Don't miss the Ultimate Blog Party

I just discovered this great new site: 5 Minutes for Mom Be sure to stop by and check out the information about the upcoming Ultimate Blog Party. It’s a great way to meet some new bloggy friends and to hopefully gain some new readers at your blog. It is being held the week of March 7-14, so you still have time to decide if you want to participate and what you want to do if you do participate. As you can see, I'm participating. I'm always up to meeting new friends, promoting, and visiting new blogs. As a mom who also runs my own business from home (writing romance books) and who needs to promote, I think this is brilliant. According to 5 Minutes for Mom "Mr. Linky will go live at Friday March 7th, 12:01 am Eastern Time and participating bloggers who have their party post up can add their link any time during the week of the party. (The Linky will stay permanently in the post, so you can come back later and catch up on any blogs you may have missed.)" Okay, now I have to figure out where to find Mr. Linky. "Mr. Linky" - that makes me chuckle. Now onto a mom-type post. (Even though I've done the control I-thing, the italics won't disappear, so please ignore them if you can) I have five children - three boys, two girls. The order is: boy, boy, girl, girl, boy. The oldest three are now bona fide adults although two still live at home, eat my groceries, and hike up my phone bill. The youngest two are 17 and 13. Today, I'm focusing on the 13 year old. My youngest constantly tells me he's too sick to go to school. He did this so much, the school began protesting his many absences. After consulting with my son's teachers', we decided he can only stay home if he has a bona fide fever. Well, I couldn't find the thermometer this morning and lo and behold, he said he was too ill to go to school. He didn't have that "I'm telling the truth tone" and he didn't feel hot so I told him to go to school anyway and if he got ill later in the day, to call me. So, he went to school. Right before my lunch hour, he called "I'm sick mom. Come get me." According to him, his initial stomach ache had gone away but now he had a headache. I still didn't really believe him plus it would have been very awkward for me to leave today as my boss wanted to speak to me about something very important concerning my customer service/day job career. Thus I told him to eat lunch and then see how he felt. He didn't call back and we're both at home and he seems fine. I bought a new digital thermometer tonight which I think I'll keep in my purse as my boys have a habit of breaking and losing "accidentally" important items like thermometers, and lawn mowers. (We've had to buy so many lawn mowers as "mysteriously", they break soon after we purchase them - believe me, I'm fuming!) In fact, if the child misses a day of school and I don't call him in sick - they're going to send the truant officer to get him - with my blessings. In fact, I've threatened to call the truant officer myself to scare him to start behaving and attend school. Has anybody else had a problem child who tries everything to get out of school? He used to do this with karate, too. He was sick almost every single afternoon right before time to go to karate. Also, his just-washed uniform came up mysteriously missing, if we didn't buy the sick thing. I thought my oldest was an extremely hard child to deal with. The youngest one makes the oldest seem like a total angel (of course, I've not begun to scratch the surface on the 13 year old's exploits). Or maybe it's just that I'm 15 years older and tireder than when the oldest was this age. Suggestions anyone?