Wicked: The Musical

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Wicked

The Mystery of Boys

I have to admit it - boys are a complete mystery to me. Men, now men I kind of get. They've grown up and they're my age, approximately, and grown-ups in general haven't befuddle me much. Boys are a whole 'nuther world. They're stinky and like to gross each other out, they roughhouse and their minds are blathering on about who knows what.

Which makes the fact that I have an almost-teenager a rather terrifying fact. And now that I'm seeing teenage boyhood up close and personal, I'm noticing three interesting facts:

~ The seeming inability to sit up straight unless threatened with The Look, and even then there is as much slouching going on as he thinks he can get away with.

~ The seeming loss of ability to tie shoes properly anymore. I admit, shoe-tying was a tricky battle for him. Fine motor skills like that don't always come easily to him, so bows in shoelaces were a long time in coming. So why has he apparently regressed? Half the time we go out somewhere, I look down at some point and one shoe or the other is untied. And he doesn't care. Shudder.

~ The seeming inability to detect the fact that he smells like a ripe gorilla. How can someone be standing in that cloud and not know it? He's clean, but good gravy, the boy smell that is rampant and ripe! (Being married, let me just say that I am thankful to God that this stage doesn't last forever, at least not for most men.)

I do look forward to the coming years as my boy matures and grows in God, school and life. But how he will do so and the thoughts he will be thinking during these coming years is such a mystery to me. But then, I do love a good mystery.... almost as much as I love him. :-)

Interwebby pet peeves

Okay, here's one of my big pet peeves on the internet: requiring complicated passwords on ordinary websites. On financial websites, sure. Ebay, okay. Something else that might attract a large audience, and thusly, more hackers, maybe. But on an everyday website? Pish. I just signed up at a homeschool curriculum site that required not only a number in the password, but at least one capital letter as well! Oooo, someone might hack into my account and buy stuff in my name there, how terrible!

Where can you find me now?

I'm back to a new homeschooling adventure - NotebookLearning.com Notebooking, or journaling, is a great way to homeschool, and I'm having a blast designing new pages every day. I decided to open up my own blog to give these away for FREE - every day! I try to have at least one new page every weekday, and sometimes I even manage to post on the weekends as well. Many of my pages are designed for a wide range of ages - I'll design them with half-inch primary paper, three-quarter inch primary paper, one inch primary paper, then a standard wide rule page as well.

I hope that you will come visit and let me know if you enjoy my pages!

NotebookLearning.com

Welcome, Top Momma readers!

LOL, I submitted a pic to Top Momma weeks ago. Then they lost my submission. I resubmitted, and it's been weeks since that. In the meantime, I've dropped writing here temporarily because I've been so busy trying to recover from our move, as well as devoting more time to my professional website, Homeschool Help Web.

I hope you'll take a few minutes to look around, and not just run away when you see all the old posts - welcome!

Meez Me!

Frugal Friday: Bonus Tracfone minutes

I recognize the safety aspects of owning a cell phone, but never had the money to commit to a monthly plan - and even if I had had the money before, still probably would not have bothered. But I did buy a Tracfone a couple of years ago, and still use it. It has come in handy more than once, especially during our recent move.

Tracfone minutes can be a little pricey if you're looking at it purely from a "per minute" basis, but the whole point is to just have a phone with some time on it for emergencies, not necessarily the best deal. I do know there are other pay-as-you-go phone services out there now, but when I bought my Tracfone, it was the only service available at the time. All the rest have been followers. So, I have a perfectly good phone, now I just need minutes.

When it comes time to renew my minutes, I always head over here:

Tracfone YahooGroup

and look at the last few posts to see if there are any current really good bonus codes. Tracfone will often email bonus codes to you, but they are usually only for 20 minutes. The bonus codes that the members of the YahooGroup manage to find are often for 60 minutes or more. Some of them simply double however many minutes you buy, so if you buy 60, you get 60 extra, if you buy 300, you get 300 extra! And so on.

I always make sure to read all replies to any posted code, to make sure that people aren't having trouble with it. The archives are public, so you don't even have to join the group if you don't want to.

One thing you should know - the bonus minutes never show up anywhere during the checkout process. (If it's a bad/expired code, I think it does tell you that much. It just doesn't tell you that you have a GOOD code. Bah.) You will only know for sure that they have been applied when you do the phone verification thing and you see your minutes change on the screen. I have not had a bad one yet, but I don't know what kind of recourse is available if you use a code but do not get the bonus minutes. I presume you should be able to call them.

Be sure to check Crystal's Blog for more frugally goodness!

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