Yes, and I keep up with them all the time...we email, facebook, skype, talk on the phone, they subscribe to my blog and I subscribe to theirs if they have one, etc. To me, if I have to send a letter covering everything we did in the last year with or without pictures because we have not been in touch in the last year and this letter is the only way you will know what has been going on in my life...well, I guess we really aren't that important in each other's lives. If I really cared about you and you really cared about me then we would keep in touch by some form or another more than once a year. So maybe it isn't the actually christmas letters themselves that bother me as much as the idea behind them....like "you aren't important enough in my life for me to have made an effort to keep in touch with you at all during the last year but I will send you a yearly update to make you feel like you actually matter." I find them a little insulting to be honest. If you can't make any time to keep in touch with me in an entire year? Then don't bother.

Donny and Marie Solid Gold Dance Fever with Denny Tario Dukes of Hazzard Mork and Mindy Laverne and Shirley Relax, Don't do it Socks over my jeans side ponytails Wham! Prince Dallas Dynasty Reagan spiral perms mall bangs Duran Duran

I loved The THirteenth Tale and Superfreakonomics.

A fabulous pedicure!

Am I the only one that does NOT write one? I don't get the point of them. If a person is a part of your life then they should already know what is going on in your life. If you have to write a letter to someone to tell them what has happened in your life over the last YEAR then they are not really in your life, are they? :001_huh: I have this very distant cousin that I have never known well and haven't seen or spoken to since my wedding almost 13 years ago. There is no real reason behind it other than, we just don't know each other, live far from each other, etc. Yes, we are genetically related albeit distantly but that's about it. And yet every year she sends this long letter about every single thing she and her family did in the last year. It just seems ...I don't know...weird. I mean, I don't even know her and if she really wanted us to know what was going on in her life then we would be a part of it, right? And what's even more unusual are my friends that I talk to all the time and I get christmas letters from them telling me everything about the last year and I'm like "yeah, I know, I was there!" So can someone please enlighten me on what the point is of a christmas newsletter?

We have been cable-TV-free since July and it is the BEST decision we ever made. None of us even miss it and the kids have not mentioned it one single time!

My all-time favorite Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas!! http://www.amazon.com/Emmet-Otters-Jug-Band-Christmas-Goelz/dp/B002LII6D2/ref=pd_sim_v_1 I laugh and I cry and I have been watching this since I was a child.

Went to see the movie 2012 today and the people behind us talked through the WHOLE movie. I need a pedicure badly. I just realized that the box with half of our christmas decorations somehow did not end up in our shipment over here so I don't have our tree skirt or my kids' stockings and a bunch of other stuff. I need to buy some new clothes for work but everyone in Malaysia is a size 2 so that doesn't make it easy for this size 10 girl. I spent all of saturday decorating our christmas tree...made so many bows out of ribbon that my hands were killing me....only to wake up this morning and see that my two kittens had DESTROYED my tree. sigh.......

It's not really about whether or not you are happy with who you are...I am happy with myself too. It's a hypothetical what-if question...what if you could be a different ethnicity/nationality just for a day or a week...which one would you like to try out? Just like the time travel idea (which, btw, I would travel back to the time of Christ).

Thanks for all the great Aussie phrases! Just wait til I hit her with one. :D

:lol: Nope, she's been living in Burma and then Malaysia for about a decade or so. Wait till I tell her that phrase is OUT! :D So what replaced it? Hey, I need a good Aussie phrase I can use with her so I can surprise her! Can ya help me out?

:D I am easily amused! Her name is Lydia and she says things like "fairdinkem"...not sure if that's how you spell it but I was like "what in the heck does THAT mean?" :lol: And the other day a little boy came in with is family and she said "he chucked a mental" in her office. Again I was like "huh?" and she explained it to me and I was rolling. She has the funniest sayings. I too love the saris the Indian women wear here. They are so beautiful. I don't think I could be Muslim because I would get claustrophobic in those full burkhas but they have some really cool holiday celebrations. Oh, and I agree that Native American would be cool too. A few years ago I watched "Into the West" and I was enthralled with the Native American culture.

That's interesting. I think one I would like to experience is being Jewish. The have such a long, rich history of great tragedy and great triumphs. I think I am attracted to cultures that are steeped in traditions. I wish my family had more tradition, and not just ones we make up but those that are handed down for hundreds of generations. Maybe I feel a lack of connectedness to the past? I don't know.

even just for a day...just to try it out...what other ethnicity would you pick? When I was a kid my best friend was Korean American. Her mom was from Korea and going to her house was like visiting Korea...the decor, the food, the language, the customs...it was all so interesting. Years later I had a boyfriend who was Italian. His parents came to the U.S. from Italy, spoke almost no English and it was the same way with them...food, language, traditions, etc...so cool to learn about and experience. I also lived with a family in Mexico for a while when I was studying there and I got to experience their culture as well (the real thing...not the "Cancun" Mexico). Living here, there are SO many cultures I see both in the local area and at work. We are always asking each other questions about our cultures. One lady who works with me is from Australia and her accent is so cool and all her little idioms crack me up!!!! So I was thinking, if I could change my ethnicity and experience that culture as one of them for a time...which would I pick? Which would you pick?

Well turkey is brutally expensive here so we had to give that up (first time ever and I am a little sad). But we are having a big dinner with friends here and that is what counts. Although thanksgiving when it is 90 degrees out is a little weird for me.

Obviously, things are pretty festive here in Malaysia for this holiday as well but I have no idea what they are celebrating. I've been learning about each of the Muslim, Hindu, and other holidays, etc. as they are celebrated here in Penang (and they celebrate ALL of them!). Can someone explain this one to me?

Ds was in shooting lessons for a while and the "regualtion" BB rifle for competitions was a Daisy so that's what we bought him.

So now there is this one website that links open courseware from: Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale all in one place and it's all free. Check it out: http://www.academicearth.org/

Well, considering I have been in the education field for 15 years, I would say that I know a lot about it. And many posters on this thread are also former teachers who have been through teacher cert. programs and said they were a joke. Maybe we need more strict entrance requirements for teacher programs??? And then, of course, we need to improve the teacher education programs.

Gosh is that ever true!! One of the reasons teachers stay is because of what I call the "golden handcuffs". In Michigan, the pay is pretty good and it is heavily unionized so the pay is steady and not merit-based. When I started teaching I was making $26K (in 1994). When I left teaching to go into administration I was making $67K (in 2004). It would be difficult for me to leave teaching and go into a non-education field and expect to make $67K to start. So you stay in education. I went into admin and made even more money and now it would be difficult to ever leave this field even if I wanted to.

That is a very good point!

1. The idea behind Levitt's "study" is NOT the exception to the rule (like your husband) but a possible rule itself. Do I agree? I don't know. I also had a lot of opportunities I could have taken based on my intelligence and I also chose to go into teaching as more of a "calling". BUT the education program at University of Michigan was a JOKE. I never studied, rarely did homework, thought the classes were an unbelievable waste of time, and graduated with highest honors without even breaking a sweat. I learned next to nothing about being a teacher until I became one. I wanted my money back from U of M. AND many of my classmates were also not the sharpest tools in the shed. So Levitt's argument struck a chord. 2. So the REAL the question becomes, how do we attract MORE highly intelligent people into the education field? How do we get more people like your husband to choose teaching when they could be neurobiologists, etc.?

I have alway thought Arm and Hammer kitty litter to be really good.

:thumbup:

I am doing a DVD study right now and in it Dawkins calls anyone who does not believe evolutionary theory as fact, "idiots, ignorant, stupid and wicked." Yeah, he's a real charmer. Me thinks he doth protest too much.