Review here: http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/247566.html (It is being marketed as "the family movie event of the year" and I had some comments, both good and bad, on it).

April, That's okay, I respect your opinion on the matter. There is a difference of opinion as to what "cleaned up" means. I think "returned to original condition" is wording that should be used, if not a specific checklist or walkthrough, if they expect things like sweeping floors and wiping tables, and that they should take responsibility for being sure you know where to find the supplies to do what they expect of you if that is the case. I really can't imagine anyone would think to bring cleaning supplies with them to a big venue they are renting for a pretty big price or is supposed to just know to try to hunt down some sort of janitorial closet...if there was a broom in a corner of the room as a "hint" I honestly didn't notice it and/or wasn't asked to use it. They did not lay out what was expected or point out what tools to use. They just said clean up. There was a trash can available to us. So we made sure we left no garbage lying around, that none of our decorations were left there, none of our leftover food was left sitting on their tables, none of our belongings were left behind, every last plate, cup and napkin etc thrown away, and then we went about enjoying the party we'd spent hundreds of dollars on. To me, this seems like the normal/reasonable expectation. I do realize that there are people who have different interpretations and expectations. That is understandable. You are one of them. There were one or two others I think in this thread. The venue is obviously one of them- still, I think that even if people don't agree about what "clean up" means to begin with, surely we can agree that how they handled it was rude and unacceptable. To chastise me like a child and tell me that she was "disappointed," to insult me by telling me I'd left that room "the worst she'd ever seen it," to exaggerate by saying it was "trashed"- to do this right at the table we were sitting with relatives at (my BIL was at the table with us, a bunch of other family members were at the table right next to ours)... who does that?! I am not upset and furious that they apparently expected me to sweep. I don't feel above sweeping or anything, and if it was a misunderstanding, it was a misunderstanding. I'm upset and furious at how they conveyed this to me and the attitude they took about it. Like I said earlier in this thread, if she had just pulled me aside and politely and discretely told me something like "Hi sorry to interrupt your party, you probably didn't realize this but we do require guests to sweep up the floor before they leave the party room, would you mind taking a minute to do so" or something like that...it would have had me apologizing and jumping up to do it immediately (although I would be thinking 'well why didn't you point out the broom and tell me this before?' probably :P) The bottom line for me is that she didn't treat me well and tried to make me look and feel bad and it was very uncomfortable, and you just don't do that to somebody who has just paid you hundreds of dollars to use your facility and could potentially give or bring you lots of other business.

I am absolutely POSITIVE that he HAS learned from it. You can bet he will know to be more careful and not get so close again should the situation ever arise again. It was an ACCIDENT. He apologized, of his own accord. He feels terrible. You were all assured repeatedly they do not want money for it. This does not require punishment. Not talking to him the whole ride home was bad enough. DH needs to cut the kid a break just like BIL and family were gracious enough to do.

Not that I know of many options, but I've been buying natural deodorant for my daughter from CJ's Sewing Room, where I also buy the CJ's BUTTer for her eczema. http://www.cjsuniqueboutique.com/

One would think!! Well, I am glad you guys have my back anyway lol. You all are some of the most logical people I know and I figured you'd tell it to me straight if I was out of line- or if they were! I'm glad it wasn't me!

I haven't seen it. But I've been enjoying Person of Interest and Unforgettable! Going to record Grimm and Once Upon A Time, too, which start in a week or so, I think.

The way I understand it, the girl who spoke to me is a high up manager. The woman she brought out was supposedly her boss and/or the owner. My next door neighbor who is familiar with the place said that the owner is a younger guy who inherited it from family kind of thing and that the other woman might have been his mother or something. I decided to call and try to talk to him on the phone and started explaining what happened (very politely, I was not loud or rude with him) and before I could finish, he told me he wanted to put me on a conference call with those other two women to talk about it. I said that I didn't want to speak with them and said that I had already spoken with them in person and got nowhere and that they were part of the problem and that I just wanted to talk to him alone and let him know about it. He interrupted and said something like "I can't do this alone, I have to put them on the phone" and when he put me on hold, honestly, I just hung up. Trust me, it would not have gone well if I had to talk to either one of those insufferable women again- I was already really aggravated with them and already knew talking to them would get me nowhere other than madder, and he was refusing to talk to just me alone, so I hung up. I didn't want to deal with it. Maybe I'll send him a letter, regular mail. I don't know. I already know the woman I dealt with today is the one who checks their email every day. But for all I know, she opens his regular mail, too, and would toss it. Or he wouldn't even care. Who knows.

I do still think based on that contract that the clean up expected was what a typical person would consider reasonable and general: don't leave your trash all over the table, plates and napkins everywhere, belongings in the room, leftover food left out and so on. We cleaned all that stuff up. I would not expect it to mean "clean the floor and wipe down the tables"- if they intended for me to do that, I would think that the contract would either be more specific, and/or there would be some sort of checklist provided, and/or our hostess would have made a point of showing me where the cleaning supplies were and asking me to please do x y and z before I left the room. If she had said to me at any point, "Just so you know there's a broom over here, if you could do me a favor and sweep up before you leave the room, I'd appreciate it" or some such, I would have said "Oh, okay, sure." I did not expect I was supposed to take it upon myself to go hunt down cleaning supplies and brooms and mops or who knows what and clean the floor for them. I figured that was part of what I was paying for. If she would have come out to me after the fact and took me aside and said "I'm sorry to interrupt, but just so you know one of our policies is that the guests do sweep up after themselves, I'm sorry if we weren't clear on that, but do you think you could help me a minute with sweeping up" or something like that, I would have said "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know! Of course!" They expected me to know and do something above and beyond what's typical/reasonable (in my opinion, in this situation) and then handled it in an offensive way by totally chastising me and trying to embarrass me or make me feel bad by telling me how I "trashed" the room (what a gross exaggeration!!) and how it was the worst they'd ever seen it... seriously?! I'm still shocked by this. With the amount of money we paid them and the potential for repeat business both from us and our fellow party goers and anyone we might have recommended them to, they were just really, really stupid to treat us the way they did. I just don't understand it. P.S. I was telling my next door neighbor about it tonight and she said she knows that lady and thinks she is (insert word that rhymes with witchy). They were pretty appalled by the story, too.

Danestress- good point. I will stick to bad online reviews rather than a newspaper thing. My husband and I put it on our facebook pages, I put it on Google Places, that Yahoo Local Cyn linked me too, and awaiting a confirmation email to post it to Yelp, and will look into others suggested later as we need to go eat dinner now! LOL at those of you suggesting you guys emailing them or posting on their facebook- I appreciate the support! :D These reviews (and this rant to you guys haha) will get it off my chest and then I will try to just forget about it. The kids did have a good time and enjoyed their party, and I know not to give that place my business again.

Thank you so much for the wave of common sense and support because I swear they had me questioning my own sanity and wondering if I was just living under a rock or something when it came to my view of party rental etiquette. I was just stunned by the whole thing, like, is this really happening? I am definitely planning to put bad reviews on every local site I can think of! They are not a franchise and they're not a new establishment and I think they do very good business so I doubt I'll hurt them much, but I'm ticked off and I want people to know. For those of you who suggested the local paper...Is this really newspaper worthy? Would a paper print something like that? Who would I even send it to?

Today we had a combination birthday party for my daughter and my son. We had it at a place called Pioneer Evergreen Farms which has fall activities, hayride, tree maze, apple slinging, bouncy house type things, and so on and so forth. It's a good sized place that also sells xmas trees, has a florist shop and gift shop on premises and so on. It's open to the public as part of their "fall festival" but they do parties there simultaneously. It wasn't cheap. We paid $13.50 per kid to do all of the activities and to have a lunch which consisted of hot dogs, chips, popcorn, and drinks, and we brought in our own cake. We paid $3.50 per adult to have the same lunch. On top of all that, we paid $50.00 to have a private room for 2 1/2 hours which we could sit in to have lunch and cake. We spent hundreds of dollars there, and some of our adult family members and friends dropped some money too on the hayride (we just paid for it for the kids, it was $6.25 per adult), and on the concession stand and so on. So, when we finished eating, we threw out all of the plates, napkins, cups etc. from all of the tables, made sure we left no trash lying around, took all our belongings out, and then sat outside watching the kids do their activities. The hostess came over to our table and said something like: "We have your bill ready for you inside. But I have to tell you, I am very disappointed with how that room was left, that room was trashed. That was the worst I'd ever seen it in all of my years." When I tell you that you could have knocked me over with a feather, I'm not even kidding. I was flabbergasted. She said this because some of the toddlers and younger kids dropped some potato chips and popcorn on the (wooden, not carpeted) floor near their tables and some crumbs on the tables (which were covered with plastic tablecloths). That was the extent of the "trashed" room. I could not believe she said that to us, right in the middle of our children's party, in front of some of our relatives, after how much money we had just dropped there. We told her we were shocked that she said that to us, that we had cleaned up all of our trash, that we knew some of the little ones had dropped chips and popcorn but we assumed they would just sweep it up as part of our $50.00 room fee, that no-one had ever said to us "there's a broom here, can you sweep up before you leave the room," that this was very normal and minor "wear and tear" for a kid's party and that we couldn't believe she would approach us at our party in front of our family and say something like that to us, that it was way out of line... she did not agree. My husband got up and said "I want to see this trashed room" and we walked back in there. She had just barely started sweeping a small pile and decided to stop and come chastise us. My husband got out his cell phone and took pictures of the whole room and said he wanted to talk to the person in charge. She said "That's me." He said he wanted to talk to whoever was over her, and she went and got some other lady. We started explaining our feelings to this lady even though we could see she had a look on her face right off the bat that said "I don't want to hear it," and that lady just stuck up for the first one, agreed that we had "trashed" the room and that she put all her life and money into this place and expects people to respect it and so on. They acted like we put holes in the walls and broke the chairs and had a ketchup fight or something....the floor had to be swept! Big deal!!! Don't you do that between parties anyway? Isn't that part of what you charge $50.00 for use of a room for on top of all other party expenses?! She said, "I'm not giving you any money back." (This was a room FEE, not a deposit, it was not refundable- she just meant she thought we wanted money off our bill because of how we'd been treated). We said we weren't looking for money back. Really, we just expected an apology because we couldn't even believe this was happening. But we weren't going to get one. We said we thought they had terrible customer service and business sense, that we would never go there again, that we would never recommend that place to anyone else, and would let our friends know what our experience there was like. And we walked out. Am I crazy?! Is this really considered disrespecting a room and "trashing" it? Or is this just a normal part of a kid's party for which clean up should be included in the cost of a party package AND a room fee?!

:grouphug: I'm so sorry.

I agree that there's no reason to state an opinion in a way that mocks someone else's choice, but I do have to say that I totally disagree that "TT is just lousy" and "doesn't teach a single thing." Or with the previous post about it being way behind. After one year of using TT my daughter's math scores on her standardized test went from the 59th percentile with a stanine of 5 to the 82nd percentile with a stanine of 7. We used no supplements that year- it was ONLY TT5 (used on grade level). TT took a non-mathy kid with about average math scores (scoring as well as or better than 59 percent of other kids who took that test nationwide) and turned her into a kid who likes math, has confidence in math, and scored better than just average on her standardized test that year (as well as or better than 82 percent of other kids who took that test nationwide, who, I assume, used all sorts of different math curricula, not just TT). (And I think she would have done even better because we took the earliest possible standardized test date and there was a particular concept that hadn't yet been introduced that ended up being introduced a few weeks after we took the test so she would have done better on that if we'd tested a bit later)! I know TT isn't for everyone. I'm okay with that, I have no vested interest in what math curriculum any family other than mine uses. It works for us though and I just hate to see it get such a bad rap about how "behind" it is knowing that 1) it's not really true (it's even one of the math curricula recommended by SWB these days from what I've read on this board) and 2) it could be scaring off the people who really could benefit from it the way that we did, which would be a shame. Sorry to derail the thread but just wanted to get that off my chest. :D

:grouphug:

Cross post because i meant to post here to begin with! When you get to a bridge in lof... If the child doesn't get enough right to move on on the first try, it says they have to correct what they got wrong and can then try the next bridge. Do you provide instruction as to what they got wrong and why and explain again how to do it so they understand it and then let them try the next bridge right away? Do you have them look back through earlier chapters and try to figure it out on their own? Do you wait for another day to try the next bridge? Or what? Just trying to figure out how most people do this.

If the child doesn't get enough right to move on on the first try, it says they have to correct what they got wrong and can then try the next bridge. Do you provide instruction as to what they got wrong and why and explain again how to do it so they understand it and then let them try the next bridge right away? Do you have them look back through earlier chapters and try to figure it out on their own? Do you wait for another day to try the next bridge? Or what? Just trying to figure out how most people do this.

I enjoy being with my kids and not missing out on so much of their childhood. I enjoy allowing them the opportunity to experience more of their childhood in a more hands-on, interest-led, interesting, real-life way without being shut up in a classroom for the vast majority of it. I like being able to do what we want to do, when, where and how we want to do it. I like being able to choose a curriculum that is more hands-on and fascinating and well-rounded than a typical test-driven, cookie cutter, public school education. I like the idea of living life rather than spending years and years and years "preparing" for it. I don't like how the public schools are failing academically, focused on nothing but standardized testing, don't give kids time or opportunity to make choices and follow their interests and go at their pace, barely give them any arts or recess and so on, and then send them home with homework cutting into family time on top of it all. I don't like the "socialization" received there (which is sorely lacking around here in elementary school when kids have silent lunches and 15 minute recesses which are often taken away as a punishment for talking too much in class, and which can be an absolute nightmare come middle school with peer pressure, bullying and so on). Mostly- we've just been having fun and enjoying each other and our freedom to do our thing. :)

I offered baby food at 6 months but my son wasn't interested. He preferred to just nurse, and around 9 months of age, he started eating bits of table food rather than baby food. Btw I read on kellymom that rice cereal isn't even the best first food to offer- I forget what it said was though and it's too much hassle to look it up on my phone lol.

Yes, I would recommend trying the Times Tales DVD.

That is incredibly rude and unacceptable and yes it would bother me a lot.

:iagree: We're using Fractions this year in conjunction with TT6. We're not very far into it, but while my daughter likes the story so far, there is very little teaching/instruction/explanation regarding how to do the math. We would never be able to use this as a stand alone math curriculum and really learn from it. This is just a fun/different supplement for reinforcing something my daughter has already learned. I had already bought Fractions and Decimals used in one lot so we could give it a try because it had sounded like a fun way to learn, but unless my daughter decides she's absolutely dying to continue with the series, I don't think I'll buy any more of them. TT is much more effective with regard to actual instruction/learning/comprehension etc, for us anyway.

I'm only homeschooling two- 6th grade and Kindergarten. I start with my oldest because I feel that it is more "important" so to speak that she get her schoolwork done whereas if it's just one of those days where we don't get to everything, I'm not going to stress about it if we didn't do much academic with a K'er. But usually I do some stuff with her to get some of the more major stuff out of the way, then set her up with some independent stuff (which may be typing practice, guitar practice, a logic puzzle, silent reading, etc), and that's when I work with him, unless it's one of those days where there's just too much other stuff to do/going on. It usually works out pretty well.

In my case, I mean reading aloud. She and I read aloud to each other. Sometimes I read to her, sometimes she reads to me, sometimes we take turns. But I mean we read the books aloud, together. My daughter does also read on her own but I haven't counted those, I'm only listing the ones we've read together. I'm not sure if she'd be able to read a book a week every single week on her own for a year, truth be told! But I thought doing it together would be a nice way for us to spend time together and enjoy reading together and son on. :)

Depends on which friend. :)