A few ideas here: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tis-the-season-for-krap-kringle-20111220-1p3fa.html

I reckon they are creepy. That link confirms it.

No, if you hide it then it stays on peoples feeds. But if you delete it, it goes from their feeds entirely.

I can't wear any earrings, they all react on me. I've tried everything incl solid gold and it makes no difference. Nor does coating in nail polish. I sometimes wear them for a special occasion, but I wait until I'm walking in the door to put them in and I know I've got 1-2 hours before they must come out. I used to wear them all the time, no idea why it changed. But I can wear any other jewellery fine, so I wear necklaces, bracelets, rings, watches of varying materials without any reaction at all.

:iagree: Check out http://www.studentdiscouts.com.au for cheap prices, you can use your homeschool reg to get the student price :) Masses of land around Canberra for horses, but holy smokes. I dread to imagine the cost of bringing horses with you!!! Tell the kids that there are no Outback Steakhouses in Aussie, you can eat there in total reassurance that it's a fully American experience ;)

I don't like the boyfriend talk either. I've never had to deal with it with either of my boys, perhaps because they went to boys schools before homeschooling?? But DD has been in school just a few months and has a new boyfriend each week. The child is 8!!! I had no interest in boys at that age, zero, zip, nada!!! When I was 8, boys were smelly. I think I'd prefer that. I asked her what it means, what makes a boy a boyfriend, not a boy who is a friend. Apparantly it's if they are "cute." Heaven help me! I'm no help am I :rofl: All I can say is that we have never set any policies, my 17yo has had a couple of girlfriends now and I've been quite happy with how it has gone. He never showed any inclination to date before about 16 and when he has dated these girls, they have just done movies etc. I just kind of take it as it comes really. But we are not Christian, and I don't care if they shack up with someone at some point, and I certainly don't expect dating to be about finding a spouse, to me, at this age, it's about finding what you DON'T want in a spouse!! We have talked a lot about how sex complicates relationships, and adds layers of emotion that were not there before and how it's not something to be taken lightly. But that's a conversation for a teen not a young child.

You give every site you go to your IP address. As admin of a forum I have access to everyone's IPs and yes, I can track them through that. But many IPs are dynamic rather than static, ie they change every time you log on your computer. The plug ins mentioned by another poster make more sense and its a good reminder not to link too much of your online life to any one provider, and IMHO that includes google. Again, regular clearing of your computer of extraneous content can help with this.

Actually, these days it's about much more than entertainment. It's about knowing what is happening. Yep, it's the way I find out about HS excursions, it's the way we communicate with our Scouts. It's the way I find out what courses places are offering. How? I mean seriously, how? If they install a cookie and you don't clear your cookies regularly, well yeah, I can see that. But it should be standard practice for you to regularly clear your cookies. If you don't, more fool you, it's not just FB that is tracking your every move. I can't imagine that they install tracking software on your computer!

I am atheist and I still feel like this. Actually my early experience was pretty much what nailed the non existence of god for me. My parents died when I was relatively young, 19 and 23. My Dad had cancer for the previous 10 years. Then my best friend and maid of honor died, then DHs best friend and best man died. I have 3 healthy children and a DH who has outlived my Dad with barely a glitch in his health. How blessed am I! And how terrified the ball is going to drop any minute!! My 17yo was recently diagnosed with a heart condition. I held my breath that day, wondering if this was IT. But it wasn't, 2 months later and he has just come home from hospital having had it fixed. How blessed am I!! So I'm still holding my breath, wondering when the big bad thing is going to happen to us. But meantime I try to enjoy the life I have with the family I have. Because I understand life is fleeting, I try to make the most of it.

Thank you :) I'm very excited! Lots going on to try and sort out the kids, but that is all falling nicely into place. The thing I found particularly interesting about this course was that they give priority to mature aged applicants. So they interview and offer places to the mature aged people first and then the young uns get the left over slots. This year there are 2 slots (from 30) left over after all us oldies have places. It's nice to know that we older folk ;) are still wanted in the educational world.

I feel exactly the same. I wanted to be an architect. My parents were firmly of the opinion that a womans place was in the home. They did not actively discourage me, but they gave me zero encouragement and didn't help when a bump in my path seemed to spell the end to that. As it turns out, I still could have done it. So my sort of other option, probably encouraged by my parents was nursing. I applied for nursing and got accepted, but in the meantime I had done serious back damage working as a nurse aide. When I was 25 I went to Uni part time to study education, found that boring beyond belief so decided to have a crack at Architecture. As it turns out, I'm quite good at that stuff. But it needed me to give 4 years full time which was not feasible with a young family. During that time I had done a photography paper and really loved it. At 27 I decided that that was what I wanted to do I spoke to the design school and arranged a credit transfer so I was 1 year on my way to a 4 year Bachelor of Design majoring in Photography. Then we had to move and I couldn't do it part time in my new city. So I have had my photography desires on the back burner for the last 12 years. I voted 27 because that's when I discovered photography. I've always had my face upto the viewfinder and seen life that way, but that was when I decided I wanted to study and make a career from it. Well the waiting is over, I've been accepted to a very prestigous course here and I start to study next year :) It's only a diploma, and I did always want a degree, but the degree course is 1/ 3x as expensive and 2/ is aimed at art photography rather than commercial. This course has strong industry links and there is no question I will come out the other end working as a photographer.

:iagree: Also, if they have been living together, the bible may not be something that means much to them.

Yeah, I would. I prefer to cry alone. Perhaps some babies are like that too. I know one of mine definitely is. :iagree: :iagree: :iagree:

We have one for the same reason as you and no, I don't think it's dangerous. I use first names, but I'm careful not to include identifying information or too detailed location information.

:iagree:

:iagree: :iagree:

Ayup.

:iagree: the child that I CIOed absolutely hated sleeping with us, even when sick he preferred his own bed. He also did not respond to intermittent reassurance, it just built him up to go longer.

Would and did. For the same reason at the same age, two hourly waking alllll night long was killing me. He cried for 45 mins the first night, about 10 the following and squeeked the night after. To me it came down to the kind of mother I was becoming for both my children, I don't do well on no sleep. I understand that people are vehemently anti CIO, but my take is that a couple of nights of crying does not undo a lifetime of love and caring.

Jenny, I missed your initial post so I don't know what exactly went on. I just wanted to let you know that we were having major violence issues 2 years ago with our 12 yo and I was very concerned that it was going to be a bad situation by the time he got to be a teen and bigger than me. DH did the whole "you will not lay hands on my wife" but it didn't really help. We took him to a private psychologist and it turns out that consequences were exactly what he needed. In 4 weeks I had a different boy. It was actually amazing the effect of someone else telling him that the behaviour was not acceptable. I'm not suggesting that may be right for your son, but I really encourage you to take him to a psych, they can talk with you and him and help you both come up with a plan for dealing with the anger. Massive hugs! I've been there.

Seems to me that as far as my kids and my Scouts are concerned, the best wood is the stuff that is nearest when they have their knife in their hand.

I voted other. My experience with my kids in schools is that there are two kinds of schools. One type pays lip service to having an antibullying policy, but doesn't effectively enforce it. They are the ones that blame the victims, and say crap like "boys will be boys." Bullying will always be a problem in schools like this and the behaviour will worsen because it is not dealt with well. This is not fair on the bully or the victim. The other type deals with bullying immediately and effectively. They do it in such a way that the kids buy into the concept and pretty much police it themselves. Prolonged or repeated bullying does not happen in these schools. I've had my kids in both types of schools, and the only way you can tell which kind the school is, is when something happens and you get to see the reaction. The second type of school may not be common, but it does exist. Out of the 6 schools my kids have attended, we have been lucky enough that 3 of them have been the 2nd kind. I don't actually think that anything major need be done with the bully if the school deals with it effectively, the behaviour never escalates to a point that it is serious enough to warrant expultion because it's dealt with and stopped when it's still minor.

I think that if we had windows, the xbox and comptuer would be able to talk and share content over wifi, so i could use the xbox to stream movies etc. But not sure if that is possible with an xbox mac combo. To be honest, it's all fairly confusing to me, which is why I'm asking here in the hope that more enlightened people may be able to explain it.

We are looking at the xbox kinect for the kids for Christmas. But I don't know how it will work with our not yet purchased Mac. I know our mac friends have playstations. I was thinking about things like iTunes and, well, I don't know to be honest but I was wondering if one of the two worked with all things Apple better than the other? Any thoughts?

My son's first sewing project was a bag out of his old trousers, it's really cool! http://jumpedtheditch.blogspot.com/2010/01/todays-sewing-efforts.html