Yes, I do believe it is safer than the front seat. A 3 point seatbelt is obviously safer than a lapbelt only; HOWEVER, from my understanding, the back seat is always safer for a child than the front seat, even if that means riding with a lapbelt only. If you were to get into an accident, an inflating airbag could kill or seriously a child. That's why pretty much every car comes with those warnings on the visors that basically say that children 12 and under are safest in the backseat or whatever. Not only that, a backseat is going to be furthest from point of impact if someone hit you head on. If someone rear-ended you, those types of accidents are much less likely to result in serious injury or death anyway (and you'd still be further from point of impact than you would be if you were in the front of the car). And if someone hit the side of the car, the middle is still furthest from the point of impact. So you could look at it that way (not to be too morbid)!

If she did that bad a job, I wouldn't want her messing with it any further. Maybe I'd call that salon and ask for the owner (assuming she wasn't the owner) and explain (politely!) what happened and ask if someone else who works there can fix it for you at no cost, if that would be a relevant situation. But I wouldn't let HER touch my hair again no matter what, even if it meant going somewhere else entirely and paying all over again!

Personally, I'd put her in the back. But then I won't let my kids sit in the front seat ever til they are like 12-13 years old.

I've never been bothered if I noticed that someone was looking at one of my tattoos. If I get the sense that someone is "staring," it's usually a kid lol. If it's an adult, they will usually just SAY "Oh, I like your tattoo," or "Where'd you get that tattoo," or "Hey, can I see that tattoo," or whatever. I've never minded that or known anyone else who minded that. If on the other hand I ever got the sense that someone was starting in some sort of judgmental way or doing a pointing and whispering kind of thing, I might be annoyed, but then again, that's never really happened to me. If I saw someone else with a tattoo I wanted to look at, I'd look, but I'd also be tuned in to whether they saw me looking, and if they did, I'd probably smile and offer up one of the comments I mentioned above, or something like it.

My kids are young. But if one of them got married and didn't tell me about it for a year, I would be pretty disappointed, I would think. By the time 12 years went by, would I still be? Who knows, it's hard to know without being in the situation. I mean, I wouldn't cause drama over it I don't think, but might I be quietly hurt over it? Certainly possible. I agree with whoever said there's no need to stir up old drama. Just let things be.

Hey all, Thanks again for the responses and encouragement! So as I had mentioned, Sunday morning she woke up saying she wanted to stay the whole time. But by Sunday evening she had another bout of homesickness and started talking again about going home early. I guess she talked to her dad and he told her maybe he could get her early but not til Thursday. And ever since then, she's had it in her head that she's going home on Thursday (the 8th; she's supposed to stay til the morning of the 15th). I just left it at that, figuring maybe she'd change her mind again but that there was no sense in making an issue out of anything. Yesterday was mostly good except for some homesickness at night. Today was great all day- we spent the day at the lake, swimming, playing in the sand, riding bikes, getting ice cream, grilling burgers and hot dogs, roasting marshmallows, playing, and so on. Just as we were getting ready to leave the lake at around 8 PM, she asked to call her mom. She seemed happy as she told her mom about her day at the lake. When she hung up, my daughter asked her for whatever reason what day she was going home (even though I'd told my daughter this morning it was probably best not to bring it up and that we'd just see what happened), and she told her "Thursday." So I decided to sneak off and call her mom again on my own. I let her know that things have been great all day, no episodes of seeming upset or anything, and that that was the case 99 percent of the time. I said that she's been having a lot of fun and is getting along great with my daughter and that I thought that if she DID leave early, she'd end up wishing she hadn't, as she'd miss out on our camping trip and stuff like that. I told her mom that of course it was up to her, but that I was thinking that if her mom DID want her to stay the whole time, that maybe it would be better if they just told her straight up that they wouldn't be able to get her early and that she'd just have to stick it out. I thought it might be better for her to come to terms with that all at once, rather than constantly going back and forth in her own head about whether she was going to stay the whole time or not. I said I thought she'd be okay, that she could call her mom whenever she wanted, that we'd comfort her as best we could when she DID get homesick, that I had her countdown calendar and it wasn't really so many days and I thought she'd do fine and so on. Her mom was very receptive and seemed to think that could be a good idea and said she'd talk to her dad and have him call her tomorrow to tell her that (since he is the one who would be getting her if she left early). So we'll see if her mom and dad decide to go that route tomorrow, and if so, we'll have to see how she handles it! I'll update when I have more news. Hope you all had a good Fourth of July! :)

I'm late to the party, but with your kids ages? I'd totally keep the buttons for them. They're great for sorting games (by size, color, shape and so on, or stacking, or pretending to be money, for math games, or whatever, which will make for great games for your 4 y/o). They're good for gluing onto paper and making crafts, which are great for your 7 y/o. I'd keep the dress up stuff too, you said they get plenty of use, and they're good for imaginative play. As for the memory stuff, I used to keep those sorts of things but then decided it was just clutter. You'd have to go through with your hubby and see which things you REALLY want to keep and see if you can consolidate storage somehow!

Update again: I just went upstairs again and this time they were awake- I spent a few minutes talking to my FAF child alone while my daughter went to the bathroom and she seems okay. She told me: "I think I want to stay now." :) We talked some more about how it's natural to have moments when you miss your mom but that she can talk to me whenever she wants, and that she can tell me if there's anything I can do that would make her feel better, and she can talk to her mom whenever she wants, and that she might still have moments here and there when she felt like that, but that I thought they wouldn't last long and that we were going to have a lot of fun. She said she wants to call her mom in a little while and tell her to tell him not to come. We talked about just taking things one day at a time and her countdown calendar and how she always has the option to call her mom if she gets really upset but that it's not like she has to make some decision now, and so on. She agreed and she seems cheerful, and my daughter came up at the end of it and got very happy to hear that she has changed her mind from last night. So, we are off to a good start so far today!

Hi, Thanks for that suggestion! I have been taking plenty of pictures and I did tell her that I wanted to make a photo journal for her that she could take home and show her mom, of all the things she did while she was here, that I could print all the pictures out for her and we'd put them in an album etc. I like the memory box idea, too, I'll ask her if she wants to do that. Yes, the age for the FAF kids start at 6. That IS very young! Ours just turned 10 like two weeks ago, but you're right, it's natural no matter the age, especially for kids who have never been away from home before and who are in a place SO different from where they live! You're probably right that it may not go away all together, even if she stays, and we'll work around it. I checked about 25 minutes ago and both girls were still sound asleep. I'm going to go check in on them again now. We'll see how today goes! Today I plan to take them to our town's Fourth of July parade, then we're having a BBQ and setting up the kiddie pools again and having some family over and we've got sparklers and fireworks and marshmallows to roast and so on, and if the girls can stay up long enough, we can see our town's fireworks just by walking to the end of our block. Tomorrow we plan to spend the day at the lake. Hopefully these things will make her happy! I'll update again later (if you guys can stand my rambling lol, I know I tend to go on! I do appreciate having people to say "hey this is what's going on" to and to get a little feedback/support from)! So thank you to everybody who has responded and encouraged! This is our first time in this program so it's all new to me, too! :)

Although I am and always have been non-Christian, that isn't how I define secular. I define secular in that we don't live a particularly religious lifestyle, and I don't home-educate for religious reasons or in a religious manner/using religious curriculum etc. Of course we do still talk about and/or celebrate our Jewish heritage and culture, especially around the major holidays, and I somehow manage to teach "morals" the rest of the year lol... but yeah I consider us a secular homeschooling family.

Last night's issue: The medication. Tonight's issue: Homesickness! The girls seemed to have a fun day, today. We didn't have anything special planned, but we made a big breakfast and all ate together. The girls played a game of Monopoly til they got bored with it. They went outside and played in the kiddie pool, and then on the slip n slide in the next door neighbor's backyard. They had a picnic lunch on the patio, and then my mom and I took them out for Italian ices/ice cream at Rita's. We came back and they continued playing in the backyard with each other and Alexa's cousins and a neighborhood kid or two. They eventually came in the house and continued playing in here. Sometimes downstairs with other kids, sometimes upstairs with just each other. We ate dinner. They continued playing. They seemed to be having fun. Around 8 PM I was just thinking of sending the other kids home and doing something quiet with the kids in my household, maybe watching a "Planet Earth" type show or some such, then putting my son to bed and reading a bit with the girls. Before I could act on that, out of the blue, Alexa came down with our FAF child trailing behind her, and Alexa told me our FAF child is homesick and wants to go home. I had her sit with me and she started silently crying. Yep, she misses her mom! I put my arm around her and rubbed her back and tried to soothe her. I comforted her as best I could, tried to balance between being understanding of how she felt, and trying to cheer her up/excite her enough about future plans to try to get her to feel differently, made sure that nothing had HAPPENED that upset her (nope!) and did everything I could think of along those lines, pretty much. We called her mom so she could talk to her. She talked to her in privacy for a couple of minutes, then her mom asked to talk to me, and we talked about how things have been going and how this was pretty out of the blue and that I understood that a girl her age away from home for the first time might have moments like that and that I was doing what I could to comfort her, etc. Her mom asked to talk to her again so she could try to comfort her further, too. They were only on the phone another minute or two, and then she gave me my phone back after they'd hung up. I said, "So what did your mom say?" She said, "She said she's going to try to call my dad and see if he can pick me up Tuesday or Wednesday." She seemed more okay by now. So we talked a bit further, then the girls watched a TV show and I went outside and called her mom again on my own. I told her that her daughter was calm again and wasn't crying or anything anymore, that they were watching TV, that I just wanted her to know that nothing had 'happened' that had upset her, it was just a bout of homesickness, and that up until this point she's been great and having a good time and so on. I repeated what she had told me her mom had said about being picked up early. Her mom said she was just kind of saying that to her to try to get her cheered up but that she was hoping that by then she would have changed her mind and would want to stay. She said she really wanted her to be able to have this experience and hoped that she'd stay. But did say that if she got really bad, they would get her. So I don't know. When the show was over, I took the girls into the kitchen and we made a 'countdown calendar' that she could cross a day off each night before bed, counting down to when she would go see her mom again. And we also noted on it days which we had fun things planned that maybe she'd look forward to. And she commented along the lines of that she WANTS to stay (Alexa chimed in her to say "Last night you even said you want to come back next year! I want you to stay, I want to do all these fun things with you!") but that she misses her mom. I said well we can see how it goes, who knows, maybe you will change your mind, these things sound fun, don't they? She said yes. She also asked me if we had to go in the car to do those things. I could not figure out why she was asking. Until she asked if she could call her mom one more time to ask her a question, and even though she went into the bathroom for privacy, I heard her ask "What day is he going to come? Because they have plans and I want to make sure he doesn't come and nobody's here" or some such. So she's worried that we'll take her out to do something and she'll miss out on being picked up early. I have no idea how she will feel come tomorrow or the next day or the next or whatever. The girls kept coloring while I put Ben to bed. When I came down, I saw our FAF child was really yawning a lot. So I had them get ready for bed and said it wasn't going to be a TV night, that we'd read together a bit and they'd get some sleep, that it's been a long day. I asked our FAF child if she wanted to pick out a book and that I'd read them a chapter or two before bed. She seemed to like that idea, and she selected "Alice In Wonderland." I got them up into bed and read them MOST of the first chapter, and then our FAF child fell asleep mid-page :) So I put the book aside and told Alexa to try to get some sleep too, and that was that. We'll have to see how this plays out!

Could you sit down and make a list of the chores that need to be done, and then ask her to pick X number of chores off that list as "hers"...? This would be especially nice if there are things you can tolerate doing that she can't stand and vice versa. And having a choice is always nice in general.

We enjoy setting them off. A lot of people around here do it, and my next door neighbors (who have lived here for many years) say that it's allowed and that the police don't bother anybody who does them on the fourth. Works for me! On the other hand, if it were banned, I wouldn't be like devastated or fuming over it or anything like that.

Deviled eggs is a good one, as is any sort of salad (macaroni, potato, broccoli, pasta, whatever!), or a fruit salad, or desserts. Of course, my next door neighbor is making me jello shots and I'm quite happy with that, too haha. :)

I don't know (I'm far from being any sort of culinary expert lol), but my kids love when I give them wooden dowels and then give them strawberries, marshmallows and blueberries so they can make their own red, white and blue dessert skewers.

I'm going to call her mom in about a half hour or so, a little after 9, and just double check with her that 10 AM is the time she takes it each day, and to ask her whether there should be any dietary restrictions. I am wondering if they didn't want to note the medication on the forms, if maybe they didn't want to note dietary stuff, either. Like, maybe they worried that even though it's a pretty minor issue to them, that it may have made her be seen as more of a "special needs" child and that some families might not want to deal with that 'hassle' and maybe they just figure that what she eats for two weeks is no big deal. But I'll casually ask about it. If anyone is interested in seeing pictures from yesterday evening for the first day of the visit, feel free to click on my livejournal link at the bottom of my sig, I just put yesterday's entry up with a couple of pics :) (All of which can be enlarged by clicking on them).

So far my only regret is ever having put my daughter into public school to begin with! She went for Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and most of 3rd grade. It was at the end of 3rd grade that I finally pulled her out and began homeschooling. We finished up that year at home, and now we just finished homeschooling for our first FULL year, as she just finished fourth grade a month or so ago. I have no regrets so far about the way I've chosen to homeschool the past year plus. We're doing a relatively relaxed method of homeschooling, we're using the hands-on/creative Oak Meadow curriculum, we're doing lots and lots of outings and field trips and fun activities and reading and spending time together and so on. We do school around life, rather than living life around school. We don't hesitate to drop school stuff to go do something interesting or fun or social and get back to it afterward. I feel like we've got a good balance. I'm happy with how things are going. I'm happy that with my son, at least, there will be no public school. He's home with me right from the beginning. I'm glad that I read books about home education and childhood that came from a more relaxed viewpoint because it's helped me to be comfortable with my choices. I'm glad that I haven't felt the need to give my son any preschool "curriculum," and that he'll be doing a very laid back story, nature and art based Kindergarten curriculum rather than pushing worksheets and academics early on... Things are good. :)

Yeah that's where I'm at in my thinking right now too. Thanks! :)

Thanks for that advice! I did get my husband to look it up and we found that it is, indeed, a cholesterol med! ETA: No, she isn't hispanic... also, I just did a little more looking and came across something saying that particular medication can be taken any time of day or night but that you should try to take it at the same time each day. So I'm assuming it's fine, that she knows what she's talking about, and they really were just worried that she might be denied a place in the program if they admitted she was regularly taking any sort of medication.

We picked her up from the bus drop off at 6 PM EST this evening. We had a fast food dinner, drove the 25 minutes home from the bus drop off point, and she and my daughter have been having a great time together, they are getting along wonderfully. They played upstairs, they've been chatting and giggling non-stop, they took one of our turtles out in the backyard and let it run around in the grass, they sat on the porch for a while, Alexa introduced her new friend to her cousins, and so on. Our Fresh Air Fund child is being very sociable with my husband and I, too, she's too funny. She seems great so far. She's very likable. The girls are currently upstairs in Alexa's room; at their request we moved the mattress from the bed our Fresh Air Fund child was going to use into Alexa's room on the floor so they could sleep in the same room. They're watching TV, and we said they had to turn the lights out at 10:30 PM. So far so good. Just one thing: She told me that she has to "take her pill" at 10 AM. I said "What kind of pill?" She shrugged and said "I don't know." I said "Let me see them." So she went upstairs and brought down these tiny white pills wrapped in a tinfoil packet, and said she has to take one at 10 AM every morning. I said "What are they for?" She said "For cholesterol." I said to my husband, in front of her, "you know, that informational packet they gave me for her said 'medication: none.'" And she spoke up and said "yeah that's because if we said I take medication they wouldn't let me come." I said, "I think they still would have let you come," and she said "No, they wouldn't." I let it go. Other than that, the first day went great. Not quite sure if I just proceed with giving her the pills on my own (she's got one for each day of her stay), if I should call her mother in the AM and double check with her first before I let her take one, if I should bother mentioning anything about this to my local representative or just let it go. So, my question: What would you guys do? She's 10 y/o btw. And her medical form that her doctor signed said she has no restrictions of any kind in regard to physical activity, diet, etc.

Shows what I know. I always assumed it was "speaking of" lol.

LOL. Well. Yeah! :)

HEY!!!! Did you guys all fill out your info on the American Secular Homeschoolers Geographic Survey thing??? I'd posted a thread about it the other day but not sure if all of you saw it. Deborah at "Secular Homeschooling Magazine" is trying to do a geographical survey. Go here if you haven't already: http://www.madeditor.com/2010/06/american-secular-homeschoolers.html And either leave a comment, or send her an email, letting her know your city/state and what sort of area you live in (urban, suburban, rural). Does anyone read that magazine by the way? If not, you should, it's a great magazine! And it's SECULAR! In case you couldn't tell by its title haha. (And, hey, if you do already subscribe, the "Preschool Or Not" article in the current issue was by me- let me know what you thought)! :D -Nance

My grandma (I called her Nanny) died at nearly 97 years of age, not all that long ago. She was sharp, right up until the end! She used to play cards and drink vodka out of a silver flask. She spoke her mind. I can remember as a little girl, she and I would play the "I hate you" game. I'd sit on her lap and one of us would start by saying "I hate you." And then we'd go back and forth trying to think of as many ways to say "I hate you" as we could. "I despise you." "I detest you." "I abhor you." I always knew I hate you meant "I love you." It's a good memory. :)

I agree! I did mention to her that I was sure she could have just gone in and said "Hey mind if I sit with you guys tonight?" and he would likely have said "Oh, sure, no problem" and that would have been that. But that's not her way. This IS standard behavior for her. I usually fall somewhere in the middle of how I feel about the whole dynamic over there, that he can be hard on her, and she can be overly dramatic... I'm just glad it's not me. Living with a husband and kids is drama enough for me. I couldn't deal with a mother or mother-in-law on top of it lol. Thanks again for everyone's response, I appreciate it!