I am so glad it went so well. And that you were relaxed enough after meeting the family and after the phone call to be able to sleep. :) Let us know when you invite the friend over to visit, and how it goes.

I am so sorry for your loss. Praying for Emma and for you all.

What lovely photos. Cute kids, lovely dogs Thank you for sharing your stories. What does your son use his service dogs for? I would love to hear the stories.

Too right we do!

A fun thread to honour our dog heros. What has your dog done for your family? Our old dog Bran (pronounced Braaaan, not like breakfast cereal!) was out walking on a beach in Devon in the UK with me and my 2 oldest...then my only children. They were aged 2 and 4 years. The girls climbed up a sand dune and were rolling back down again. They did this a couple of times and then we walked on. A bit later we came to another great dune for rolling and they climbed up again whilst I threw sticks for the dog. Suddenly Bran dashed past me and headed for the girls barking and growing. Bran was the world softest dog and he never growled at anyone so I was horrified...he was going for the kids! I thought it was because they were rolling so I shouted at them to stop, running across they beach as I did so. They sat up and Bran stood over them barking madly. By this stage the youngest was crying and the oldest was asking what was the matter with Bran. He was a labrador cross and a big dog. I was scared by the whole thing and was shouting at them to sit still. I reached the bottom of the dune and started to climb up when I stopped, horrified. There on the sand was a viper. Right where the girls would have rolled if they had kept going. Bran was between the girls and the snake. If he had not intervened they would have rolled right onto it. Bran was our hero dog and he lived to be 14. He died December 18th 2008. Now its time to share about your canine heros! Willow.

Just to let you know, only the West Coast is part of the Australian plate. The east is part of the pacific plate. Well thats the case at the moment, Nz is wobbling a bit just now......;)

Thank you, Melissa.

New Zealand chiming in here. New Zealand is NOT part of Australia..... We are independent of any continent. We just are. Mind you geographically half the country is setting off towards Australia (continent) and the other half is heading towards Antarctica, (another continent)! The middle of the south is just wobbling about of course. Willow.

My husbands parents know (they don't live in the same country as me) but we never, ever mention it. We hear all about the cousins and how they're doing at school (often hilariously different from how their parents, dh's sister and hubby, tell about it) but they never ask and we never say. As we only see them about once every 3 years it is not a big problem. I don't think we would actually hide it from a family member or friend but there are those I would not 'flaunt' it in front of either!

Not read the whole thread yet, but I live in Christchurch New Zealand. We had no water or power or sewage for 3 days. There are people in the city who still have no water or sewage, and who don't expect to have any for up to a year. The storage warehouses for supermarkets were destroyed. There where landslips on the road to the north so food could not come in that way. The docks were damaged at Lyttleton, the nearest ports. They shipped food to Dunedin and it came by road. It took time to get here. Christchurch was fine, people didn't horde and did share. But this was a 'friendly' earth quake. We were very lucky. But I was very very glad indeed of my emergency store of food, camping stove, candles, matches and water. (You can never have too much water stored.) Ask people in New Orleans how long an emergency can last. Even in the states. Willow.

I voted other. As traditional Quakers, we meet in silence. Willow.

Thank you for all your replies, (even the descenting one!) Life is on hold at the moment (we live in Christchurch, NZ) and although we have power back and can therefore surf the net all our homeschool classes are obviously not meeting, and dh is not at work until sometime next week (the walkways at his school have gone) so life is a little wierd (and wobbley...over 300 aftershocks in one week) so we are amusing ourselves by considering our new computer when all this is over. :) Willow.

I know macs are very higly thought of on this site. The time has come to look at a new desktop computer. Ours died and I am using dd's netbook. I have asked this before I think (or maybe i just read other peoples posts, I'm not actually too sure about this) and I have seen lots of raves about how cool macs are, but why? What do they do that a PC will not? Or what do they do better? I know they LOOK cooler ;) but i think i need more than this. Thank you Willow.

All safe here, power only just back on. We are very tired, but thankful we are safe. No safe drinking water, and the sewage system is shaky.

Ds14 and I have an agreement (made when we got the touch) that he will check in before downloading anything, even free apps. There were a lot of inappropriate one when one searches for 'free apps' I'm sorry to say. My ds asked what the karmasutra was the other day..... Searches for things like 'car racing games' is safer! If I had a 10 year old we would do it together. We would schedule it if necessary.

Yes it is legit, and no we haven't had to prove our identity. We all know who we are, who they are etc. It is family money, just not close family money or anything we knew about or expected, and we are not taking it away from anyone else...sadly there is now no-one else. Thank you for all your advice. Dh's job is as secure as any in this economic climate, and is unlikely to be under any threat, but one can never tell. I hadn't considered how much further the emergency fund would go without the mortgage. (it is a bit more than 1000 at the moment, almost 1500) We have done a lot of talking and if we do a 3 month emergency fund...without the mortgage amount....we are still within $3000 of paying the mortgage off. With that motivation I reckon we can do it in 2 months. The kids are also on board, and very excited and between them we can pay almost 1000 off using their money (not their college money of course, their pocket money/lawnmowing/babysitting savings). Maybe we could do another yard sale...but we have been at this so long there is very little left ;). And yes, of course we will pay the kids back...with love and interest and a small pressie once all is done! :) Maybe we will go out for a meal. My son calculated he had only gone out for a meal once in the last 2 years, and I don't think we have had a take out in five years. Thanks again. Willow.

Yes, when we emigrated. One the one hand it was great (we kept a trunk for each kid, to be filled with what they wanted) on the other hand, replacing the stuff was MUCH more expensive than we anticipated.

We have been Dave Ramsying for some time. We sold our larger house and brought a smaller, cheaper one (we were sad but it needed doing), we sold other stuff, we lived carefully. Yes we had setbacks along the way but we now only have the mortgage and less than $300 on the last bill to go. That will go at the end of this month. We have only a baby emergency fund. Now the luck, dh has just heard he is coming into some money from the UK. (not quite an uncle he has never heard of who left it to him, but the same sort of thing). After taxes etc I have just worked out it is about $800 short of clearing the mortgage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dh says pay the mortgage off, if we are a few hundred short take the money out of the emergency fund and just pay the darn thing off! I am worried this will leave us very vulnerable and would rather do the fully paid up emergency fund thing, put the rest to the mortgage, and work to pay off that last 10,000 like mad. Dh says the physiological boost from getting rid of the millstone would do him more good than anything. It is, of course, dh's money ;). The amazing thing is...if this had come before the house move, before DR, we would have paid off a few things and then gone on holiday....nothing would have changed. It coming now will change our lives whatever we decide to do. What would you do? Willow. PS....we don't have it yet....i am trying VERY hard not to count chickens, but it is all legit, its juts when we get it, not if.

Good to see you are catching up with us Kiwis..... ;)

Imp, I am beyond stunned. Your strength and courage is amazing. you must do as you feel right. I will pray for you, wolf, your boy and your little ones. I am weeping as I type this, I cannot even begin to imagine your pain. Willow.

I went and brought an itouch! :D Now my biggest problem is wrestling it out of ds's little hands.........

My dd (Then a pre-teen) was noticed by a neighbour in our street. Neighbour approached me and asked if dd would like to model. It was totally legitimate, neighbours father owned a clothing company, a catalogue was coming out, with pre-teen clothing. After checks we allowed dd to do it. I admit I was flattered and proud, as if 'I' had caused her beauty! :tongue_smilie: The shoot went well. Dd was polite and well behaved. The photographer was impressed. he recommended her to another company etc. etc. Dd gradually became more and more body concious and self critical...a down hill slope started. She became proud of her looks, she stopped playing outside if a shoot was scheduled...in case she produced a blemish somewhere. We stopped modelling. We went though a very difficult spell, but emigrated to a new county soon after, which helped no end. She remained body concious throughout her teen years, but the tendency to vanity did wane gradually. never again. Dd is now 21 and a marathon runner. She is sensible and well balanced, but her teen years were much harder than they needed to be, because of our mistake.

Ah, that was one question, are some games etc free? How much does it cost to download a movie? Thank you for the other thread links, i will go read them. We are to travel (we being ds13 and me) a lot over the next 6 months for family reasons and i thought one of these would be good. Ds can use it as a games machine, and I can email dh, as well as use it as a diary etc! I am rather a Luddite, and my cell phone is of the brick variety that, well, acts as a phone. ;) I only use it to keep in touch with a student dd with no land-line. We have no TV, or games machine, and only one family computer, so this is a big foray out into the technological world, but if all goes well, I shall go and actually look at one in a shop tomorrow! Thank you for the input.

Can you review the ipod touch for me? :) Thank you! Willow.

KISS grammar is free on the net, and is very good, if you can navigate through their confusing site. There is a section for adults. http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/KISS.htm