OK - time for a new post

Lets go with something not quite so down for starters. How about....I skipped class tonight. Not that I am saying that is a good thing, but it was. I spent time with my kids while Brent was working. It was just such a crazy night that I honestly could not make it to class.
So I stayed home from church yesterday - Mad was not feeling well, well....okay, see the kids each got their own computer for Christmas. Basically, that was all that they received. They have each had their own emails/screen names and yes they do have parental controls on them, actually Madi was the first to have parental controls placed on her account. When she was 5, she would tag along with me to volunteer at the school, I was volunteering in the Computer Lab. She would sit there and play on the computer - educational games of course. But then she would come home and go on the computer at the house. Somehow she figured out the computer at a very young age, much younger than the age of five. The stuff they did in kindergarten was below her. She was ahead of her game.
Anyway, the girl knows her way around a computer. In fact, all three of my kids know their way around a computer. You realize, kids now days are not going to know what it was like to not know a life without a computer. They do not realize how much it can make you life easier.
So back to my story. I do from time to time check to see what websites my kids have visited - not that I do not trust them, but, I just want to make sure that they are safe. They are also aware that I can check and do check.
Well, the other day I saw a blog that was on one of the kids computers that they had visited. It looked innocent enough, but what blog are my kids visiting? So I thought I would check this blog out. Well, I tried to pull up the blog but the screen froze - gotta love computers. I close my windows and open it up again. Hmmmm, interesting blog. I glanced at it, but there was not much to it. So I closed it down.
Okay, now here is the part that had to do with yesterday and staying home. Madi and I are sitting on my bed and she says, "Hey let's go to G. and M's blog (she used their names of course - but since M is a friend I will not put her name on here and since they do not refer to their names on the blog I am not going to put them on here.) Some of you may already know who M is anyway.
I looked at Mad (Madi's nickname Parker gave her when she was small) and said, "Huh? G has a blog?" Totally shocked, this is so unlike this child. If he is on the computer it is for train stuff, eBay, train stuff...
Mad said, "Yeah, he and M have a blog, let's go to it."
So she proceeds to tell me the address. Now I recognize this address from being the snoopy parent a few days before tyring to figure out who in the heck's blog they are visiting. Surprise! They are visiting their own blog.
So I proceed to read this blog. It is freakin funny. I called Brent into the room, because he had not left for church yet, and I asked him if he knew about this blog that G and M had?
To which he replied, "No, they have a blog? G and M?"
"HAHAHAHA, yep, and listen to this," I tell him. I start reading the blog entries. Seriously, maybe I find the blog entries funny because I guess I find the whole thing that they need a blog funny.
I confronted, I guess, made an off hand comment to G at church (I went for the last hour - bad parent left Mad home alone - G was being set apart as a Counselor in the Teachers quorum) and I asked him about it. G basically blew me off, said it was no big deal and that M did most of the writing - to which I would totally agree with - but occasionally he contributes with an off hand comment or two.
Anyway, to that really long drawn out explanation, teenagers are much smarter than they let on. Seriously. But it is not only teenagers, kids in general that use computers.
One more to prove my point. So, like I said, the kids each have their own laptops. Well, the other day Mad's is out on the table, as well as Parker's being there. Brent was using Parker's laptop and I needed to finish some homework. My computer was shut down and did not want to sit and wait for it to come to life, so I decided to use Mad's computer. I did my homework and submitted it to the teacher, but I wanted to have a copy for myself. I copied and pasted my homework into an email, using Madi's email account.
I paste it into a new email and notice at the bottom of the email there is a signature. It is Madi's signature. At first I did not think anything of it. I thought maybe I was using a previous open new email box and that maybe Madi put it there when she was messing around. But being the Mrs. Cravitt (Brent's affectionate nickname for me...haha -haha being said sarcastically) I am, I decide that I need to open another email and see if the signature is there again, "surely it has to be a mistake and it would only be on the first one, the one that I put my assignment on," I thought.
"Holy freakin cow!!" (sorry about the language - I love the word freakin for some reason and I am not using it in a bad way - at least to me it is not being used that way - sorry if it is offensive) I said. Remember, Brent is on the other computer, he is sitting across the table from me.
He asks what is going on. To which I reply, "Madi has a signature on her email!"
"What!?!" he says.
This girl can get around on the computer. She is the one I have to really watch because she will just type something into the address bar and see what it brings up. Most of the time it brings up the desired website that she is looking for, sometimes it brings up businesses, nothing bad so far. When we found out that this is how she was surfing, and this was when she was five, that is when I gave her her own screen name/email with parental controls. She had tried typing in her name followed by .com. Yeah, a little too smart for her own good.
So, back to the signature. I know you can add a signature, and I know that I have seen where to add the signature, but it is not something I could tell you how to do and where to go to do this. I would have to mess around in the email until I located the whereabouts for the email signature.
Now her email signature is not just her name in black. No, it is Time New Roman font (nothing special about that) but then it is bolded and made extra big, it is also italicised. Her signature lays on top of on orange rectangle, and at the end of her name she has a smiley face that is winking. I do not mean the :) . No, it is an actual smiley winking face.
I asked her about this when she woke up the next morning and she she just smiled and said that she found the spot where she could make a signature and if I wanted she would show me how to do it on my screen name. Nice. Just what I need, an eight yr. old teaching me how to do things on the computer.
"No thank you," was my response. Not to be outdone, I found the spot the night before where I could add a signature - not that I did, but if I wanted to.