Facebook

Let’s talk about Social media.  When Facebook was first introduced, I stayed away from it.  I was content to pick up the phone and connect with my friends that way.  I truthfully only joined because I was trying to find people for my HS reunion.  You don’t need to know which one 🙂

Shortly after finding my old “friends”, I began to explore the possibilities of Facecrack as I started to call it.  I became addicted to the games, I found old friends that I thought were lost forever.  I was in my glory.

I love that I can share things with all my friends at the same time.  It does take away a bit of the personal feel to things but no one can get upset that they weren’t first to know.

I love being able to see Kids grow, especially those that are far away. 

I loved Facebook so much that I nagged my husband into opening an account.  BAD move!

Spouses should NOT be Facebook friends.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not having some illicit affair that he found out about. Please, who has time for that?

He just tries to micromanage my posts.  I am currently on day 8 (yes you read that right) of a migraine.  On day 2, I had posted that I had a bad headache but had to push through it because I had a Den meeting planned.  He told me he didn’t like that I tell people when I don’t feel well. 

My theory is people will just skip to the next post if they don’t want to read about my headaches.  Who is he to tell me what I can and can’t post? 

My solution?  I set up a new account and I blocked him!  Not the best solution I am sure but for now it brings me peace just like the spell check that has been helping me with even the simplest words in this post since the pain is so darn sever behind my eyes.

Thanks for letting me vent.  If you ever don’t like a post I promise I won’t be insulted if you just move on.

The Nopoo Experiment

By no means am I a totally crunchy Mama but sometimes an idea comes my way and if it isn’t too crazy or expensive, I will try it out.  It seems that the newest trend in haircare is nopoo.  What is nopoo?  It is a simple, CHEAP way to clean your scalp and thus clean your hair. 

You can make your own Nopoo for pennies.  I recently finished up a bottle of both shampoo and conditioner so I figured after all my Frankenstorm prep that I would do something “fun”.  I rinsed my bottles out really well and then made my own shampoo and conditioner.

Next up was the test.  Since both the “shampoo” and “conditioner” are mostly water, they are NOT going to be thick and the “shampoo” will NOT lather.  The point is to just get in into your scalp and when rinsing it will get to the ends.

I have to say that I was tempted to put “real” shampoo in my hair after using the Nopoo as my hair felt strawlike.  I resisted the temptation so I could truly test my new “products”.  I rinsed with my Apple cider vinegar “conditioner” and still wasn’t feeling it. 

I will say that my hair was VERY easy to brush and it feels really smooth.  There may just be something to this!

I will keep you posted.

Summer Adventures

It is hard to believe that Summer is winding down already.  Soon the kids will be back to school and I will actually be a little lonely.  We have had many adventures this summer.  We have also crossed off some more items on our bucket list!  Here is an update:

• Find a Conch shell – nope
• Geocache in Canada – check
• Geocache in NC – check
• Geocache in Lake George – check (and nearby Bolton Landing)
• Go out for lunch – can you believe I am not sure?
• Make ice cream sundaes – check but I think we need to do it again!
• Go to an ice cream place – check, 2 places in Lake George!
• Have a garage sale – nah, too hot and we haven’t been around, maybe in the fall
• Blow bubbles – I think so, we have some in the shed though so I will make sure we do.
• Swim in the pool – check, not as much as we would like to as it keeps going green!
• Go to a park – we went to Blue Mountain for a geocaching picnic along with a few smaller ones.
• Go metal detecting in NC – check
• Go metal detecting in Canada – didn’t have a metal detector yet
• Go metal detecting in Lake George – forgot to pack the metal detector, DOH!
• Go on a boat – check, motor boat in NC and row boats in Lake George
• 
• Go tubing – check, the kids went twice!  Once in NC and once in Lake George.  I went with my Sisters in NC.  Sooo much fun!
• 
• Go Parasailing (4 out of 5 of us) – 3 of us went in Lake George.  Hubby decided to stay behind with the middle child as he didn’t want to go.

We also went to Fort William Henry and the kids joined the army to fight off the French in the French and Indian war.  They got paid with a wooden nickel.

J and hubby went ziplining at the Adirondack Extreme Adventure Course.
We went back to the same place in Lake George this year. We have gone for the past three years and love it there. My friend Helene actually saw my pictures and asked where we stayed. She booked her trip to the same place for real soon. we love going there because the Minnehaha gets real close and we have made some great friends from Chicago that we see every year. This year, our friend Eric couldn’t make it and we were bummed but that was short lived as a family with 3 boys stayed in their unit and all the kids got along really great. We are happy that they will be back with us again next year. Here is my favorite picture of Lake George that I took from Top of the World.

We have gone on hikes and had so many adventures.  I am having so much fun, I don’t want summer to end.

The “Old” Days

The phone rang this morning at 9am while I was still in bed.  It’s summer and we go to bed and get up whenever we want unless there is something we HAVE to do.  Anyway…

The phone stated that the call was from unavailable.  Thank you unavailable for waking me from my peaceful slumber (not that the kids hadn’t already come in 5 times).  I started thinking about how lucky we are that the phone actually does annoyingly talk to us and thought back to the “old” days.

Growing up, we didn’t have caller id.  We had to run to grab the phone in the kitchen and pray that the caller would still be there when we got there.  The kicker was that the caller could be a sales person and we would be stuck trying to figure out a way off the phone.  We also didn’t have call waiting and if you were waiting for a call and Mom was on the phone well, you just had to wait.  If you were the one making the call, you had to pray you didn’t mess up the dialing or you had to start ALL OVER AGAIN!  There was no push button phones.  We had rotary phones.  One slip of the finger and you started over.  Get a busy signal?  Start over.  My how times have changed.

My next realization was when my almost 6 year old asked if he could play the wii.   I immediately thought of how lucky he was to be able to play games that are multi-color and 3 dimensional.  How he didn’t have to plug anything in as it is already plugged in.   All he had to do was switch the source.

Remember when you could watch cartoons only on Saturday?  My kids certainly don’t have THAT problem.  Spongebob seems to be on 24 hours a day here.

We are fortunate in the fact that my kids do like to play outside though.  They run up and down the block just like I used to as a kid.  They want to have lemonade stands and camp out in the back yard.  They like to hike while looking for geocaches.  There is hope for their generation yet.

Summer Bucket List Update

So back at the end of May we came up with our Summer Bucket List.  I figured since it is now July 2nd that some of you may be wondering how we are doing with it.  So below you will find the original list with notes next to the ones we have accomplished.

• Find a Conch shell

• Geocache in Canada – Not only did we geocache in Canada but we grabbed a travel bug from there
• Geocache in NC
• Geocache in Lake George
• Go out for lunch – We did this on the way to Canada
• Make ice cream sundaes
• Go to an ice cream place – Had ice cream by the Bay of Fundy
• Have a garage sale
• Blow bubbles
• Swim in the pool
• Go to a park – We hit a Provincial park, a national park and a playground while in Canada
• Go metal detecting in NC
• Go metal detecting in Canada – Sadly we still don’t have a replacement metal detector so we couldn’t do this
• Go metal detecting in Lake George
• Go on a boat
• Go tubing

• Go parasailing (4 out of 5 of us)

It’s a slow go but we still have a LOT of summer left. 

Thank you A Magical Childhood for reminding us Mother’s that may not think we are perfect but that our kids think we are pretty great!

A Magical Childhood

(One of the nice things about having written A Magical Childhood for so many years is that I have lots of archives to dig up and share again every once in a while!  Here’s a favorite of mine from May 2010 that I thought deserved to be said again.)

I’ve been hearing lately from mothers who say how stressed they are and what terrible mothers they think they are.

What?  Oh pah.

If you’re thinking along the same lines, I’m  here to tell you to stop it.

You rock.  You’re a fabulous mother.

How do I know this?  Well, first off because you’re beating yourself up and only people who care feel guilt, which means you’re a caring mother.  So that right there tells me a lot about you.

Second of all, you’re the sort of mother who reads books about making lives magical for her children.  That sort of…

View original post 280 more words

Shine Your Sink

A few (ok maybe more like 10) years ago, I was a member of an online group that was going to help me eliminate the clutter in my home. They would e-mail a task to accomplish every day.  Ask my friends how that turned out, lol.

While the program wasn’t a huge success for me, I did learn 2 things.  The first thing I learned was that you can accomplish much more in 15 minutes then you thought you could.  The second thing was that you should shine your sink.

Shine your sink?  What is this kook talking about?  When you have a pile of dishes staring at you from your sink, you groan.  Admit it, you groan.  One of my Darling Daughter’s (DD) chores is the dishwasher.  This means that she is supposed to load and unload it.  Sounds simple enough, right?  You would think but I have to pull a mouth full of teeth EVERY day in order for it to get done.

We experienced a miracle the other day though.  I only had to prod DD 10 or 20 times rather than the usual 30-50 to do her job and EVERY dish actually made it out of the sink!!!  I stuck my sponge in there with some soap and I shined that sink!

That sucker sparkled.  As silly as that advice I received so many years ago sounded, I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment in the fact that for at least a moment, my sink was nice and shiny.

Please share the tiny things that make you feel accomplished.

Tooth Adventures

Last night the little guy was walking around with a toothpick and a napkin.  The toothpick was to pick at his loose tooth and the napkin to catch the blood.  He was determined he was getting that darn thing out.

This morning, he was getting ready for school and midway through his preparations he realized something.  He realized that his tooth wasn’t in his mouth!  Where could it be?  After a real good search of his bed, it was located.  Disaster was averted. 

Hubby told him to get a snack bag and put the tooth in it so the tooth fairy would be able to find it tonight.  This is no different that the usual lost tooth routine.  The next part however, is.

Little man ventured in to the bathroom to brush his teeth.  Hubby went in to hurry him along only to find that he was brushing the detached tooth so it would be clean for the tooth fairy.  This kid is too much.

What kind of crazy things have your kids done?  Do you have any interesting tooth stories?  I would love to hear them.

Our Summer Bucket List

The latest facebook trend is posting your summer bucket list.  I don’t like to be a lemming but this seemed like a great idea.  It got our family talking about fun things we could do together this summer.  This is what we came up with:

• Find a Conch shell
• Geocache in Canada
• Geocache in NC
• Geocache in Lake George
• Go out for lunch
• Make ice cream sundaes
• Go to an ice cream place
• Have a garage sale
• Blow bubbles
• Swim in the pool
• Go to a park
• Go metal detecting in NC
• Go metal detecting in Canada
• Go metal detecting in Lake George
• Go on a boat
• Go tubing

• Go parasailing (4 out of 5 of us)

Hubby added Go Kayaking for himself.  I think it is a pretty obtainable list.  What do you think?  What is on YOUR summer bucket list?  Do you have a life bucket list?

Houston, we have a problem

Remember the toads I wrote about a while back? We wound up buying another after the tadpoles died so that each kid would have one. Well, after being in the city all day on Monday we noticed Tuesday that Climber was gone.

Houston, we have a problem! We have no idea where he is and hope that the kitty hasn’t eaten him!