Weeee'rrrreeee Baaacccckkk!!!!

After spending the better part of the last year mostly "unplugged" we are back. We did away with cable television and disconnected the internet just about a year ago. It was a long year but worth it. We began the year with lots of questions from the older kids about what they might be missing on Facebook and their other sites of choice. They just knew they couldn't live without YouTube. We stayed away from the internet almost entirely for the first six months then we began needing to spend more and more time at our local library in order for me to conduct our family business on line. By the end of the year, it was clear that we really needed to and were ready to welcome the internet back into our home. The kids did learn that they really weren't missing anything on Facebook and things weren't so dire that they needed to check in all of the time. They do enjoy having the internet back on in our home, as do I, however, Shawn, who is 15 now, has taken to staying up late into the night to get his computer time in. Mostly, this has to do with the fact that his new girlfriend seems to be up half the night doing the same. I can't say that I like this for him, but then I stopped to think back to when I was his age. Chris, his stepdad, and I didn't have the access to the internet like the kids do now, but we did fall asleep while talking on the phone together nearly every night. Most nights we would talk well past 3 am. So really, what Shawn is doing isn't all that different from what Chris and I did back in our day, at his age.