Moxie, there are so many things that I want to say, but I am afraid now is not the right time. (And I don't know if I will have the courage later). I will pray for you to have peace in this time. I want you to know that your pain has brought me to tears, even though I don't know you. I know you will come to want this little one, so when that happy day comes I want to tell you congratulations :) I am so sorry for your pain right now though. May God bless you and comfort you :)

Oh, and I forgot to add that I would not withhold financial support from her during this time. All you will do is alienate her. If she were doing something illegal, then yes, but she is not. And you currently have no proof to offer her that she is/could harm herself. She will almost assuredly find her own way and have little or nothing to do with you. Tread carefully, lovingly but carefully, and you will serve yourself and your daughter so much better :)

I will preface this with my experience. I met my husband online. I am 4.5 years younger than him and we were at an age where that mattered. I was depressed and almost committed suicide, except he stopped me. He has never experienced depression. I lived with my grandmother, and she saw the difference in me, and invited him to visit for two weeks. The rest is history; there were more visits and eventually we got married. We've been happily married for 7 years :) That said! Definite red flags. Teenagers and young adults are wily, and it would be beyond simple to fake that email. Especially since it came shortly after you talked to your daughter. I would either call (understanding that he may have a friend to pretend to be his mother..) or if you had the money, hire a P.I. In this situation I would find it worthwhile, as your daughter's safety could be at risk. Whether or not you go the P.I. route, be proactive. Do not let it advance to her going to visit him. Extend the invitation for him to visit you. You and your husband will be on guard and will have your parent-senses on high to see if he is what he says he is. If she goes there, you will worry about her during that time, and when she comes back you will be no wiser as to whether he is genuine. If you give him the chance, your daughter will realize that you aren't telling her "no" just to be in control, and you will have gained the opportunity to have a real talk with her about observations you have made instead of what you assume from conservations with her. Good luck in this and I hope all works out as well for your daughter as it did for me. Whether with this guy, or someone else :)

Thank you all so much! These are all such great ideas. I hope more people post their ideas, so we can all have that much of an easier time in our lives! :D I'm sorry I've been slightly absent, but I'm sure you all understand how busy you can get with kids :) I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I'll have to remember that when my kids are older! Right now, I find if anyone gets up, everything is instantly derailed and difficult to get back on track. Surprisingly, my kids don't have the wiggles :D Don't know how they managed to be like that, since I'm wiggly! Brilliant! I didn't really think to look at homeschool-type things on Youtube. My kids learned all the books of the Bible after listening/watching a 2.5min long video 4 or 5 times :D I don't know why my brain doesn't connect certain things that would be obvious benefits to homeschool! I can see doing a rotation of your idea of the world map with the previous poster's ideas of other things to put under a plastic tablecloth! My wheels are spinning :D

Oh I like both those! There are so many things you can do with that kind of thing. I remember seeing this picture a long time ago, and just didn't put it together with these kind of ideas.

I was wondering what 'hacks', 'shortcuts', or whatever that you lovely people have for homeschooling. This question came to me because I had a wonderful revelation today. My kids love looking at things while we are sitting at the table eating. Often we have left a grocery store flyer on the table, and it invariably gets picked up by a child wanting to 'read' something. This also happens with their vitamin bottle. The revelation came in the form of one of my 5 year old daughters being able to spell "Jamieson" correctly without looking (Jamieson is their brand of vitamins). She was looking at it so often that she had it memorized. So I quickly went and got them these math mats that I had gotten (one for addition, one for subtraction, and one for multiplication by Melissa and Doug; one side has just the problems and one the problems with answers) and I let all three of my kids look at those during breakfast. Then they took the mats with them when they left the table and continued looking at them for a long time afterwards! I'm doing a happy dance inside my head with how easy math is going to be now, haha! My kids have amazing memories, and I don't know how I didn't think of this before :) Do you have any 'cheats' for homeschooling that you would like to share?

I wanted to reply when this thread first started, but couldn't find the time. Now someone resurrected it (yay!) so I get a chance :D I'm in the camp of some movies being good if you think of them separately from the book. Love comes softly series is HORRIBLE adaptations of the books. I mean terrible! I watched the movies first, and I loved a few of them. After awhile it got to be "okay, that husband is going to die.." though. I have no idea what caused me to want to read the books, but I did. The books are amazing! Differences: The daughter, Missy, is an infant in the books, not 9 years old and a little terror In one of the movies (3rd?), Willie dies... In the books that man is alive through the whole series!! Which makes the 4th(?) movie really weird, since it has Missy marry another man....??? Sigh. There are so many more differences. It's hardly worth telling! I highly, highly recommend the books! And a few of the movies were good on their own, but not as adaptations (some where just bad though). They should really just ask authors "Hey, can we borrow like, 5 things from your book and make a movie that's completely different? We'll have our own names, and such, but these 5 ideas really sparked our imagination...". And voila! A good movie is born that doesn't get people all grumpy that it isn't like the book that they took a few elements of! Okay, I'm done :P

I often find things hiding in this little opening inside my wash machine. It feels really gross reaching in, but the treasure trove of little kids socks (and big people socks!) makes it worth it. When we first moved into this house, we didn't realize it was there so we kept having things missing... Turns out the wash machine really DOES eat socks... :D I hope you find them!!

I believe that deal is also available for the kindle fire and kindle fire hdx, which are tablets. You'd have to check for sure though!

They are giving me $40 off! Woohoo!! :D Took about half an hour, and they transferred me about 4 times, but its $40 :) Not as good as $60 but far better than $0! And after explaining that I tend to browse Amazon for more items to buy before purchasing (to save on shipping costs), it changed from basically being "order it right now" to "order it soon, but you don't have a time limit". I have even got an email confirmation. Happy dance! :party: Thanks to the person who mentioned it, and for the person who complained and got money back! :D And good luck to you others who are in the process of negotiating :D

I'm in a chat right now with a representative. This is what I was told: "Yes, this offer is randomly selected by the Internal team. If you have qualified, you'll get an e-mail notification wherein the promo is attached for you to place your order for Kindle. I'm sorry, I'm not really sure what is their parameters but one of which is you must be have a bulk orders of Kindle books on account aside from being a loyal Amazon Prime member. I can't extend the exact same promotion to you but if you are willing to place an order right now, perhaps I might be able to find a way to give you a discount." We are currently negotiating ;) I'll let you know how that turns out!

I'm so glad that your mom went and got checked out and is heading home now!! I hope that she does follow through with the lifestyle changes to help reduce future problems :). Hugs to to and your mom! I'm really glad she is going to be okay!

I've been a silent watcher for this whole affair, due to everyone else giving all the advice needed. But I just had to say that I feel a tiny bit sorry for the woman... Can you imagine how confused she must be now that you're standing up to her? :D. Poor thing didn't know what she was getting into when she started treating you like a mat... She didn't realize that you weren't just on your own, but that you have an entire Hive behind you! I'm realizing the power of that strength :) Go go Aimee! You're doing great!

Another vote for the Radian :) We have a van, and right now my son is forward facing in the back and the girls are still rear-facing in the middle searts (they could be forward facing, but they haven't reached the limits for being required to forward face). Three times we have had put all three together forward facing, once in the back of the van, once in the back of my MIL's truck, and once in the back of my Grandma's small car. All were no problem :)