We're all over the place. This spring we turned our house in to Hogwarts and invited 25 of my son's friends to become students for the day. That was crazy. More often than not, we have one or two friends over for a sleepover, or even just have family over. Whatever seems right for a particular kid in a particular year.

Continuing in the Star Trek line of thought, in addition to JeanLuc Picard, definitely Captain Janeway. Aragorn Hermione Granger Come to think of it, Emma Watson herself wouldn't be so bad. Caspian ...so basically literary characters already in leadership positions, lol. I suppose I'm not exactly thinking outside the box here.

Most telemarketing calls here come from India. There's about a two second delay between when I pick up and when the auto-dialer connects them to the conversation. Normally I hang up in that time, but every once in a while I'll have some fun. As soon as I hear them pick up I'll saying something like "You've reached the menswear department at Sears, how can I help you?" and listen to them fumble over themselves for a while trying to figure out what happened. The best was when I said I was the switchboard at the hospital and they tried to convince me that I, the imaginary switchboard operator, should book a duct-cleaning for the whole hospital.

Halfway through your update, I was thinking that it sounds like a very big issue with anxiety, and then I saw at the end that you'd already recognized this a bit. He's so good and responsible for other people because he's on guard at all times, trying to remember everything, trying to behave correctly, trying to be perfect. And then he gets to YOU. And you are his safe place to fall, his place to not have to be perfect and where he can just relax, and you get the brunt of all that tension that he carries around the rest of the time. He sounds like a good kid who is so terrified of failing that he can't even bring himself to try and panics at the thought of doing something he's not 100% sure he can do perfectly. How does he respond when he makes little mistakes or things go a little wrong? As for family counselling... I think that would be a wise idea, and that is all that board rules will allow me to say about the way your DH is treating you.

In a very general sense, reading everyone's stories and seeing so many different stories and viewpoints has made me see people as, well, people. People that I otherwise probably would have thought of as too different from me or wondered why they weren't talking, or not know what to say, etc, I know think "oh, that's just like [random poster] I should [do whatever works]!" instead of just not engaging due to discomfort. In a more specific sense, the advice to "not compare your work in progress to someone else's highlight reel" has made life a lot less stressful.

Yes and no. Yes, I am a single-issue voter in some ways. I vote to save as many lives as possible. But no in that my "issue" works itself out in many branches of policy. War, abortion, nuclear weapons, the environment, refugees, health care, etc.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone! I like the idea of handing them things in stages so they don't try everything at first and get bored right away. Lots of great ideas here, I need to hit up my local dollar store and see what I can find! :) ACK, google maps said 8. :( We'll have to leave earlier than expected to get in some decent waterpark time at Great Wolf Lodge, then. I HATE waking up early, but I think the waterpark will do the kids a lot of good, so I can put up with it for one morning. Thanks for the heads-up!

Next month we're driving from Disney back to Canada with five kids in tow. (See ages & special needs in my sig.) We're spreading the drive out over 2 1/2 days as the baby still nurses a lot and thus will need lots of pit stops. The first day is Disney to Concord NC, with a long stop for lunch with a friend in Savannah and some playtime at a park there, a short stop near Columbia for food & nursing in the mid-afternoon, and then stopping around dinnertime at Great Wolf Lodge in Concord so they can burn off some energy in the waterpark for a few hours. The second day is the long one. We have no specific stops or meet-ups planned, so we're just going to stop for running around and nursing as needed. We're stopping in Erie PA for the night (the hotel has a pool so the kids can burn some energy there as well), and then heading the rest of the way home the following morning, likely arriving around lunch time. So basically... lots of car time. Lots of pit stops as well. We have a road trip box that we're stocking for the kids. So far we have: - a steering wheel toy for the baby He LOVES steering wheels... but that won't be enough to entertain him for 18 hours. He'll have his siblings around to play Peekaboo with, though. - colouring books and crayons for the 2 year old - Dual screen DVD players and new movies for them to watch - Story of the World Volume 1 on CD - pencils and word searches/crosswords/logic puzzle books for the older boys - lego boxes - a new game each for their Nintendo DSes These kids are HIGH needs as far as entertainment goes. Their minds are constantly whirring and if they don't have anything to keep their minds and hands busy, they start to get loud and the oldest with autism start stimming, etc, which will drive us INSANE in close quarters for hours on end. We'd rather over-prepare than leave them with nothing to keep them busy. (Just in defense of parenting here: they're fine with nothing to do at home. They make up games and play well, etc. They've got awesome imaginations and can make fun out of next to nothing... but that's a lot more difficult to do when trapped in a vehicle.) Any other ideas for me? Particularly for the 2 year old (girl), but we could use a few more ideas for the older boys as well.

Here's a link for you. http://www.imax.com/news/harry-potter-imax-week My local theatre wasn't listed on the official pages of theatres having showings, but when I went to their page and searched for movies playing next Thursday, it came right up.

As far as I know, it's only being re-released to IMAX, yeah. :( Most theatres that have IMAX screens are participating, though; I get the idea that there may not have been a lot of other IMAX movies out right now.

We've bought tickets! Our theatre is treating it just like a regular movie, no special events or anything (at least not that I've heard of). They're only showing the first and last movies, and only on Thursday night. I'd LOVE it if they were making a bigger deal of it, but I'm happy we at least get this much. We were able to choose specific seats though, which was nice; no having to arrive hours earlier to get a decent spot.

Because should a crime actually be committed: -people will have no idea how tall they were, what colour their hair was, what their face looked like, etc. All they'll remember is "a clown". -if they get caught, they play upon the very sentiments in this thread. "It was just a stupid prank," "I wasn't ACTUALLY going to hurt someone," "It was just stupid fun," etc. Actual criminals are hiding out under the "stupid prankster" umbrella. How do you tell the difference between a 'prankster' threatening to kill children and a psychopath who actually would? You can't, until they've actually done it. Which is why it's important to treat the threats like actual threats, not write them off as pranks or teenage silliness.

Just as a suggestion: he didn't only waste *your* time. Because of his procrastination, his siblings missed out on classes (and possible had to spend time with you in the car during the drive as well? Not sure if your younger child was with for that as well). I'd say he needs to recognize that his actions impact MULTIPLE people. He owes *you* an hour and a half of his time... but he also owes a bunch to his little sibling in addition to that. How exactly he makes things right on that front may be very different than how he makes things up to you. And it may have more of an impact on him because it's not coming from someone he feels like pushing back against, but from someone he may naturally feel more protective of.

The gender of the people in question wouldn't bother me. Developing a relationship wouldn't bother me, either. Once it went from being "kind of interested in each other" to "officially dating," however, I might look for another tutor, just because something feels off about paying your girl/boy friend to help you with a subject.

I don't want to "like" this, but I wanted to say that if it is a hit nerve, I had the same thing. It took about 3 years for the sensitivity to go away. My nerve in the crook of one arm still seems to randomly spasm a few times a year, and it's 9 years out.

I'm with those who don't see Snape as a hero even now. I see a troubled man, desperate to assuage his guilt in the only ways left available to him. He did the right thing (well, in the grand scheme of things; he did plenty of the wrong things as well), but not BECAUSE it was the right thing; he did the right thing only because it made him feel a little bit better about what he'd done.

Customs is horrid, especially at Detroit as the bridge is under construction at the moment. If they're going over for meets during the day, I would assume that they'd be heading in during usual commuting hours in the morning? I'm pretty non-chalant about border crossing by now, but the thought of that particular one at morning rush hour makes me cringe. I'd allot an hour at least.

Aside from the "everything went down" comment, there was also the comment when they were talking in the bathroom, and Kate (or was it Kevin) said "You're all I have now," which leads me to believe something BIG happened with Randall. I agree that the father probably passed away; I didn't notice the moon necklace at first, but that does make sense. I'm not sure how long ago, though. Randall's kids call the two of them "Grandma and Grandpa" when they answered the door, so it seems as though it may have been quite a while if they've come to think of Miguel as Grandpa.

I kind of liked the second episode ending for its realism. People make promises they don't keep and you have to deal with the fallout from that. The "big 3" chant thing felt a little forced and unnatural to me, but overall I liked it. As the resident fat girl in the room, I identified strongly with how she felt at the party. I do wonder what the one brother meant when he said "I've been meaning to call you since, you know, everything went down." There's definitely a huge story there to be told.

We use it all the time. We've never had a bad experience. I have heard of a few people that had problems when a small business got in over their heads and weren't prepared for the influx of customers, but those who were affected did get refunds. When sticking with reputable companies I've never heard of people having issue. Go for it, and have fun!

We wanted to go see Fantasmic at some point. Does that mean if we book a FP for it, we get a better spot, like a reserved area or something similar?

I think I need to buy the app tonight (after the kids go to bed; the trip is a surprise for them) and do some exploring. It sounds like it'll do pretty much all my work for me if I can figure out how to use it most effectively.

Oh, I'm not worried about being overwhelmed in the parks, as long as we can get a DAS. (Our oldest gets quite aggressive physically and with stimming when he's excited/anticipating something. Not violent, but loud shrieking, extreme hand flapping, forceful stomping and hugs, etc.) As long as we can keep him moving from one thing to another, we'll be fine. :) And I'll have my husband with me; we're each used to handling all five with even one of us, so having both of us together, and with a DAS, it'll seem almost like a vacation, lol. Our younger two are too young to need tickets, so we can't book FastPasses for them for anything; we "only" need to get a group of 5 if we want to go on anything as a group. Can the Lines app tell you ahead of time which FastPasses are still available? I should definitely buy it and check it out; I wonder if it could tell me right now which FastPasses are still available for November 3rd, etc. It definitely seems like a fantastic planning tool, especially since you can modify your plans on the go. Good to know that the parade/fireworks FastPasses aren't too useful; frees me up to use them for something else (if anything else useful is still available). Thanks for all the info, everyone! :)

We can book FastPasses for our Disney trip in just a few days and I'm trying to decide what to go for. We're staying off-property, so we can only book 30 days in advance as opposed to guests staying on-site who can book 60 days in advance. I'm assuming this means that most of the FastPasses for the longer rides will already be claimed. (We're likely getting a disability pass anyway, so we're not overly concerned about this.) However, I'm wondering if I should try to get FastPasses for parades and fireworks? I'm a bit confused as to how that works. I mean... people without FastPasses can still watch a parade and fireworks, right? What's the benefit of the FastPasses at these? Is there a better seating.standing section reserved for people with them? If I show up early without a FastPass, will I get better seats than someone *with* a FastPass who shows up just in time? Just trying to figure out if this is worth using a FastPass for.

I think the leggings are gross but the other clothes are cute. HOWEVER, all I ever see in pictures & ads are the ugly leggings! I had no idea they sold anything OTHER than the printed leggings until I read this thread. (I realize this is a zombie thread, but it's legging season and SO MANY PEOPLE are pushing this now.)