My kids will get their license when they are adults (18yo or older) when they no longer need adult consent as I feel driving requires much more mature decision-making skills than a 16yo has.

Gosh, I really thought all of these were just exercise. :confused:

Yes! I know many. My husband, his sister, and even myself (adopted by my dad). So far my 6yo has not shown any issues but who is to say he won't later? Honestly, I know LOTS and LOTS of people who are adopted or have adopted and their experiences have been very positive. In fact, I think I only know 1 situation where it wasn't positive and that was due to RAD in a child that had spent the first 3 years of her life lying in a crib in an orphanage. It was a rough go at first with her for my firends but she is doing very nicely now.

Gosh, I just read through this whole thread and to be honest...it is just depressing. It takes all the joy out of the idea of a group of people becoming a FAMILY. Maybe I am just the kind of person who tries to focus on the positive? I have a lot of adoption stories in my family. My husband is adopted. He has zero abandonment issues...doesn't even think about his birthparents...is not defined by being "adopted". His sister is also adopted and feels the same way. My younger ds will be 6yo next month. We are open about the fact that he is adopted (kind of hard not to be, he is Korean). He has zero interest in the topic, never brings it up. Maybe he will later? Right now he is just too busy being a kid to care. And now we have Natalie. Her birthmom is a scared 15yo girl who got pregnant in a culture that does not look the other way on those sort of things. She did a very brave thing. She could have gotten abortion (albeit illegally but it is done here all the time). She didn't. She did the only thing she could do. And I am sure that she will forever wonder about the daughter she gave up. I am not a saint. I did not adopt these children for "charity" reasons. I wanted these children with every fiber of my being. I love them just as much as my bio child. There may be questions later in life about where, and why, and how? I will answer them the best I can. I will never make them feel like rejects or cast-offs. I will never tell them how "lucky" they are. Because, in fact, I am the one who is lucky...lucky to have them in MY life. But I will also teach them to focus on the positives in EVERY part of their life. Crappy things happen to people all the time but I do not let those events define me and I hope my children won't either. I am grateful to God for every blessing I have in my life and I will teach them to do the same. Families come in all shapes and sizes these days...bio, adopted, foster, step children, children of all different races and mixed races...the "traditional" nuclear, biological, single ethnicity family is not the only way and it isn't the "better" way. My "biological" father is the biggest waste of oxygen on earth. As cliche as it sounds, it takes more than DNA to be a parent. As a mother of one biological child and two adopted children... I pray you can find some peace about your situation. :grouphug:

Good morning ladies! Guess what? I have a DAUGHTER!!! That's what I think every time I look at her. It is all so surreal. I am blessed beyond measure and I have the dark circles under my eyes to prove it! :D She is doing wonderfully. It has been a long time since I've had an infant, 11 years! Much of it is like riding a bike, though. It is so sweet to see my dh with his big "man" hands holding this tiny little girl. :001_wub: As far as the legalities are concerned....no worries. I am very detail-oriented! We have a lawyer already who has done this many times before and she has explained the whole process to us. The baby is not muslim. And we have to live here with her for a minimum of two years before the adoption can be finalized in the U.S. and she can get citizenship. Until then she will be a Malaysian citizen. But the mother has already signed off and cannot change her mind at this point. Thank you all for your kindness!!!! Your prayers and concern mean so much to us. :grouphug:

wow. That story is amazing! My oldest ds is 11yo...I can't imagine what his mother is going through. But she is right. These children belong to God. None of this is a surprise to Him. He is still sovereign. He is still on His throne. His will is perfect. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

:grouphug: Oh wow.... Your husband has my utmost respect and gratitude for serving his fellow man in such a way. And thank YOU for sacrificing so that others may be served.

Yes I was. No I would NOT.

Please allow me to introduce Natalie Sarah Fischer... http://picasaweb.google.com/jfischer1013/NatalieSarah#5426094778748252082 Man makes plans and God laughs. Sometimes we wish we could figure out everything God had planned but sometimes I am so glad that we can't because His plans are so much better than we could imagine! If you've kept up with our adoption story you know that we had a chance at adopting a baby girl right after Christmas which fell through two days later. We were devastated. But on Monday night the orphanage called. The birthmom has decided to let us adopt the baby after all and we drove 5 hours to Kuala Lumpur yesterday to pick her up!!!! She is tiny (6lbs) but beautiful and healthy. We decided on Natalie Sarah for her name (I still wanted Noelle but I was outvoted!). Last night was our first night with her and she woke up every 3 hours on the nose, ate, went right back to sleep. I had forgotten how tiny newborns are! The birthmom is a 15yo girl and we have no details on the father. It all happened quite quickly. We received a phone call from the orphanage late Monday night and they asked us to pick her up by noon on Tuesday. We called our friends, Peter and Ailee, since we knew Peter was from KL and may be able to help us navigate that crazy town. They brought us a baby car seat and then instead of giving us directions, Peter actually volunteered to drive with us to KL and guide us through the trip! We are so grateful. Then we called other friends, Larry and Debbie, to see if they could watch our boys for the day. Not only did they agree to it, Larry cooked up this idea to contact the Dalat staff and ask for help for us and our complete lack of baby stuff! When we got in last night we were surprised with a truckload of baby items! We are absolutely humbled and amazed by the blessings God has poured out on our family. He grants us the blessing of a beautiful baby girl and He sends us to Dalat where a group of people live, work and love together in ways we have never experienced before. We are so grateful at the generosity of our colleagues that it is difficult to find words to express it. And I thank you for prayers as well. We are overwhelmed by it all. :grouphug:

NCLB tests are NOT nationalized. Each state creates or chooses its own test. I was on the committee to design the Language Arts portion of the test for the state of Michigan. The questions were written by teachers, evaluated by teachers and chosen by teachers. Other states may do the process differently but the U.S. does not have a national curriculum or a national test (not yet anyways).

sigh...I am probably going to regret this but... Those who talk about "teaching to the test" being evil do not fully understand curriculum and assessment development. It's a process we curriculum directors call "triangulation" and it goes like this... An entity (whether it is the state, local district or even a homeschooling parent) decides they want to educate a child in say...Science, for example. The FIRST thing that has to be done is to create standards/benchmarks. Now I know those sound like evil words but all that is is eduspeak for "what do you want the child to know about this topic?" We all do that or at least we should. We come on here all the time to discuss our goals for history, science, math, etc. If you wroteall of your goals for your child at the beginning of the year and numbered them, then kept track throughout the year of how closely you were teaching those goals you would have standards/benchmarks. NEXT, You create/choose a curriculum that helps you meet these goals. Schools generally adopt textbooks that address the goals they are working towards. Homeschoolers discuss curriculum choices ad nauseum. :tongue_smilie: FINALLY, how will you know if your child has reached the educational goal set for him? Well, when you are working with a small amount of kids (like your own family) it's not as hard. But when you are talking about millions of kids it gets a little dicier. So the entity creates a test that asks questions designed to see if the original educational goals were met (the standards/benchmarks). The test questions ARE aligned to these standards, I know, I've been doing this for years. So we set educational goals, find or create materials to help us reach our goal, then assess to see if the goal has been reached. We call it "teaching to the test" but really...you should teach what you plan to assess and assess what you have taught. Why is that evil? If you set a goal for yourself to run a certan distance in a certain amount of time, how would you ever know if you met that goal unless you had a stopwatch? Now, why where all the NCLB strings attached to this process? Standards/benchmarks have been around for a while and guess what, teachers didn't follow them. They did (or didn't do) exactly as they pleased. You can point the finger at unions and teacher tenure, lazy principals, lazy parents, and all manner of people who thought poor kids or special ed kids would never learn. The culprits are many. The government has tried MANY initiatives over the years to improve education but nothing worked. It would be great if all human beings involved in education took their jobs seriously but they don't. So the government did the only thing that would get their attention...tied it to the money. And guess what...it is working. Scores ARE going up. Teachers are forced to actually know what the goals are for the class, teach them, and then assess them. And then they have to take a look at the data and see where the gaps are and make a plan for closing those gaps. None of this is evil. Would it be better if we didn't have to have NCLB? Of course. My initial reaction to NCLB was the same as everyone else's. But I have seen the data. It works. Let the tomato-throwing commence. :D

I suppose...but honestly...how did they put a happily-ever-after ending on this movie and still look at themselves in the mirror? What's next? Hamlet- The Musical?

Looks cool! Thanks for sharing.

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

I'm sorry...what were you saying? I wasn't listening... :D

Thank you for sharing... yes, we need to pray for those who bear these scars. I can't even imagine what itmust be like to be haunted by that. She is very brave.

Well, it's a just a bit too hot here for me anyways. :D

Here is another vote for the Susan Sarandon version...a favorite around here!

Wow. that must have been very scary for her! Well Dalat is well-established, been here for 40 years, and completely on the up and up with an excellent international reputation. Not to say that they still couldn't force us to close...I don't know about all those laws. Things have been quiet today thankfully.

How about this one... The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore is the WORST film adaptation EVER.

With my first ds it was done right after he was born (maybe the next day?). I was not there. With my second ds, we had to wait until hew was 2 yo. He was adopted from Korea and they doctor in the U.S. wanted to wait until he was old enough to go under anesthesia. It was an outpatient procedure. I didn't care one way or the other but it was important to my dh.

Thank you. I just woke up to see this thread has taken a contentious turn. Tis life here on the boards, I suppose. :confused: I know people often say "I'm praying for you" for this and that, but you all have no idea how amazing it is to me at this very moment to know people from all over the world are praying for the safety of my family. It means so much to us right now. :grouphug:

because the Kindle is pretty fragile (ask me how I know!) i like to keep it in a sturdy jacket. I bought the M-Edge one (in hot pink with matching book light of course!) and I really like it...very sturdy.

My mom bought me a set of 10 of the GIC stories when I was kid. I LOVED them. I read them over and over when I was little and I still have them in a box somewhere. Reading them actually FOSTERED a desire to read the originals and I did for all of them. It was like it whetted my appetite. It didn't matter that I already knew the ending. Everyone knew the ship was going to sink in the end but Titanic was still the top-grossing movie of all time! :D So we have many of the GIC and I let my kids read them freely and I don't feel a drop of guilt about it. They will still read the originals when they are older.

It's like this with my oldest and crafty projects. He hated lapbooking, doing nature journals, art of any kind, really. He is a very left-brained kind of kid and I REALLY wanted to do lapbooks when he was younger. Oh well.