Strange.

I agree. Forgive me. Next thread, please!

No, my kids can play with her. Just not when she's supposed to be at school. She comes knocking at the door at 11:00am to play with my first grader who is done with school for the day.and it may not e so much of a JAWM, but a "does anyone have this problem and does it bother anyone?" Sorry. I must have been vague.

She's ditching school. She's out in the streets playing during school hours. Last time I checked, if kids are healthy they need to be in school, And if they are sick, too sick to be in school, they should be inside resting, or at least not spreading their germs. My kids are forbidden to play with her during the hours that she's supposed to be in school until I am informed that she is being homeschooled. I realize there are medical/emotional reasons for kids not to be in regular school, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Why do I care? Well, what she's doing is wrong, and by letting my kids play with her during school hours, IMO, is encouraging her in her wrongdoing. Besides, even though I know I am within my legal rights to homeschool, I still try to fly below the radar and I just don't like the idea of a truant officer coming down our street seeing a bunch of kids playing basketball in the early afternoon when everyone else should be in school. Fwiw, I'm not planning on confronting the parents, but apparently I am odd that it bothers me.

If you had a neighbor girl the same age as your kids, who is a nice girl, generally, but seems to have little supervision and is always "sick" and not attending school. She did this the week before Christmas. We were done with schoo, for the day and all the sudden I look out at 1:00 and she's playing in my backyard with my kids. I questioned her, gave her the old, "if your're too sick to go to school, you're too sick to be playing here" speech and sent her home. Supposedly Grandpa is home, I see a car. She was home early from school yesterday because she was "tired",(which means someone picked her up and knew she was at home) but then she "rested" and was out playing. I really don't know these neighbors (they just moved in a couple months ago) and I feel uncomfortable confronting them about this. She's home again today, the kids are forbidden to play with her, but they want to go out in the front and shoot hoops and if she sees them.... I know I'm kind of being a weenie about this whole thing, but they supposedly know she's staying home, so all I'd be doing is calling their daughter a liar.

We enjoy them. You can see my kids' ages in my siggy. I've used them quite a bit this year with Am. History. We used his presidential series. We've read a few "real" biographies on the presidents, but these are good because they give a quick overview and I was looking to give my boys a "survey" of some of the presidents of the late 18th/early 19th century and these hit the spot. My youngest son loves the cartoons and humor, my oldest boy, who doesn't get humor much, is clueless. Oh well!

That was my dd's problem, too. I talked to the dentist. She looked at the x-ray and said, "the tooth is there. It'll come." And eventually it did.

Dh and I were married at age 34. My parents were infertile (I happened to come along after 8 years of marriage, but I was mom's only pregnancy), so it wasn't a surprise. There was no obvious reason for me to be infertile (dh got tested and was on the low end of normal) but i just hate medical procedures, so I didn't do any testing. Going the adoptin route was very easy. I knew I did not want to do infertility treatments at all, so we went through foster care and adopted 5 kids in three "sets". One thing I would recommend if you decide to adopt is to make sure you have had closure regarding your infertility. Some couples adopt, but still haven't made peace with their infertility and see their adopted kids as "second best" and that's just not fair.

I'm not sure I understand why this would be considered an abortion. The baby died on its own. The other two babies were not supposed to be harmed. How is this an abortion?

None of my children's stories are pretty, but one is pretty bad. For her, I have given her the sanitized version. No lies. never lies. but some things left out. One thing you have to ask yourself is, "what is beneficial for her to know and what is not?" And not all truth is beneficial. Really. My dd is only 6. We give our children information about their stories as they become interested and ask. All know they are adopted, so we are not hiding that fact, but some are more interested than others. Oldest ds is very interested. We've had some good talks. Youngest ds is not interested at all. He knows the basics. That's all. That's all he wants. I'm sure when we go to court next month for the little girls, there will be more questions and talks, but we'll wait till that happens. I just try to be very open and willing to talk, but my adoption talks with my kids have always been child initiated and that works for us.

I would agree with this. Also, the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell popped into my head when I read this thread. I think some of the success stories he talks about would illustrate that principle.

I'm sorry, but I am not doing a very good job tacking Monday. Monday has me in a head-lock and is bashing my head against a wall. My kids are naughty, disobedient and defiant. They are tattling and whining and battling me with school work. Dd1 is acting like she's never even heard of math before, dd2 is throwing her, I don't know, 100th fit for the morning, DS1 is getting nothing done, the house is a wreck and the cleaners are coming this afternoon and I just want to sit down and cry. I'm sorry to be such a whiner. I've been reading the boards this weekend and a lot of boardies are going through horrible stuff, but I'm sick of today already and it's just barely noon.

That's tough. Some of us are just wired to be more uptight and not deal with stress as well as others. I, for one, am not someone you'd like to have with you in a crisis. And then God gave me five very high-energy, noisy, strong-willed children. I think yu got a lot of good advice. I don't handle stress well, either. One thing, though, I try to do is, is when I'm stressed, I lower my high standards until I can get a grip. It's ok if we have pizza once in a while. We don't always have to have several veggies and fruits and a made from scratch meal. Some days we can just do reading, spelling and math and call it school and I shoo the kids outside so I can have some quiet and get a few things done.

I'm so sorry, Joanne! You have been through so much! (( hugs))

Hugs, Julie. God will see you through this! It may not seem like it at the time, but the promises in the Word are for you!

I love Al Mohler, the president of SBTS. I believe it is because of his influence that the seminary is leaning Calvinist. His blog is excellent. http://www.albertmoh...egory/blog/���� He wrote a beautiful piece about Sandy Hook. OK, the link to Dr. Mohler's blog isn't working the way I wanted it, but .... it'll do.

Same here, though I grew up here in Central Cal. I went to a Christian high school and we did a "comparative" study on Calvinism vs. Arminianism in Sr. Bible class and went out of there believing that all Calvinists were heretics on the highest level.

I am so sorry!

Quite possibly. Don't say you haven't been warned (and right here I'd put the little winking smilie guy, but I can't get the emoticons to work)

Not yet, but.... we've only been paid once this year and that was with the Social Security shock.

I just finished a fantastic book on faith/reformed doctrine. "Putting Amazing Back into Grace" by Michael Horton.

Yeah, they drink it. I didn't let them till they were about 4 years old. I don't buy it, but they get it when we go out to eat.

I hope today is better than yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. Just a lot of conflict with ds1. Lots of conflict. Plus, I'm on my second round of a z-pack for a sinus infection that will not go away and now I'm working on a yeast infection for my troubles, since I ran out of my probiotics and the new stuff hasn't come in the mail yet. But, we will carry on. - school is what I hope to accomplish today -visit from the social worker -bil coming to put cabinets in the garage - gotta get ready to start a new semester of co-op - I'm teaching three classes of aerodynamics to three different age groups

When I taught 5th grade I read this aloud to my class. Ok, I was standing in front of my class bawling, half the class was bawling and a few boys were looking around at the rest of us bewildered.

We enjoyed this one!