I grew up with friends with friends who had horses. I was not an experienced rider, but I loved riding and did it as much as I could. Never once was my mother informed that we were riding, and we didn't have adult supervision. She knew that there were horses that were ridden at these houses and I gushed about it quite a bit when I got home each time. It wasn't a secret. My friends were raised with these horses and were trusted to be responsible with them and both of my friends taught me everything I needed to do before during and after riding. I fell a couple times (always when riding bareback and once I got bucked off when a horse was spooked) and my friends encouraged me to get right back on. But my worst fall was when I had my own mother's supervision and an ex-racehorse decided to relive the glory days. I tugged on the reins so hard they cut my hands (I didn't know what else to do, and I didn't damage her mouth- she didn't even seem to notice!) and when I fell off, I landed on my back on gravel, getting scrapes all up my back. Somehow the adult supervision didn't prevent this accident. Either way, I'm alive and well. I know that horses can be dangerous but we respected them. If your daughter is an experience rider, I am not surprised the mother didn't think much about letting her ride and didn't feel the need to make a fuss about an incident that turned out ok, and she plans to do something about anyway.

Certain books I don't like marking up, but a book like this definitely gets marked up. It's a resource book, full of ideas. Highlighting and notes won't get in my way in future readings of the book. I don't even read it in order, just flip around to what's interesting at the time. :)

It's true that pole dancing is starting to be seen as more... fitness oriented to some people? I've watched some videos of pole dances for competition (the clothes stay on at these events) and they are impressive.

This is a misconception. People with ADD are often able to focus almost obsessively on things that are of high interest to them. http://add.about.com/od/adhdthebasics/a/myths-adhd.htm One article about ADD myths. It says: Edit: Whoops, looks like people already addressed this. Sorry. :)

We just started Tae Kwon Do and while our "dojo" is very informal (they meet in a church) they still seem to follow all the rules of their organization as far as how the classes are run. The first belt testing since we joined is this weekend and we're not going, since my girls aren't ready to test yet (they only know the first half of their form) but on Tuesday they were preparing for testing and we were told what to expect. For the actual testing, everyone is expected to sit quietly around the edges of the mats (they can stretch out while they wait) and the person being tested goes through their form three times facing in three different directions. They are judged by multiple black belts and they will not know if they advance until the following week. I'm not sure what else is involved, like if they line up as usual or go through any opening exercises. The school is small, but there's a lot of individual attention and it seems fairly disciplined and testing seems to be taken seriously from what I can tell never having gone to one.

My husband doesn't like talking about those things so he leaves it up to me. He uses the excuse that they're girls so it's all on me. I know that growing up that neither of my parents really talked to me about anything and I found it very difficult to talk to either of them about it.

Ha! I love number 5. :)

The Lightening Thief. They went nuts for it and begged to start right away on Sea on Monsters.

I guess I'm the only one then. :) My kids are annoyed because they think seev sounds better than siv in the poem. :p

I tend to mispronounce words sometimes. My vocabulary comes is from reading so while I may know plenty of words, I'm a little shaky on how to say them. I always pronounced sieve like it looks: seev. But now we're memorizing a poem and I looked up the pronunciation just to be sure and it's apparently pronounced with a short vowel sound: siv. That sounds weird to me but I must say that I never say the word in my daily life. We would say colander or flour sifter, depending on how big the item in question is. So is "seev" used by anyone or did I just make that up? :)

That made me laugh. :)

Check out costume rental. We have a place that will rent fancy southern belle type dresses for like $15 so I imagine less complicated costumes would be even less. You don't get to keep the costumes, but hey, it might keep you under budget.

Holy OUCH! :eek:

I'm not sure if this works this way in all states, but if you can delay finalizing on the adoption, I would do this until you are very very sure. Even if it means he lives with you a couple years as an adoption placement. In Texas, there's a six month waiting period between placement in your home and finalization, but you don't have to finalize at the end of the six months. Once you DO finalize, you are his parent. It becomes much harder to disrupt on the adoption at that point.

I clench my jaw at night and sometimes wake up with these killer headaches like someone has taken a baseball bat to my head while I slept. The pain slowly fades through the morning and by lunch it's usually gone. Even though the pain is bad, sometimes causing me to be dizzy when I first get out of bed, I've never mistaken this for a migraine. I'm not sure how someone would, after reading a description of what a true migraine is like. It's not really provable, whether a person is just having a nasty headache or a migraine, but I would agree that anyone who is up to cooking and entertaining the kids isn't dealing with anything too terribly intense.

Everyone thinks that girls are harder in the teen years. Granted, I've never actually parented anyone through the teen years... But I have five younger brothers, so I have more experience with teenage boys than I ever wanted. :) In my experience, girls may cry more but boys are angry more. Both boys and girls can be snotty, overemotional, shut you out, push you away. Boys are going through changes every bit as much as girls.

That's hilarious. I have to say I'm someone who tends to RSVP kind of last minute. Not night-before-the-party last minute, but maybe a couple days before the party. I did have one mom call me a few days before a party and ask if my daughter was planning to attend and I was grateful to get her call.

Um, why was this your husband's decision and not a joint decision? No offense to submissive wives out there, but I would think on something as important as how your child will be educated, this would be something that could be decided together. That question aside, would it be possible for you to work part time somewhere? Could you volunteer somewhere besides the school? Personally, I would have liked to volunteer at my community's pregnancy crisis organization, but I just struggled with time management and stress and never got around to it. Is there another cause you are passionate about but never had the time to pitch in? Local homeless shelter, adult literacy classes, humane society, etc. Is there a hobby you can take up? NaNoWriMo is coming up. You could learn to draw or paint or knit or arrange flowers. You could take classes at a local college. Do you have a degree? Maybe you could get a graduate degree or finish your degree or whatever. Or you could take classes with the continuing education section of school. There are usually all kinds of fun classes offered from pottery and jewelery making to creative writing workshops.

My husband didn't know there were no snakes in Ireland. Maybe this is common for people to not know, but I always knew and thought everyone did, you know? Anyway, I mentioned it offhand, in the context of another conversation, can't remember what. And he was all :confused::confused: What do you mean there are no snakes in Ireland?? He thought I was just making up random stuff out of nowhere. He was literally laughing at me, and I was laughing at him. Then he looked it up. :p

I know what you mean. My husband is a programmer and I used to think that his day was pretty much spent in front of his computer typing stuff in some mysterious language. Nope. Turns out he's pretty much the go-to guy for his entire department. Any time anyone needs help with anything, they ask him. He spends more time working with someone else than he does alone. Furthermore, he has a to-do list that's pretty much a year's worth of work that he could be doing at any given time. He tells me when he's too busy to talk or when he has to go suddenly and I never get offended at that. If something absolutely can't wait, I text or if he answers, I make it as brief as possible.

That's a rant, not an argument. :)

Or it could have another meaning... :001_huh: :) :p

There's an American Girls series about Addy. Her family were slaves and ran away to Philadelphia and had to wait for her father to join them.

:blink: That is just mind boggling.

I've dealt with this on a slightly younger child. It takes time to break them of the habit once they are in it. Imogen went through a phase of around a year where she would lie continually. It was always to get out of trouble. One night it all hit the fan when we were scrounging up dinner and she made herself a sandwich. (Yes, this story is about a sandwich. To this day, I can't believe it.) She asked her father for ice cream and he told her she needed to finish her sandwich. She came back later asking again and when he asked if she had finished her sandwich, she said yes. So she had her ice cream. And then my husband found a sandwich with only two missing bites in the trash can. She insisted over and over, very emphatically, that it wasn't hers. The thing was, it could only have been hers. It had mayonnaise on it. Genevieve and I are strictly anti-mayo and my husband doesn't throw away food. By the end of the night, it wasn't about the sandwich at all, but about the lying in the face of such obvious proof. She didn't admit it till two days later. Anyway, what I did was make it clear very often that I didn't trust her. This took months. She would ask to do something, say, play on the Nintendo DS. I would say no. She would ask why. I would tell her I don't trust her. She would get in an argument with her sister (who very rarely lied). I would get two different stories and I would believe her sister. And make it clear why. I would frequently bring up specific incidences when she lied, like the sandwich thing. I know it felt to her like I was holding a grudge, but I wouldn't do it in a nasty way, but just always to keep this type of thing in the forefront of her mind. And ANY time she would confess a lie BEFORE I argued with her about it, I thanked her and praised her and so on. I wanted it to be a very rewarding experience to tell the truth and even if she blurted out the lie, I wanted her to be able to undo that. I also talked about it a lot, about how it takes a long time to repair trust and how I wanted to be able to trust her and how she should pause and think about how she's going to answer me before she does. I think lying gets to be a habit, something that people do without thinking about it. So I tried to make lying something that was thought about frequently. Also, I tried to make the negatives about lying completely outweigh any positives about lying (such as getting away with things). Even if that meant that things were unfair for her at times. I'm happy to say that she almost never lies anymore and I trust her very much.