http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog Aha! moments from a ho-hum life Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:08:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Here's today's Zits comic strip. It pretty much sums up how to crush your child's dreams: just say no. [Click here for a larger image.] I would hate it if I turned out to be the mother in this strip, the one who just gives an automatic no. No thinking, no sharing ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/08/02/turning-off-the-automatic-no-switch/ If only our insurance company would allow us to have a trampoline. Then the boy would have a place to jump, a place actually designed for jumping. Since he was a toddler, he has loved to jump on his bed. First we put our full size guest bed in his ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/08/01/what-happens-when-big-boys-jump-on-the-bed/ This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/07/30/lowell-folk-festival/ Something in this house has the stench of cleanliness! --The Duke of Hazard, 8.5 years This is what happens when you clean so rarely that your kids find the smell of lemony fresh household cleaners to be offensive. http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/07/17/quote-of-the-day-2/ How very cool! I spent most of last summer editing a book, Campus Calm University, by Maria Pascucci, who self-published it in the fall. About a week ago, Maria learned that the book won a Gold Gold Medal in 13th Annual Independent Publisher Book Awards! If you have a ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/06/02/book-i-edited-won-an-award/ What do you get when you cross a kid with a broken lawnmower? A take-apart project, of course. (That was too easy.) We've had the lawnmower since last fall when a neighbor put it out on trash day. My son, who likes to pick stuff out of other people's trash, ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/05/28/some-disassembly-required/ Holly over at Unschool Days asked if we could describe, in ten words or less, why we homeschool. My answer: So my kids can grow from the inside out. It's so good, it deserves a trademark, doesn't it? Too bad it's not my phrase. I plagiarized it from an acquaintance ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/05/15/growing-from-the-inside-out/ This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2009/03/12/time-to-climb/ Like most kids, my kids love to make things. They especially like to make something new out of something old. Sometimes their projects involve power tools and lots of dust-making in the shop with Mr. Enigma, and other times they just require simple materials. The constant state of making means ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2008/11/23/weve-got-stuff-big-stuff/ In case you haven't heard, we had an election here in the U.S. last week, a historic one. Either we were going to have the first female vice president in our history, or we were going to have the first African-American president in our history. Some thought the outcome had ... http://www.lorimortimer.com/blog/2008/11/09/unschooling-the-historic-election/