http://www.houseofparents.com/ en Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:45:07 GMT vBulletin 1440 http://www.houseofparents.com/images/misc/rss.png http://www.houseofparents.com/ http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7217-Testing-out-the-new-server&goto=newpost Sun, 05 Sep 2010 19:46:36 GMT There are so many changes and I swear I will get them up and running but it may take a while. Not like there are 1000's of ppl banging down the door so it's not really a priority for anyone but me but I still would like it up and running properly. :) ]]> General Chat Oz http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7217-Testing-out-the-new-server http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7211-Wife-Sees-Husband-s-2nd-Wedding-On-Facebook&goto=newpost Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:35:11 GMT *Woman Began Searching Facebook For Possible Affair (http://www.kpho.com/technology/24521782/detail.html?sms_ss=facebook) MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Writer POSTED: 2:39 am MST August 5, 2010... Woman Began Searching Facebook For Possible Affair
MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Writer

POSTED: 2:39 am MST August 5, 2010
UPDATED: 4:13 am MST August 5, 2010

CLEVELAND -- Dread of the unknown hung in the air as Lynn France typed two words into the search box on Facebook: the name of the woman with whom she believed her husband was having an affair.

Click. And there it was, the stuff of nightmares for any spouse, cuckolded or not. Wedding photos. At Walt Disney World, no less, featuring her husband literally dressed as Prince Charming. His new wife, a pretty blonde, was a glowing Sleeping Beauty, surrounded by footmen.

"I was numb with shock, to tell you the truth," says France, an occupational therapist from Westlake, a Cleveland suburb. "There was like an album of 200 pictures on there. Their whole wedding."

Affairs were once shadowy matters, illicit encounters whispered about and often difficult to prove. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter and lightning-fast communication, the notion of privacy is fast becoming obsolete. From flirtatious text messages to incriminating e-mails, marital indiscretions are much easier to track - especially if potentially damaging photographic evidence is posted online.

"All of these things are just a trail of cyber breadcrumbs that are easily tracked by good divorce lawyers," says Parry Aftab, an expert on Internet safety and privacy laws.

France, 41, was not completely blindsided by her Facebook discovery, which happened in January 2009. That fall, she had grown suspicious when her husband began taking frequent business trips, even leaving the day the couple's newborn son came home from the hospital. Once, she found his passport at home when he was supposed to be in China for business.

In October, before leaving for another trip, her husband left a hotel website up on the couple's computer screen.

"So I actually went there with a girlfriend, just to see for myself for sure," France says. "He was there with this girlfriend. I said, 'Hey, I'm his wife. We've got a baby.'"

The woman told France that she was engaged to France's husband.

"Sure enough, they were registered for a wedding at Target," France says.

A girlfriend recommended checking the woman's Facebook page, which was then open to the public, France says, but has since become private. There, France found evidence of an unfolding relationship that she still couldn't wrap her head around. Overwhelmed with two young children, she confronted her husband. She says he told her he wouldn't actually go through with the wedding.

It wasn't until she saw the wedding photos that she finally began divorce proceedings.

"People who engage in these sorts of behaviors now have the option of trying to keep things private or turning it into a spectacle and becoming their own reality show," says lawyer Andrew Zashin, a child custody expert who is representing Lynn France. "In this case, it seems, the spouse may have crossed the line and gotten married while he was still married."

Aftab, a lawyer who runs the online protection site WiredSafety.org, says the lesson to be learned from the Frances' case is that no form of communication is sacred anymore.

"It's like trying to catch a river in your hand," she says. "It will leak out eventually."

But Aftab doesn't recommend snooping around online. That can backfire in court if used inappropriately - such as when spouses log onto each other's Facebook pages without permission. If your spouse isn't trustworthy, she says, get a divorce and save yourself the trouble.

Lynn's husband, John France, does not deny that he has remarried. Rather, he simply is insisting that he was never married to Lynn in the first place.

His attorney, Gary Williams, issued a statement Tuesday saying his client is asking a family law court to declare that his marriage to Lynn was "void since its inception."

"While it appears that John and Lynda France were both under the impression, once upon a time, that they were married, the fact of the matter is that their marriage was never legally proper," Williams wrote, "and, therefore, it does not actually exist."

Lynn and John France were married in July 2005 in a seaside wedding on Italy's Amalfi Coast, having organized the event through Regency San Marino, which coordinates weddings for couples looking to get hitched in Italy. On the company's website, Lynn is still the first radiant bride whose portrait appears in a gauzy veil, the brilliant blue sea behind her.

If that wedding was a fraud, it was news to Lynn.

"If that were true, then he's lied to the IRS," Zashin says. "He's lied to insurance companies. Banks."

In June 2009, against the advice of her attorneys, Lynn France dropped divorce proceedings when her husband came home and persuaded her to reconcile.

"I just wanted to believe the good when he came to me and said, 'Let's reconcile, I love you,'" she says. "You want to give somebody a second chance."

But three months ago, Lynn says she was cleaning the sink when her husband took the couple's 2-year-old son out of her arms and said he was going to give him some milk. Minutes later, she heard the car running.

"He threw them in, no car seats, no nothing, and took off," she says.

She hasn't seen her sons since. John France had taken them to Tampa, Fla., where he currently lives with his new wife and, according to his attorney, is seeking custody of their children.

Lynn France called 911, but as in most parental custody disputes, little could be done. She is in contact with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and has a team of attorneys preparing for a court fight. Authorities have told her not to attempt to take back the children forcibly.

For Lynn, the only glimpse of her children now comes, ironically, from the same Facebook page where she found those fairy-tale wedding photos.

Until the day she can see her children again, Lynn France says she continues to text her husband, pleading with him to bring the children back to Ohio.

"The only way I've been able to see my children is on her Facebook page," she says. "It's stranger than fiction to watch this woman living my life."
]]> News Room Oz http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7211-Wife-Sees-Husband-s-2nd-Wedding-On-Facebook http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7208-You-Know-You-re-A-Homeschool-Mom-When...&goto=newpost Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:29:40 GMT My sister sent this to me so I thought I would share. It's pretty amusing.

• You get to change more than diapers, you get to change their minds.
• When a child busts a lip, and after seeing she's okay, you round up some scotch tape to capture some blood and look at it under the microscope!
• You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect later.
• Your children never ever leave the "why?" stage.
• When your teenager decides to take one community college course, and comes home and asks you why the teacher wrote "At" on his paper. (A+)
• You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet for your wedding anniversary.
• Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.
• Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the science experiment went just by looking at the house.
• You never have to drive your child's forgotten lunch to school.
• Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after PE.
• The only debate about the school lunch program is whose turn it is to cook.
• You never have to face the dilemma of whether to take your child's side or the teacher's side in a dispute at school.
• If your child gets drugs at school, it's probably Tylenol.
• Your neighbors think you are insane.
• Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of "Calvin & Hobbes" books.
• Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and any book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.
• You have meal worms growing in a container....on purpose.
• If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you're having a PTA meeting.
• Talking out loud to yourself is a parent/teacher conference.
• You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs clean underwear.
• You can't make it through a movie without pointing out the historical inaccuracies.
• You step on math manipulative on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.
• The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no one gossips.
• Your honor student can actually read the bumper sticker that you have put on your car.
• If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the dog.
• Some day your children will consider you to be a miracle-working expert and will turn to you for advice.
• Your kids refer to the neighbor kids as "government school inmates."
• You can't make it through the grocery produce department without asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.
• You can't put your produce in your cart without asking your older student to estimate it's weight and verify accuracy.
• You live in a one-house schoolroom.
• Your favorite Christmas gift was a gift certificate to a book store.
• The principal can give the teacher a pat on the behind and it's not harassment.
• Your kids will actually talk to grown ups at a family gathering and are actually patient with kids half their age.
• You can take the time to look at a tiny spider on a log.
• You can listen to your child's favorite hilarious passage from Hank the Cowdog 47 times.
• Your daughter, who is practically a vegetarian, is begging her dad to shoot some starlings so she can pluck them and clean them up to make a "blackbird" pie just like the Ingalls family.
• You're almost afraid to put your hand in your purse because you not sure if your 6yo has put something that's alive (or possibly not alive, but once was) to take home to view under the microscope.
• You have a line item in your budget for overdue book fines.
• You have to add the words: "homeschool, homeschooler, and homeschooling" to your computer's spell checker so it will stop marking them as wrong.
• Your house in on the Parade of Homes List - for educational merchandisers.
• When visiting a strange town you see a parking lot full of mini-vans and station wagons and wonder if it's a homeschooling conference.
• Your friends don't want to help you move because you have so many books.
• Your school clothes have more holes in the knees than your play clothes.

]]> Home Schooling Oz http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7208-You-Know-You-re-A-Homeschool-Mom-When... http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7207-How-s-Everyone-doing&goto=newpost Wed, 11 Aug 2010 19:48:25 GMT How's your summer going? Funny how busy it has been this year and the summer is almost over already. I just had a birthday this weekend and could not believe how quickly time is flying by. It is crazy.

We have been gardening quite a bit, spending as much one on one time with the boys as I can. I know I am a SAHM you would think that would be obvious but it really isn't. I took a break with the Homeschooling this month and have been letting the boys just play and have a good time. I always feel guilty like I should be shoving as much info down them "just in case" but my DH was like take a break they are only 3 and 5. hehe

Anyway, how is everyone else doing? ]]> General Chat Oz http://www.houseofparents.com/showthread.php?7207-How-s-Everyone-doing