March Gifts

My baby has turned 9, how depressing! I can't believe he has grown so fast! I'm so proud of the little man he has become. He is strong willed which can lead him into a little bit of trouble, but I think it will help him later in life.

I've been complaining to my father for a few months that the boys computer no longer worked for their school work. It was really, REALLY, old and outdated. So it would just cycle and buffer and never let them log into anything. So it was really frustrating when trying to have 2 boys do computer based learning. We have the laptop and the ipad - but the ipad wouldn't do any of their school websites (time4learning, reading eggs, etc) because they are Adobe Flash based. Which was sooooo irritating. So last fall, I had gotten the boys a Kindle Fire - boy was I ticked when I turned it on and it updated....and no longer supported Adobe Flash!! Grrrr. Any Android based tablet no longer supports AF either. So we were stuck with 2 kids using 1 laptop. Which meant having one child doing school work and the other putzing around for a couple of hours, then they'd switch. Which meant distractions for the one trying to do school work, and it meant schooling lasted all day. This lead to many arguments. Anywho, I've been complaining about it to my dad for a while - that we needed a 2nd computer. He shows up on X-man's birthday with a gift, saying ti was a gift for the whole family since it was too expensive to be for only one child.

My kids were stoked when they opened a Galaxy Tab 2. I was bummed. The last thing we needed was another tablet! LOL. But my father said he had asked Best Buy to be sure the kids could do their school websites and he was told they could. So I spent HOURS setting up the tablet. It simply wouldn't recognize our WiFi, I had to use my hotspot (which I have limited data each month). And when I finally got it set-up  I realized it wouldn't work for their websites as it too was an android based OS. So I got the receipt from my dad and we all headed for Best Buy. I was ecstatic to realize they had a huge clearance sale going on notebook computers (as they are making ready for all the Windows 8 systems). I was able to get the boys an Acer ChromeBook. Essentially it's a mini-laptop, that runs on a Google Chrome operating system - so it doesn't have programs, per se. Instead it's like a computer that runs simply as an internet interface. Using Google Chrome. But Chrome has tons of apps (much like the Kindle or Ipad) so we have writing programs, spread sheets, etc. AND we have Adobe Flash! YAY!!

We got through all the kids school work in only 2.5 hours today! Nary an argument in sight!
Man, I love technology!