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 :)

No, I don't do strenuous exercise. Do they have to do a blood test right then and there, or will a blood test a few days later show anything?

Spryte, I hope your mom is okay!! Let us know! To all those who asked, this is what they did for me at the hospital: Heart rate monitor Blood pressure cuff IV line stuck in my wrist in case of emergency Oxygen (the nose strap kind) Blood sugar check Those circular sticky things they stick on your chest, hooked up to the heart rate and blood pressure monitor The doctor said they would do a "heart scan" so a lady came in with another machine that had more circular sticky things to stick on my chest, then it printed off a sheet. She had asked if they took blood and looked surprised when I said only the blood sugar, not vials. Said the paper looked good, so the doctor would probably be in shortly to "free" me. And he did. The part that bothered me is that they didn't mention the possibility of a panic attack like you guys said, angina like my husband said, or anything other than "indigestion". The doctor's attitude was pretty much "you're too young to have problems".

Thank you everyone for your help! It was not a heart attack, thankfully :) They don't know what it was. The nurse was very kind and concerned, but the doctor pretty much dismissed the idea that anything could be wrong with me due to my age :/ He still ordered the heart test to check if there was signs of a heart attack though. After it was proven that I hadn't, he basically said it was indigestion and that was that. (It's basically impossible that it was indigestion though, due to the fact I've been having the same exact breakfast and lunch for the past week or two :001_rolleyes: ). But I was unfortunately too relieved it wasn't a heart attack that I didn't advocate for myself to try to get him to figure it out. But I am planning to book a doctor's appointment for other concerns, so I might as well add this one to the list, and see if a different doctor isn't age-prejudiced :sad: On the plus side, all hospital and heart-attack-like-symptoms aside, I had a great day :) Did a day and a half's worth of school work with the kids, and after the hospital we went to a couple of stores (only spent $2, but that's great too!), and visited a lady from church that hasn't been able to make it for 3 weeks due to not feeling well. So, ended up nice after all :D Thank you again guys for advising me to go, I would have gotten myself all worked up if I hadn't gone :001_tt2:

I'm on my way to the hospital. There's no one who can drive me, and I have no aspirin. I'll update later. Thank you guys!

My symptoms have pretty much all disappeared except for lightheadedness. About 5-10 minutes ago I was almost positive I was having a heart attack. Now I don't know, because I didn't think they would disappear? Symptoms: Pain in the middle of my chest (between breasts radiating up some as well) Aching shoulders Lightheadedness My throat and possibly my jaw hurt (possibly because it was just touching my jaw a little bit) 5 hours ago my left palm was hurting a lot (never had that kind of pain before), then it went away after 5 minutes. It faded into a tingly sensation then went away completely. I searched it and came across it being a possible sign for heart attack. So that's where a lot of my doubts come in.. is my mind making things up? Especially since the symptoms all went away after 5 minutes? (Except the lightheadedness). I know that it's possible to have heart attacks at a young age, but it is rarer. I'm 23. I don't have my driver's license, takes about 30-45 minutes walk to get to the ER, husband is at work. Three young kids at home. All reasons I hesitate to act on the very high probability of my mind just messing with my body. Sorry this is all jumbled, my mind is still drifting.

For the game creating, do you mean like a video game? If so, next year Xbox is coming out with a game called Project Spark, where you can create your own games from scratch. You can either have a pre-made landscape or create your own. You can have characters and objects to exactly what you want (people speak, rocks follow you around, doors open, etc.). It is really, really cool. I am super excited to make story games, learning games, etc for my kids :D. There is a lot of examples on YouTube under the channel name Project Spark (www.youtube.com/user/JoinProjectSpark). I can't wait for it to come out :D

On our camping trip earlier this year it was pretty cold, but not below freezing. We had a air mattress but it deflated (its old), so we ended up on the ground. We had a blanket underneath, sleeping inside a sleeping bag, and a blanket on top. I really recommend the blanket on top, because it saved my poor nose so many times :P I normally can't breathe with a blanket on my head, but that's how I slept for 8 days :). I also can't stand sleeping with socks on, but I happily did that for 8 days too :P Because it is going to be below freezing, I would also go with the other suggestions of long johns, socks, gloves, and a hat. Side note: my husband didn't believe me about it being so cold, but I made sure we packed super warm. I told him it was better safe than sorry. That man was so grateful to me that night :P So yeah, better safe than sorry! I hope she has a great time!

I'm shameless... I would totally bribe them. The day before/morning of (whichever time they are most agreeable), I would let them know my plan. If they will do one day where they do not dawdle, then they can have/do (insert special thing here). Stress that it is one day, and plan for whatever reward you have to be given that night. Try to avoid making the reward a day off of school. The idea is that after they've seen how marvellously quickly they can be done, they will only need a gentle reminder the next day to get them going, if any.. Source of knowledge: I'm going on speculation here, but I'm sure if my husband bribed me with pizza and Slushies to get this house cleaned, I'm sure I would discover how quickly chores could be done. Thus, my mind would be free from thinking that it was impossible to clean certain things in certain amounts of time and the house would be more likely to be clean on subsequent days :D

That is too funny! I'm glad if I was able to help you at all. Anything to help you keep one step ahead of the kids when it comes to this kind of thing! :) When the kids first discovered the recent app area, I didn't realize it and was very confused as to why they were (correctly!) accusing me of playing games without them :P Then I saw them be sneaky and 'check on me' another time, and I just started laughing. That's when Mommy stepped up her game and started deleting :P It took them about a year to catch me in the act of doing that, haha. Sneaky rodents :001_wub:

I'm not sure for iPad, but for iPhone when you double click the home button and your "recent app" bar shows up, if you hold one of the icons (say Christmas spreadsheet for example ^_^) a little red minus appears and you can then delete it. This also works for the kids though, so if you think they don't know about it, don't clue them in!! I might have learned this hiding trick after my then 3yo twin daughters and my 4yo son discovered that Mommy had been playing Cut the Rope without them... :001_wub: