It's Christmas thank you time

Filed under: 6-7 years

So, has your child written his or her thank you notes for all the Christmas goodies received? Despite my ambitious plans of having that taken care of before the new year, we haven't even started. Ellie's winter break is just about over and I am determined it will get done this weekend.

For Ellie, I think that writing thank-you notes feels a little bit like homework and she balks when it is time to get down to it. If there are lots to be written, I try to break them up into smaller groups that we do over a period of days. We generally use blank cards in which she can write a note and and draw some pictures, but there are other options that might be less tedious for a small child.

There are quite a few sites that allow you to design and print thank you notes from your home computer. They are mostly free and easy to use. These fill-in cards may seem a little impersonal, but they certainly get the job done. Plus, they come in lots of really cute designs. This one even allows you to choose a black and white theme, which is handy when your child has used up all your color ink printing photos of the cast of High School Musical.

However you do it, teaching your kids to write thank you notes is a lesson in etiquette that will serve them well into adulthood. My mother never really made a big deal out of the thank-you notes and to this day I still feel a twinge of guilt for all the unacknowledged gifts I received as a child.

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Embarrassing things children say a/k/a my payback

Filed under: Games, Stores and shopping

Children are always a source of embarrassment, aren't they? Personally, I'm starting to think they should not be allowed to speak in public until they reach the age of 21. Just kidding. A little.

When my son was younger, we frequented a local grocery store that had small carts for the children to push alongside the parents while they shopped. If the store was not very crowded, I would race him down the aisle, walking fast to see who could get to the end first.

One day, we were in a hurry, and I did not have time to play our regular game. He moaned and groaned, pouting, and finally I urged him to hurry up so we could check out. Seeing his sad little face, I caved and said, "Race me to the checkout line." So we pushed our carts to the checkout line where it was very crowded, and my son screamed out, "Mommy, please don't beat me! Don't beat me, Mommy, wait, I'm coming!"

As you can imagine, this scene raised quite a few eyebrows of the people in line. I could see the wheels turning in their heads, thinking, "Is she abusing that poor child for not walking fast enough?" I turned 1000 shades of red and wanted to explain our game, but what a dilemma. Explain away the suspicion that I'm a child abuser by telling them I encourage my son to race shopping carts in the grocery store? Quite the double-edged sword, huh?

I certainly learned my lesson. No more grocery store games for me. I guess I deserved that embarrassment by my inappropriate behavior with the shopping carts.

How have your children embarrassed you in public? Has any game you've created with your kids been misunderstood?

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Parents fund raise to pay for research for their kids

Filed under: Making a Difference, Current Studies and Research, In the News

Comedian Chris Rock once did a bit on AIDS saying that it would never be cured because "there ain't no money in the cure. The money's in the medicine. That's how you get paid, on the comeback." For drug companies, there's not much financial incentive to research treatments for rare disorders, so parents are having to step in and find ways to fund it themselves.

When his son was diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumor, "we thought the medical cavalry was on the way," said John Ragnoni . "We thought there must be just tons of research happening, that certainly there must be some cures or at least treatments."

But Ragnoni was shocked by the limited amounts of research being done. "We kept running into dead ends," he says.

He and a group of fellow parents of children with Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma (or JPA) which affects about 600 kids a year, have raised more than $6 million in three years for research.

Another family raised three million dollars for treatments for their son's genetic disorder by holding golf tournaments and a mother who is a public relations executive for a food supply company used her connections to co-ordinate a giant cookie sale, which netted $200,000 to help improve a treatment for a rare pediatric cancer.

"Never underestimate the power of a parent with a sick kid," said one parent.

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Long Island Lolita resurfaces

Filed under: DVDs and Videos, Weird but True, In the News, Celebrity parents behaving badly

Remember Amy Fisher, also known as the "Long Island Lolita"? She was the teenager who shot her lover's (Joey Buttafuoco) wife in the face a point-blank range somehow thinking that was the best way to achieve a fairytale ending to her under-the-age-of-consent relationship.

Fisher is the married mother of two kids of her own now and has taken up a hobby befitting someone of the soccermom set: promoting a sex tape she stars in.

But Fisher didn't set out to be a sex tape star. It appears that her husband, in a fit of jerkishness during their divorce, sold a tape of he and Amy enjoying a little, uhhh, "married person massages" to an online sex company. Since the guy is obviously a gentleman and major catch, Fisher reconciled with him and opted for a six-figure payout rather than fight to have the video pulled. Since being released, the tape is the #1 porn download.

Jokes the thirty-three year old, "I always wanted to be No. 1 at something, but I didn't think it would be something like this."

She also admitted that explaining what she does and why she is famous will be hard when her 6-year-old son and 3 -year-old daughter get older.

You know, a video of mommy and daddy having sex might be a welcome distraction from the "When Mommy was a girl, she slept with an older man, shot his wife in the face, and then went to jail" discussion.

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Man gives in-laws big winning lottery ticket

Filed under: Stores and shopping

Most every year, I buy some scratch-off lottery tickets to put in all the Christmas stockings. This year was no exception and after all the gifts were opened, we set about scratching off our tickets. As usual, none of them were big winners. I think Christy got a whopping $4 and I got my usual nothing.

But what if one of them was a big winner and it wasn't mine? Say, for example, the ticket I put in my mother's stocking ended up having a million dollar payoff? Of course it would be really cool if mom suddenly came into a bunch of money and I have no doubt she would share. But after all the losing tickets I have purchased for myself, picking a winner for someone else might make me feel a little cheated.

This Pittsburgh man knows exactly what it feels like to give away a winning lottery ticket. He bought a $20 ticket for the Pennsylvania Lottery as a Christmas gift for his in-laws and it turned out to be worth $1 million! Merry Christmas indeed!

Fred DePasquale isn't identifying his wife's parents, but has said that he has no intention of asking them to give the ticket back. He says that would be like giving someone a shirt for Christmas and asking to wear it on New Year's Eve. That might be a bit of an understatement, but clearly DePasquale values his marriage and the relationship he has with his in-laws. Regardless of how he really feels about losing out on all that money, he hasn't been left completely empty-handed. Because he bought the ticket at the pharmacy he owns, he gets a $5000 payment.

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