The Movie 66
Posted on July 2nd, 2008
I have a preview copy of the movie… I’m watching and I’ll be back with my review. See the trailer right here:
Easy-Peasy Mornings
Posted on June 13th, 2008
My afternoons are mayhem, but I am blessed with peaceful mornings. Amazingly, they are quiet, serene and unhurried. This will be the only quiet time of the day. What does make a house full of boys so quiet in the morning?
- There is no TV on during breakfast. There is a spot for a TV built into our kitchen, however, it holds no TV. Instead, we filled it with a cable box and speakers only. We use it to play music choice — all day cable music. It’s been a long time since I watched Good Morning America and the Today Show, and when I saw Dooce on The Today Show a few weeks ago, I was startled by how much jumping around, and yelling goes on during the commercials and segments. Keep that out of my kitchen! I can imagine what it would do to the people in the kitchen who heard all that jarring noise first thing in the morning. Maybe the producers of those morning talk shows suffer from ADHD.
- The music. I know… it should be classical. But that doesn’t do it for me. I like, and the kids seems to like, New Age. We leave it on all day. I will add that the music does little to overcome the mayhem in the afternoon.
- The boys don’t like to sleep. Really, this is not a virtue, but it does have its benefits in the morning. They are less likely to sleep in — they get up quick, fast and easy. The boys don’t even use alarm clocks, and we never have to yell at them to get up. We don’t listen to those annoying morning talk shows on the radio either.
- The boys are quiet… they are a few squabbles over who gets to read the cereal box, but they’re generally quiet. Could it be the lack or media? Who knows.
- We don’t lay our clothes out the night before; they boys are so picky about what they wear, they’d spend half the night deciding. (Really.) So, they do it in the morning, in that half-sleepy quiet alert state they’re in. I do laundry once a week, so all the clean clothes are usually in their drawers.
- I don’t fuss about setting the table at night for breakfast. I just make sure the kitchen is clean and neat as a pin before I go to sleep the night before. This takes me forever.
- I should — but I don’t empty the dishwasher before bed. This would save me lots of time… but I normally don’t do this.
- We pack lunches on Saturday for the week. Sandwiches go in the freezer. This is a huge time saver.
- We don’t do homework in the morning. We try to make sure that’s done before we go to sleep… you just never know if you’ll have enough time to get it done.
- Because this is such a quiet time, we take advantage of it by practicing the piano and the violin. This is probably the only chance they’ll have to get to it all day.
Before you start throwing the book at me for having it so easy; remember, I pay for this in the afternoon when all that testosterone is full awake, and all four of them hit at the same time after school. But mornings are a gift from heaven.
This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by KRAFT BAGEL-FULS.
I made fruit leather once…
Posted on June 8th, 2008
And The Winner Is: Michelle, number 8. Congrats.
The Parent Bloggers Network and My Fruit Roll Ups are giving away fruit roll-ups. To win, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me which design, from My Fruit Roll Ups new design page, you would choose. As always, I’ll use random.org next June 17, 2008 to pick one lucky winner. For those of you who don’t have blogs, you can still win. Just make sure to leave your email address so I can contact you. This contest is valid in the US only.
One naive day, back when I only had two boys, I came across a recipe for making “fruit leather,” which utilized my newly purchased food dehydrator, which I had bought to turn my bumper crop of tomatoes into sun dried tomatoes. With a fresh-picked bath of strawberries, I jumped into the fruit leather recipe, so I can honestly advise you here, that it will break your heart to watch the dehydrator efficiently “evaporate” hours of your careful work of cleaning, hulling and pureeing a batch of strawberries into a few scrawny strips, that are almost instantly snatched up by your kids. In no other recipe are the “fruits of your labor” so quickly eliminated.
Now, I simply reach for that little box in the store, and let Fruit Rollups take care of harvesting and hulling the fruit. So, there were cheers in the house when The Parent Bloggers Network asked me to check out the new website that lets you design your own picture and message to be stamped on your own personzlized Fruit Roll Up. I have artistic children, so I put the computer mouse into the hands of my 12-year-old and let him design our box, which come in sets of 30.
He easily navigated through the choices on the site, and quickly made his way to the sports pictures and accompanying words. You can also personalize these for birthdays, which is a great idea for party favors. So, leave a comment to enter to win.
Lemon, flour, eggs… SUGAR!
Posted on June 8th, 2008
I am no stranger in the kitchen. At the age of ten, I opened a Betty Crocker cookbook, and began plowing my way through the book, teaching myself how to make whatever recipe I fancied at the moment. My Mother never seemed to mind my creativity which probably resulted in lots of messes. The messes may have been tempered by the fact that I was putting dinner on the table by age 11.
A friend, I’ll just her her intimidating Martha, and I were co-hosting deserts for a progressive dinner party. She was a much more “sophisticated” cook… her mother owned a restaurant, and she had been trained by her mother and legions of aunts. I was merely trained by a fictitious person named Betty. (She doesn’t really exist… did you know that?) So, I felt intimidated. The plan was desert bars. She was making the raspberry ones; I was making lemon bars, with FRESH lemons.
Presentation was everything to her. Thankfully, the bars turned out perfectly — well they looked nice away. They passed inspection. Except, when people bit into them, they learned what I failed to remember, as evidenced by the sour pucker they wore. The sugar.
She would definitely nominate me in the “America’s Worst Cook” competition.
You can see more funny kitchen messes at Parent Bloggers Network, and enter the contest yourself, sponsored by the American Egg Board.
A clever game that isn’t made with plastic
Posted on May 22nd, 2008
In my quest to throw out as many plastic toys as possible, the Parent Bloggers Network enticed me with an offer to try out a new family game, Rapido, from the Discovery Channel Store. This game is made from 100% natural bamboo, and wood. Real stuff from the earth. Once my boys started to put their hands around Rapido’s soft bamboo cylinders, and started rolling the wooden balls around in their hands, they were sucked in, and found the game irresistible to put down.
You play the game with four people — four bamboo cylinders per player. Each player picks up their own bamboo strip, color coded in random order to match the wooden balls. Discovery Toys was ingenious in leveling the playing field with this game by making it possible for a 12-year-old and a 4-year-old to play together by creating 8 color-coded strips. Four are coded for beginners, and four are coded for advanced players. Following the colors on your strip, the object of the game is to “catch” the rolling balls with your cylinder… in the order of the colors on your strip. So the beginner strip has colors that repeat — two yellows, two reds, two blues, etc. in various order. The advanced strip has no repeats, rather a random pattern of the colors. Once you release the balls, they roll around inside the white string circle placed on the floor, and you race as fast as you can to catch the balls in your cylinder. A great way to develop fast eye-hand coordination, learning colors, and engaging fun, without the use of electricity!
The game is beatiful for not only its natural materials, but also with its elegant simplicity. The boys spent at least 40 minutes exploring the mechanics of the game, fascinated by how all the parts work, without the use of batteries, springs and plastic. A clever black rubber-band attached to the end of the cylinder lets the balls go in as you “punch” them on top of the wooden ball, and the rubber-band holds the balls inside, so they don’t tumble out during the game.
The game was created from people from 15 nations , working together to design toys for children made from bamboo, an abundant renewable resource. We love this as a family game, as so many ages can play this together. But, I know I will pick up a few more boxes of Rapido. It’s the kind of gift I’m proud to give to another family as a birthday present.
They don’t call it Rapido for Nothing…
Light Green Popcorn Balls for Christmas
Posted on May 18th, 2008
When I was growing up, my Grandma, bless her heart, was in her 70s, a widow, and had raised 7 children, most of them, by herself. She had over 50 Grand and Great Grandchildren. Not until PBN asked us how we handled gifts from the Grandparents, did it occur to me that Grandma’s gift obligations for birthdays and Christmas for all of those little loved ones amounted to thousands of dollars, and covered virtually every week of the year.
With the constraints of living on a fixed income, and most of her monthly government check heading towards doctors visits, and utilities, life gave Grandma little opportunity to shower her little babies even one gift at Christmas. Because, if you give to one, it’s only fair you give to all. I’m wondering now, how Grandma must have felt to see each child, empty handed, year after year on Christmas and birthdays.
Empty-handed, is probably not an accurate picture. Grandma spent most of her time in her tinny little kitchen making hard-tack candy, popcorn balls, taffy, peanut brittle, thumbprint cookies, and soft butterscotch candies wrapped in waxed paper. The hard-tack candy was the most labor-intensive. The slab of marble, pouring the green, red, yellow hot syrup, and reading that candy thermometer until the temperature was exactly right. And who could forget that little bottle of wintergreen flavoring?
As the youngest of all her grandchildren (not counting the Great Grandchildren), my brother and I seemed to have a soft spot in Grandma’s heart. I know this only because I overheard her, several times, slipping dollars into my Mom’s hands, and say, “get the kids something just from me for Christmas.” (Grandma didn’t drive.) My Mom would always push the money back into Grandma’s hands, as Grandma insisted that Mom “just take it.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’m sure she did that for all of her Grandchildren. Grandma would have loved to have access to the Grandkids Gift Guide, as it would have put so much power in Grandma’s hands, and taken all the guess work out of finding the perfect gift.
Still, Grandma, now that I’ve had time to reflect on what matters most in life, I want you to know that it wasn’t whatever it was Mom picked up at the five-and-dime store, which she and wrapped to put under the tree from you to me. I don’t remember much about whatever toy that could have been. But, your green popcorn balls — those were the best. You made them so big. Their enormous size made it impossible for us to get our teeth around them for one big bite. And the green, that light green color, saturated every single sweet-popped kernel.
Grandma, I know you thought those popcorn balls weren’t enough; that you wanted to give something that we could keep, and hold longer after Christmastide had past. Honestly, Grandma, those popcorn balls that so quickly disappeared in our bellies, is the one gift that I’ve held into my heart for over forty years. Thanks again. Grandma. You gave the best gifts. I miss you, so much.
Kids Just Play With The Box Anyway
Posted on May 16th, 2008
Hats off to Nabisco for paying attention to what kids really want: the box. A toy comes with the current box of Ritz Crackers; there are no crackers to dig through to find the toy; there are no hazardous leads or plastics, and no choking dangers. Just a simple box that can be transformed into a simple make-it-yourself toy; the kind kids love best.
And kids, be sure to check out the games on the Ritz web site.
No Cavaties
Posted on May 5th, 2008
It only took one traumatic cavity, that cost my son two teeth, that inspired me to invest in this toothbrush, Oral B S-320 Sonic Complete Rechargeable Power Toothbrush
In the 3 years we have owned ours, we’ve had perfect check-ups. And that laborious, nerve-wracking tartar scraping procedure is almost “nil,” as the toothbrush does such a great job of keeping it off the teeth.
A two-minute timer, is great for the kids, and sets a habit. Plus, this tool gets you’re teeth gloriously white.
Long car trip? Try Billy Brown
Posted on May 2nd, 2008
We spend three hours with the kids in the car, one-way, to go to the lake. How do we stand it? Audio books. Jens Hewerer from Giddo invited me to try out the new audio story “Billy Brown And The Mystery Package.” Action-packed, this audio book is complete with sound effects, professional voices and a complete audio experience. My 6 and 4-year-olds loved it, and have popped the CD in several times to listen to the story again and again. Now, the 9-year-old is listening.
And like Hewerer says, “The audios are professionally produced with full cast voice acting, music, and sound effects that hearken back to the days of radio dramas and it’s potential for imagination.”
You can get your own free download of this award-winning audio adventure “Billy Brown And The Mystery Package” at www.Giddio.com! So, click here, and get it on your I-tunes library for your next big trip.
Motherhood is like this…
Posted on April 24th, 2008
6:00: Rising before children are awake is difficult. Go back to sleep, while the house is quiet, I tell myself. But this hour of yoga makes me a better Mom, a better person, so I head for my mat.
6:15: Little ones, supposed to be asleep, are up to join me. I plow forward with my routine.
6:22: I hear a clap. This is the signal that someone needs help in the bathroom. I pause the DVD and head to the bathroom. (The signal is his idea… not mine.)
6:22½: OMG. Send the boy to the bathtub to soak, while I clean up this mess. A yoga chant is still humming through my head, challenging me to stay calm, as I scrub the floor, the toilet seat, and my own toes, and then the boy.
6: 38: Scrub under my fingernails again to get rid of smell.
6:39: Begin yoga DVD again…
6: 43: The little boys begin searching through the laundry piles for costumes that are not yet washed… they begin laughing and giggling, while I press forward through the routine.
6:51: I hear one say, “Close the door… all the way.” While in crow pose, I begin to imagine this:
my little boy inside the front-loading washer, and the door is pushed shut. The older son laughs, and hits the button to start the machine. He screams, at what he’s done, and I frantically rush in and begin pushing buttons to stop the machine. I suddenly remember the one time I forgot a pair of stocks, but the controls locked and I couldn’t get the machine to stop, or the doors to open. I run to the fuse box to shut off the power, and I think about the machine’s “air-tight” seal. When I get back to the machine, I realize I’ve turned off the button that “releases the door.” And all I can see in my mind is my little boy trapped behind the glass of the washer, his hands pushing against the glass. With no air.
6:51 ½ : I jump out of crow pose and head over to the laundry area to see if the pictures in my imagination are real. I thankfully see the washer empty, everyone still breathing. But there are sparkles all over the floor, and the laundry. Glitter. Everywhere.
Notice, the dainty socks.
I should have stayed in bed.
This, is truly, Motherhood.
For the PBN Blog Blast Microsoft’’s “Portraits of Mom” campaign that runs from April 19-May 11, 2008. “Portraits of Mom” features an opportunity to visit a neighborhood Windows Live Portrait Studio in San Francisco or Brooklyn where you’ll be treated to a free professional family photo that you can edit and share with your friends and family.
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