In the wake of all the email and Facebook hoopla at our house, I have gotten a lot of feedback (both online and offline). One person asked if I was embarrassed to admit that we, being self-proclaimed tech junkies, had a daughter who out-witted us (technically speaking). My answer is simple: I hope our mishap helps other parents learn to *really* pay attention to what their kids are doing online. If we can be duped, so can you!

Our 10-year-old daughter knew we monitored the email on the laptop, so she signed up for a new Gmail account using her iPod Touch over our wireless broadband access. (I must admit I was amazed at just how smart she was to accomplish all this! I see a bright future for her technologically, as long as she uses it for the right purposes.) As I speak to more and more parents about this, I am realizing how many kids trying these types of sneaky tactics… and how many are getting away with it!

Another girl who goes to school with my 5th grader frequently sends us email at 11:30pm… on school nights. When asked, she says she isn’t tired, so she plays on the computer… late at night… in her bedroom. I checked out her Facebook profile. She lied and said she was 16 to get the account. Her picture is cute. Her info says she’s “looking for men.” Her parents have no idea. They don’t have Facebook accounts. They don’t use the Internet much. They don’t realize what their child is doing online, or who she is talking to.

Do you?

I found a “Family Internet Contract” (courtesy of iMom.com) that certainly isn’t going to prevent kids from doing this stuff, but it could help parents have an informed conversation with their kids, hopefully before email and MySpace/Facebook accounts are obtained “on the sly.” Or if you’re like us, and this whole “growing up” thing sort of snuck up on you (i.e., our kids are already heavily online), this contract can be a great way to make sure we’re all on the same page.

I was brushing my hair the other day when it struck me: why am I so dissatisfied with what God has given me? And, at this moment, with my hair color? I started dying it in my late 20s, when I noticed a touch of gray. I immediately instructed my stylist to cover that gray with something fresh and beautiful, and have been doing so ever since. (Isn’t that what all the commercials tell us to do?)

But I had an appointment scheduled for a few days later, and this time I wasn’t just planning on covering the gray, I had actually told my stylist I “wanted something fresh,” because I was bored with my current color. “Maybe some auburn highlights?” I asked. Yes, I do believe those were my exact words. Now that I write them here, they seem a bit hallow.

My small group has just started a series entitled Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald S. Whitney. The first chapter starts with “Do you thirst for God?” It has me thinking… a lot. Also, last week’s sermon about “Living an Intentional Life“… that has me thinking too. Finally, our book club just read Same Kind of Different as Me (more on that in tomorrow’ post)… and that has me really thinking.

It’s all making me ponder how much of what God has given me I am trying to change. He gave me a wonderful husband, who loves and cares for me and our children. So what if he always leaves his dirty underwear behind the bathroom door. God gave him to me just as he is… why am I trying to change him?

He also gave me the talent for a job I can perform from home, so as to always be available for my kids. Yet, I have this desire for more… more power and prestige in the workforce… something I can’t have by working part-time from home while my kids are in school. I am blessed with what most women would refer to as “the best of both worlds”… so why am I trying to change that?

And then there’s the thing that got me started on this whole topic. It’s the least important of all these things I’m trying to change, yet it was what God used (at least, what He used today) to give me a wake-up call today. It’s my mousy-brown, turning-gray, hair. I’ve hated the color since I was old enough to know I could change it. Isn’t that what causes us all so much trouble—the knowledge there we could have something better? (Not to mention the fact that I could obviously be doing a whole lot more *useful* stuff with the money I’ve spent on changing my hair color.) I’m not saying hair color is everyone’s issue, but it’s definitely one of mine. I think it just points to an underlying current of discontentment in my life.

So I told the stylist I wanted her to color me back to my natural color (yuck), to avoid the whole my-roots-are-showing scene. I’m not in love with it, but I’ll learn to live with it. Or, better put: I’m making the decision to be content with it… for now. I’m kinda hoping God waits until I’m *really* old to turn my hair completely gray… either that or we all get raptured before the gray makes its permanent home on my head. A girl can dream, can’t she?

Oh but in case that doesn’t happen, Proverbs 16:31 offers some encouragement: Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life. Seriously? Well, alrighty then .

We’ve been accustomed to cooking dairy-free for over 10 years, because my oldest daughter (who is 10) turned up with a dairy allergy pretty much as soon as she came into this world. So we’ve become good at knowing which brand of cake mix or granola bar, for example, typically doesn’t include dairy. We’ve also been adventurous in trying to make our own dairy-free cakes and granola bars (some good, some not-so-much), among other things, thanks to web sites like The Food Allergy Mama and Go Dairy Free.

Then we met a family that just moved here from the left side of the country, whose daughter is not only allergic to dairy, but also soy. Yikes!  I did not realize how lucky we were until I tried cooking without dairy or soy! We typically replace dairy with soy products, like dairy-free margarine (which is soy-based) and soy milk. Did you know even many canned spaghetti sauces contain soy products? (I found that out when I considered preparing spaghetti the first night we had our new friends over.)

Tonight we were invited to our new friends’ home, and asked to bring a dessert. Great! I love making desserts. I decided to make a chocolate cake because, well, who doesn’t like chocolate cake? I’ve frequently made dairy-free chocolate cakes, which are yummy, so I figured it wouldn’t be that hard, right? Hmmm. There are a few dairy- and soy-free chocolate cake recipes, but not very many with good reviews, except this one. It’s called the “Easiest Chocolate Cake Recipe” and it really is easy. I had all the ingredients on-hand, which was a bonus.

After I got the cake into the oven, I started searching for a frosting recipe. Here’s where things really got sticky (pardon the pun ). Virtually *all* the frosting recipes I found included some form or dairy or margarine. And lest you think I could use shortening, no! That is soy-based! So I went out on a limb and tried a powdered sugar/water combination, plus a tad bit of oil, some cocoa powder, and a little raspberry flavoring for good measure.

You can see the result in the photo. Now I don’t normally cut into cakes before taking them to someone’s home, but I was really nervous about this one (and maybe a little hungry), so I had to do it. The frosting was really really sweet, so I was afraid it would ruin the cake. But… (insert drum roll here)… it was good! The frosting *is* sweet, but the cake is moist, rich, and melt-in-my-mouth-yummy. Overall, it’s something I’m pleased to take to a friend’s house. I hope the girls all love it too! (I might need to admit to our hostess why I’m not so hungry for dinner now…)

As far as what I’d do differently next time, I think this cake would go well with a home-made whipped cream (of course I would use soy creamer, but that wouldn’t work for our soy-free friend). The whipped cream might be served on the side, so those who couldn’t eat the cream would still be able to enjoy the cake (which really is delicious enough to stand on its own, without any frosting at all).

P.S. A few people have asked why I didn’t just make two desserts – one for the girls with allergies, and one for everyone else. To those people I say: you obviously have never lived with someone affected by food allergies! Unfortunately, when eating out, at parties or with guests, those with food allergies are forced to eat separate meals *most* of their lives. Whenever possible, I try to prepare meals everyone in the family can enjoy, regardless of their food allergies. Of course this is not always feasible, but I like to at least try. And hey, it makes for some interesting experiments sometimes!

Thanks to Snowmageddon 2010, our kids haven’t been to school since the morning of February 5th (they came home two hours early that day). In case you need help with that calculation, they have been home for 10 days, with 50+ of snow on the ground. This has made for a lot of “family time” (some good and some… not so good). But the good parts had a lot to do with one particular board game, which has been played for hours on end with everyone from grandparents to neighbors. The game? Blokus.

Yes! We finally found a game that is equally challenging to an 8-year-old, a 10-year-old, and their parents (who are at least 30… something). You each receive a series of pieces that look like they belong in a game of Tetris. You’re then instructed to place them all on the board. Sounds simple enough, right? Sure. But when everyone else is placing their pieces on the board in such as way as to “block” you (it’s the name of the game, folks), things get pretty tough.

In fact, I wasn’t able play all of my pieces for the first month of owning the game. None of us did. But then, I played a game with three friends and actually went out. Hooray! (OK, I admit these women had never played the game before so maybe it wasn’t truly fair, but I still used all my pieces for the first time ever!)

The only potential drawback is that you really need four players to play the game correctly. But with our family of four, that actually works really well. During the Super Bowl, we had a bunch of people over and took turns playing rounds of Blokus. Everyone had a blast.

If you haven’t yet tried this game, definitely check it out. I think you’ll end up with some really fun family time… we certainly did . (P.S. Target sells it for about $27, but Amazon has it for less than $20.) We’re now off to purchase the alternative version… with triangles.

So… now for part 2 of our ongoing “privacy” debate with a 10-year-old. Earlier today I wrote about my daughter’s discovering secret gmail account. Upon doing so, I blocked gmail on the laptop, but didn’t say anything else. The girls had taken the laptop upstairs (something we had allowed them to do provided the door stayed open), so I went and retrieved it, saying only that it would no longer be allowed upstairs. When pressed for answers, I told them we’d discuss it when their father got home (that’s always good for causing a few minutes of mental distress).

All day I could tell something was bugging my oldest daughter, but I didn’t discuss it any further with her. After dinner, she asked my husband what he needed to discuss with her. He said, “I think you know.” She asked, “Does it have the letters g and m in it?” He confirmed her suspicions. She then screamed, “You’re the meanest parents in the whole world” before throwing herself on her bed in tears.

And that’s where I found her about 20 minutes later (still sniffling). She asked me, “so you know all about the stuff I did?” I nodded. Then she said something I wasn’t expecting: “Both things?”

[Here's where I did some really fast thinking so I could act like a responsible parent even though I had no idea what "both things" were.]

I responded, “We log everything on that computer (which is true).” She questioned why it took me three days to talk to her about it. I reminded her that I don’t spend all day reviewing her computer usage, but that I perform spot-checks periodically (this morning being one of those times). Then she proposes: “So tell me what I did.”

I counter with: “No. God knows all our sins, but He still requires us to confess them to him before offering forgiveness. It’s the same here.” (Ohhhh… that was good! Don’t know where I pulled that one from…) It worked, because eventually she said, “Does the second thing start with an f?”

WHAT? My 10-year-old created a Facebook account behind my back?!?!

Inside I am flipping out, but outside I am cool as a cucumber (who knew those acting classes would come in handy for parenting?). I nodded and then told her how she had broken the law by signing up for a Facebook account at age 10. She said, “I didn’t read those statements, I just clicked Agree.” Nice.

[Sidebar: I search Facebook and found the account - she had already uploaded a photo, played Yoville, and gotten 12 friends!]

We then had a good heart-to-heart about peer pressure and picking good friends (friends who don’t tell you to create secret email and Facebook accounts, for example). She just wants “to be cool,” and I get that. I told her this is a good lesson to start learning young, because she’s going to be faced with a whole lot more dangerous suggestions from friends as she grows up. She still doesn’t understand why things like unsupervised email and Facebooking can be dangerous, but that’s OK. She is only 10. I don’t want her to imagine all the horrible things that could happen… at least not yet.

In the end, I guess we all learned something. For starters, she learned we really do monitor her computer usage (in case she was wondering how much she could get away with), and we learned that we really do need to monitor her computer usage (in case we forgot how quickly our kids are growing up). We also started a healthy conversation about friends that will probably continue for the next decade or so.

[Note to self: install keystroke monitor ASAP!]