yeast quenched the inflammation. Brewer's yeast is a by-product of the beer industry, sold cheap $10 for 1 lb. as NOW brewer's yeast. But one company convert that to pills, and sold under EpiCor for outrageous price of $42 a tiny bottle on Amazon, with many glowing reviews. Lots of perfect reviews on Amazon are corporate sponsored. NOW brewer's yeast has the LOWEST rating on Amazon, since it's cheap ... they don't pay people to boost their Amazon ratings. However, NOW brewer's yeast works as well as EpiCor. It tastes good if mixed with buckwheat honey and milk. It's a meal in itself, I don't get hungry until 4 or 5 hours later. The blood-sugar stabilization is fantastic. One drawback: can't take that before bedtime, since it makes me very hyperactive like caffeine. The last time I had a cold/flu ? That's when my kid was 4 years old. Nutritional Yeast tastes nasty like brewer's yeast, plus without the chromium. I already tried nutritional yeast, it was like stinky powder-egg. The below link shows the difference between the two: http://www.milkandhoneyhealthfoods.com/brewers-yeast-versus-nutritional-yeast Brewer's yeast helps me to lose weight, since it stabilizes my blood sugar. Here's an excerpt from below link: "A recent study has found that a hydrolysate from brewer’s yeast may help obese people lose weight and abdominal fat. Participants in the study included 54 obese men and women. Over the course of ten weeks they consumed either 0.5 grams of yeast hydrolysate or dextrin as a control 30 minutes before breakfast and again 30 minutes before dinner. At the six week point, the researchers noted that the yeast hydrolysate group already had significant reductions in calorie intake. This reduction was maintained through the end of the study. At the conclusion of the study, the researchers noted an average 5.7 lbs reduction in body weight and a 17.3 cm2 reduction in abdominal circumference in the yeast group, compared to 1.8 lbs and 7 cm2 reductions in the control group. Researchers from Jeonju University in South Korea conducted the study. It was published in the January 2014 issue of Nutrition." Below is my Christmas tree. It was decorated by my kid and her friend. I have NOT added the other decorations. Here is a link that might be useful: Brewer's yeast extract to lose weight

Oh boy can I relate. We went through that so many times....but we were by ourselves. DH is an only child and my brother never helped with anything. We did DH's grandmother's NYC apartment, his parent's NYC apartment, my mother's house of 50 years (plus 3 barns full of stuff!) when she moved to her condo here, and then after she passed, the condo and her house in FL. Then we had to pack or toss everything from the old house that was on this property (DH's family's summer place) and move it to our old house while we tore it down and rebuilt. Then we had to pack and move everything to the new house once it was built so we could sell the our old house. There's a reason why my attic looks like a goodwill store! My cousin is going through the same thing with her Dad's house of 60 years. We spent an evening together trying to determine who was who in the boxes of photos we've amassed as everyone from that generation is no longer with us to ask....so please label your photos! It's also a key reason why I don't have a bread maker and a rice cooker et. al. It's also a reason why I try to decorate with what I have...it's so hard to justify buying more stuff, even if it isn't perfectly my taste. After you go through that, you realize that yesterday's "gotta have" is tomorrow's "gotta get rid of this drek!"

I started talking with my kids when they were small. I talked to them most when they were in Jr. High because there were 'stories' that I heard at work (social services) about kids their age playing sex games at school. My kids confirmed that some of that stuff goes on... where kids are giving each other oral sex for recreation. They didn't consider themselves boyfriend/girlfriend and didn't consider it sex if it was oral. It was one of the deciding factors in leaving the area, the County we were in had the highest teen pregnancy rate (per capita) in the state. I was seeing that in cases I worked and even now, my kids tell me that almost all of their friends from that time have either had a baby in high school, involved in drugs (some both) or dead from drugs or car accidents. Very few have finished high school and gone to college. Makes me glad I talked a lot to my kids and left. We moved to an affluent area and even here, the kids say there is some of that activity but not as much. The major difference is back where we used to live, the families were primarily single parent households and not a lot of supervision. Here, the parents aren't supervising because they are busy with high paying careers that keep them too busy to supervise the kids and some of these kids are more able to do what they want because they've been given cars, credit cards, and too much freedom. The common denominator is lack of parental involvement or supervision. My sons didn't date in high school. My younger son let his grades slide in his third semester of college because he really liked a girl in some of his classes. She got him to buy her things and give her rides to school every day and kinda led him on, then midway through the semester, they got a job together and she started dating a guy from work. Then he had to go to school AND work with her and he was crushed/felt used. He is going back to school next week and doesn't want to think about girls until he graduates. My older son didn't have a girlfriend until he was just out of high school. My daughter is also not interested in finding a boyfriend or dating and she just graduated high school. My step daughter is 9 and breaks her neck looking at any guy she sees and thinks they are all (teenage and older guys) checking her out. We've talked to her about priorities and self respect but she still gets all crazy when she's around ANY guy. We can probably talk to her until we're blue, but she has modeled after her mom that likes to be a flirty party girl and needs to have a man in her life to feel good about herself. We'll continue talking to SD about it and hope some of it sinks in, but as she gets older, only time will tell if she'll be receptive to the message her dad wants her to get. For that reason, DH and I are dreading her high school years.