Are you saying you are going to school 345+ days per year and do normal school day hours on all of those days? Wow....that's a LOT of school. How old are your children? I firmly believe that kids need time to be kids. And I would most certainly count field trips and reading books as school time. They are learning when we do those things. We don't actually take the summer off. We live in Florida and it's much too hot during the summer to get outside and do things. I prefer to take breaks during fall, winter, and spring. I don't even have a set schedule for vacation days. We just take them when we need them. So we will be schooling throughout the summer, but we've had lots of breaks at other times of the year.

A match? Really? So you light just one and stand there for a minute? That's all? Next time I see DH headed to the bathroom, I'll toss a box of matches his way. :D

Oh my goodness!!! The poor lady! They just ran straight over her? What in the world??

I don't know, but would someone please tell my 6 year old that I cannot possibly listen to her 24/7? I love the child to death, but good gracious, I need her to be quiet sometimes! She's my "needy" one....always needing to ask me something, needing me to do something, needing to tell me something, needing me to look at something, needing me to acknowledge something. I'm a quiet person....a shy person. I need quiet time. My 3 (almost 4) year old is like a mouse. She plays quietly, rarely talks, etc. She's not a talker like her sister. And the ironic thing is....my 6 year old has been diagnosed with selective mutism!! She won't say a word to anyone except our immediate family, grandparents, and aunts. She saves it all up!

Wow, they were warned? That's all it would have taken for me to turn back! It doesn't make it any less tragic, but I just wonder why in the world they would continue when they were warned?

I found a lump when I was about 21 years old. The doctor did a short outpatient surgery with local anesthesia to get it out. Turns out, it was a benign nodule. But the doctor wanted it out because he said it could grow larger during pregnancy or later in life.

They both call me "mommy." Every so often, DD6 will call me "mama", but 95% of the time it's "mommy." DH sometimes refers to me with a phrase like "go ask your mom." I quickly correct him that I am not mom LOL!

I saw his interview on the Today show and he made some very bizarre comments. One of them was "you can't process me with a normal brain." Oh, how right he is! A normal brain definitely doesn't understand where in the world he's coming from.

HUH???!!!! Seriously, how in the world can a mother be convinced that it's OKAY to do that to their own child (or any child)??!!

You could have her visual and auditory processing evaluated. My 6 year old (she'll be 7 at the end of April) was having a very difficult time with reading. She's had speech issues since she learned to talk. We had been to several speech therapists and nothing was working. Basically all they were doing was saying words back and forth to each other. After years of speech therapy, I finally pulled her out and started working on it at home with her. Still nothing. She was reading CVC words at 6.5 years old and that's it. Finally someone told me about auditory and visual processing disorders. So I had DD evaluated. Turns out, her eyes were not tracking across the page as they should. Also, her speech and reading issues are caused by the fact that she's not hearing small bits of sound...like the difference between cab and crab. We just finished with the visual part of her therapy. It took 6 weeks. Now we're moving on to the auditory portion. Already, she is very improved in her reading. I'm using the phonics program that the therapist herself created...it's very good. And I'm supplementing with Explode the Code books. We're on Book 3 of it now. Just thought I'd throw that out there for consideration.

My blog is in my signature....I update several times a week. Well, except for the last two weeks because I've been feeling really crummy.

Thanks everyone! She's drinking and keeping it down now, so that makes me feel better....hasn't thrown up in about 5 hours. The fever has me puzzled though. It was getting a bit high for my liking, so I went ahead and gave her some Motrin. Now she's up running around with DD6. :001_huh:

I'd go with a desktop. I have a laptop that I only use when I'm out of the house. I much prefer a desktop. And both DH and I'd laptops are Dells and we've never had any issue with them.

And yes, definitely this. I found our Cozy Coupe car, our Step 2 Climber, our wagon, our sandbox, and our sand/water table either on craigslist or at garage sales. I never pay full price for those type of things.

We have a swingset and a Step 2 Climber that my kids never use. :glare: We have a sandbox....this one .....and it gets used sometimes. My girls (they are 6 and 3) number one favorite thing to use outside is this...the Step 2 Sand/Water Table. Except I'm not crazy enough to put sand in it too LOL, we just put water in it and the kids have a blast. They bring their animals and people from inside and will play for hours. We have numerous "vehicles" for them to use, such as a Big Wheel, a trike, a bike with training wheels, a cozy coupe car, and a Power Wheels. They use all of them frequently in the driveway except for the bike. Like yours, my girls sometimes just sort of wander around outside. They enjoy making mud pies in a bucket and stirring it up with a stick. They enjoy collecting rocks, sticks, leaves, etc. We don't have a very big yard though so their findings are pretty limited.

My sister's boyfriend really messed up his iTouch jailbreaking it. It sounds illegal to me.

Anyone? :bigear:

Awww, he's adorable!!! And great lighting on those pics!

DD3 woke up in the middle of the night last night throwing up. It's not constantly, but she's probably thrown up 8 times between around 1:30 AM and now, which is 6 PM. She's acting very tired, she's taken several naps today with one of them being long (she never naps otherwise). I wouldn't say she's lethargic, because I view lethargic as where you are too weak to really walk, talk, etc. She's weak but she can walk around if needed. She is choosing to stay laying on the couch though. She's finally keeping down some Sprite over the past 2 hours. Thing is, now she's running a fever. I just checked it and it is nearly 102. We've never had fevers with a stomach bug. Is this common? We either have fevers/chills/weakness or vomiting/weakness. Never both at the same time. So I'm wondering if both at the same time is common. One thing I thought about is the fact that yesterday, it was warm enough to pull out the kids water table for them to play in. The hose hadn't been turned on in a while, so who knows what was in it. And I didn't actually clean the water table after it had been sitting all winter, I just hosed it off before filling it up. I caught DD3 drinking from the water table. I told her to stop because it could make her sick. Then she wakes up sick in the middle of the night. :confused: Could it really have made her sick?

LOL!! Guess it was a lot easier for him to spell Oak.

I only wash one thing separately and that's the dogs towels.

The thing that would bother me is that they are ADULTS. They are adults whom no one knows their backgrounds and they are hanging around with teenagers, partially unsupervised. I would have no problem with a homeless ministry, but I don't like the part that I mentioned above.

I despise pitt bulls. Any time I hear about dogs attacking people, it's usually in the form of a pitt bull. I don't care if a pitt is just the absolutely nicest family dog.....I have heard many stories of those dogs turning and attacking their owners. Sure, there are other mean dogs, but those are the consistently mean ones. I would never, ever own a pitt bull nor be around one. I'm very sorry about what happened to your cat and I really hope that dog is not returned to its owner.

We have one DS to share as a family. It started out as mine but now the kids use it too. We have one Leapster. And all of us have our own iPhone or iPod Touch (DH and I have the phones, the kids have the touches). The things that get the most use from the kids are their iPod Touches because they are so versatile and have so many things I can put on them. They are used nearly daily. The Leapster sat on the shelf for like a year straight but recently my 3 year old picked it up and uses it maybe once a week. The DS goes through cycles of being used. We limit screen time for any hand held devices, TV, and computer. As long as you put a time limit on it, I think they can be good things. Especially in the car, waiting rooms, etc. DD6 even uses her Touch for her 20 minutes of downtime in the evenings before lights out. Sometimes she'll switch to books or drawing as well.

Definitely hit Clearwater Beach. We vacationed there last year and the water is amazing!