Most smartphones - iphone, windows phones, android phones have tons of little videos on how to do stuff on Youtube and you can get free or for a couple of dollars online user's manuals on the internet - Amazon, GooglePlay, etc... You can also do trial and error too. You can always reset it back to factory settings. It the fun of having a smartphone! Android smartphones are customed by the manufacturer for the most part and may be difficult to learn since each manufacturer does it just a little bit differently. There are hundreds of forums and specific websites that specialized on each smartphone operating system as well as podcast like Twit.tv. Check them out! If you are lost and cannot find the answer and need some live help; Apple, Microsoft and Google (if you purchase a Google brand phone like the Nexus will be happen to help you online. if you have an iPhone; you can make an appointment and visit a genius at the nearest Apple Store. If you purchase a Nokia Lumia phone you can take it to your nears Microsoft Retail Store and they will help you too! Amazon takes it a step further and offers a direct live two way video chat help; so you can ask away with their new Fire phone and the help can setup the phone too if you cannot do it yourself while you are talking. Also, their is Sirus for iPhone and Cortana for Windows Phone - a built-in voice activated personal assistant to help you with questions too! I forgot what they call Google's personal assistant however! In other words; you can get help everywhere. Just do a Google or Yahoo search on what you want to do or have problems doing! 95% of it will be answer by dozens of sites on the links! This post was edited by harry_wild on Fri, Aug 15, 14 at 3:57

I completely and whole-heartedly agree with Sweeby. I say get your mother out of your life. My X's neice was 13 when she started telling her mother that her SF was molesting her. She didn't listen. Finally, the girl told a liazon officer at her school. CPS found the claims were valid and the kids were taken and given to X's parents. Mom was ordered not to let SF back into the house once he was out of jail on bail or she would never get her kids back. Well, she did. She took the b*stard back and estranged herself from her kids forever. They ended up having to live with their father (X's brother), whom they barely knew (divorced when twins were 2; saw them MAYBE once a year until this happened), and his new wife that they barely knew. I was so heart-broken to see this happen to these great kids. The girl started doing so much better and even got a college scholorship. She never speaks to her mom. The last time she watched my son, she told me that she can't even stand the thought of speaking to her mother. She's 19 now so this has been 6 years of hell. The boy, he's just flat angry. He's lashed out at everyone, including his sister, saying that if she'd just kept her mouth shut they wouldn't be in this. And he would say why did he have to be taken away when SF never did anything to him. He DOES still talk to their mother. She gives him gifts. I believe that's the source of all his anger. If he'd cut her off, he would beon the way to getting on the right track. But his feelings for his mother and the continuous lies she pours into his head are mucking up his emotions. When you get your mother and her lies out of your life and out of your head, you can begin to heal. You need clarity to sort things out.

HAHA, actually, JMT, I check the child support hotline for payments and I DID press repeat to make sure I heard it correctly. LOL!!! I've had to do that before with sperm donor's payments.... especially the one two summers ago when he paid $1500. Also, a good thing for me is... my dh is the cook! Woohoo! He might make me make a pie or a desert but he cooks all the hard stuff. I really have no clue how. LOL! I've been sheltered. I moved straight from living with my mom to living with my dh... and he LOVES to cook. I did make potato soup yesterday though, so I do try every now and then. You are right myfam, I do get anxious over when the next payment will come. I hate that. I have to plan bills around it kind of. I'm really hoping that before she'd send another one the garnishment takes place. We have to be to that point. It's been well long enough seeing that he filed with the IV D office at the end of August. By the end of November I would certainly hope we've gotten there. Especially since we know she's already gotten letters regarding this.... and we told the child support office where she works (Remember, she gave dh her email address with the company name in it... haha, idiot) DH has made it clear he will not drive further then 2 hours. Well, he's made it clear to me, they haven't officially spoke about it yet. I was just going based on the last few holidays.... and last Thanksgiving. SS mentioned they may not be going to her in-laws this year... and he's glad "cause it's boring"... we will see. She obviously doesn't stick to any plans or anything that comes out of her mouth. Ima, I still think our bm's are some how related. LOL! They both seem so selfish and only think of themselves. I haven't bothered to give bm any of the medical bills for the year yet. I'm waiting till the end of the year for dh to tell her the total that she owes for the year. I doubt she'll pay it. She'll say something like she never made us pay any medical.... which is a lie. When he was really little he was ALWAYS sick and we took him in more then she did, paid the copay, bought the meds... and even when she did she made us have our own supply of his meds at our home. She wouldn't send RX's with him. Then as he got older she just stopped taking him to the dr. The parties are crap! SS's bm promised him a big birthday this year and failed to deliver. My ds8's bday is this weekend, he'll be 9 and we've been planning. SS has repeatedly made comments that he didn't get much as far as celebrating for his bday. BUT, he was with her for that weekend and she promised HUGE things so we didn't think we had to, we ended up taking him out to eat at Don Pablos so we knew he'd get desert and sang to. I'll let everyone know what happens for sure.... everyone have a good Thanksgiving.

I'm sorry for you all that it happened that way, especially the kids. What a difficult position to be in... because you know that if you say anything to them about it, you'll be accused of being ungrateful, "looking a gift horse in the mouth", etc. I mean, sure, they didn't have to censor themselves and make every little thing perfectly equal if they have a lot more money and felt like indulging themselves/their kids... maybe there was a misunderstanding about who was expected to pay for what, and maybe communication could have been clearer on the subject on either their part or yours... But it sounds like the discrepancy in provisions was excessive, and to not share at all with your kids was pretty heartless. Especially after it probably was evident that you were not going to be able to financially "keep up" with their spending at that time. They could have at least offered to temporarily *loaned* you the xtra sending money to make sure your kids enjoyed similar things to the others, even if they only really wanted to pay for the basic costs of your trip. Wonder what kind of point they were trying to prove... and to who? Gross... As for advice, I'm not sure what to tell you. Other than try to gracefully turn down any future offers they make like that, or try to come up with alternative ideas so that trips, visits are a more "level playing field". If you're the ones "hosting" them, they have to do things on your terms, and you are still doing your part to be gracious and maintain relations (without being unduly controlled). I'm afraid if you or your husband tries to be emotionally honest with them about how it hurt, they won't understand and you'll be called ingrates with too big "expectations". Which is clearly not the situation, but that's how they'll see it in order to feel okay about themselves being so self-indulgent. So the only thing I can think of to handle it is just to make sure you're not put in that position, in the same way, again.