My kids get $5 per week. .50 cents goes into savings. And .50 cents goes towards offering at church. So they are left with $4 spending money per week. This money is not tied to any chores, etc. Chores are something that they are expected to do because they live in this house and are a part of this family. If I have other jobs besides their regular chores, I might pay them a little something for it. My 7 year old washes the baseboards when I need to and I usually pay her $5. Giving them spending money teaches them to save for something, and it also curbs the "I wants" when we go into a store.

Kids can't make decisions based on the bigger picture. There's no way I'd send my child to a school like you described. But no, as it stands now, my kids will not have a choice on whether they go to school or not. I homeschool for a variety of reasons, but most of all so that they are not around many questionable children, bad teachers, and I can teach them to live for God.

Wow! That was great!!! What an amazing story he has!

Honestly, my DD was in Early Steps from 2 until 3 and then in public school speech through Child Find until she was 6.....it didn't help at all. All they do is basically repeat words back and forth to each other. Right now she's currently in visual and auditory therapy. I'm hoping the auditory portion will help her speech. Because if it doesn't, I haven't the slightest clue how to help her after this. She's now 7 and is still hard to understand sometimes.

Can you leave him out but gated off to where he cannot get near where the kids are?

I have no idea how to ignore someone....so I guess I'm not ignoring anyone LOL. But now y'all have me wondering if I'm on anyone's list LOL!

Perfect! How old is the boy? Will he understand the comparison between the two?

I like it!! I'm not really a fan of rooms that are all one color. I like a different color above or below the chair rail, or an accent wall, or a stripe. So I wouldn't paint below the chair rail.

No. Not really. Our yard is somewhat boring....there's no neighborhood kids to play with. It's really hot here. So when the kids come in, they usually have to head straight to the bath because they are hot, sticky, and smelly.

I see two pretty distinct categories when it comes to baby naming. There's the group that is using the older, classic names right now. And then there's the group that's using the trendy names too. I'm browsing a lot of baby name boards right now, and I notice these two distinct groups. Me? I don't like trendy or classic. I like unique names that you don't hear of much. Although DD7's name began without being in the top 1000...it's now near 300. GRRR. LOL.

It just depends on the kids. My two really do not care for the heat. They don't like to play outside in it. And when they do, they want me to sit out there in a chair and watch them. Sorry, Mommy doesn't really do 100 degree heat. So mostly, they choose to play inside during the summer months. But we do have a pool and they swim for about an hour each day.

Usually the wheelchair stall because I have both DD's with me and it's gross to have to brush up against the walls and stuff by trying to all 3 squeeze into a regular stall.

It's about 90 down here in north FL. I school year around too, due to the heat of the summers. We really don't go outside during the summer except to swim in our pool. Running errands is miserable.

I live in FL....sometimes I'm not sure why LOL. I cannot stand the summers here and I've lived here my whole life. I'll take a little cooler weather any day.

Oh no! I'm so sorry. I will be praying for your DD (and you too!). Please keep us updated.

LOL, I think that some people are taking this way too deeply. I liked it. No, I don't take my children to the woodshed and beat the heck out of them....but I get the focus of the whole post.

LOL, I think we were there during that same time. It was COLD. But it's not usually like that down here in December....that was pretty unusual.

HP is not its own park...it's inside of Universal's Islands of Adventure. Usually they have pretty good deals combining both parks for more than one day. A single day can be sort of costly though. But you get to do more than just the HP area too.

LOL! That's great!

We had our big ultrasound and found out our little one's gender....I blogged about it! :D http://www.christusg.typepad.com If you read the post, no, we were not drunk LOL. That is our normal, everyday personalities. :D

I don't usually condone a teacher hitting a student....but that guy was big, in her face, angry, and cursing. She didn't know what he would do next...grab her by the neck? Her fight or flight reaction was to defend herself and punch him. I can't blame her. He wasn't a small, defenseless elementary child. He was a big guy, probably very nearly an adult.

We go to Disney all the time and one time we were chatting with some cast members. They said that the week after labor day is pretty much "deserted." Don't go on Labor Day, but go that Tuesday and stay through the week. No lines. For our family, we don't do Disney when it's hot outside. We have seasonal passes, but never go from June - September. Our big family vacation is usually at the end of October/beginning of November. We spent Halloween there. The crowds are good then. And the weather is much more bearable. Plus, they have a lot of fun Halloween activities.

I would choose my kids side in that situation. I would have said, with a smile on my face and a wink in the kids direction "Nah, I like having them around." :D

That is AWESOME!!!! Love it!!

If there is ANY chance that your son may need a kidney transplant one day, then I would not do it now.