Seriously.

Yes, I believe this is IN error.

Just so you know, I found this devastating news out only when I tried to access the site for a work-related search.  Love it.

Badges of Fun: Learn Something New & A GIVEAWAY!

The girls earned their third badge in Disney Family Fun's Badges of Fun challenge!  The theme for the third badge was Learn Something New.  To earn their badge, the girls started a scavenger hunt.  I created exploration guides for them to fill out to earn their badge. 

On each page of the guide, I read them a riddle and they (Jaden) had to try and guess the correct answer.  After that, they had to draw a picture of that object and then find it. 

Once we found it, I took their picture to put in their guide!

This has been a fun, ongoing project for both girls and myself!  We aren't completely finished with our guides yet, but I feel that they have completed enough to earn a badge :o)

 

 

Great job girls!

For the next badge, we all get to participate in some Family Night Fun!  To earn the badges, the girls must complete an activity in one of the following categories:

1. Play Table Sports
2. Make Some Custom Crafts
3. Hone Your Skills

As always, I like to choose an activity that is fit for the girls' age level (4 and 2) and the second category has the perfect activity for us!  As you can see, we love to display photos and artwork on our refrigerator. 

I think the girls would really enjoy making frames to hold their own coloring pictures and the photos of our friends!  I have two creative kiddos so I'm sure the frames will be awesome!  Like always, we'll put our own creative twist on our project.

I can not say enough good things about Disney Family Fun magazine!  We all love it at our house!  Jaden loves to grab the magazine when it comes in the mail and look through it to find her favorite characters.  You can only imagine her surprise when she came across these cuties on page 11:

She couldn't believe she was in the same magazine as Tinkerbell and Duck Tales! 

 

I want to thank Faye and everyone else at the magazine for featuring my girls and their hard work!  Disney has agreed to give one of my readers a ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION to Disney Family Fun!  How awesome is that?!  If you already have a subscription, they will extend your current subscription for one year at no cost to you!

This is not a random giveaway.  Please leave a comment below telling my why you want this subscription.  Have you ever purchased a copy of the magazine before?  What is it about Disney Family Fun that you absolutely can not get enough of?  Who would you share your subscription with? 

Be sure to leave your email address in the comment!!  I will pick the commenter that I feel is most deserving of this awesome prize.  You must comment BEFORE November 13 to be considered.  I will pick and announce the winner on Monday, November 14.

Facebook friends: You do not have to have a Blogger ID to comment!  If you would like the subscription, leave a comment as anonymous, but be sure to leave your name and email address in the comment!

Also, I have listed the Exploration Guides I created in my Etsy shop.  They come as a printable PDF for you to make yourself!  Check out my shop if you are interested.

Good luck! 

"Oh, crap."

I'm tired.  This week has kicked my butt. 

On Monday evening, Taylor wasn't feeling so hot.  We had just finished dinner and the girls wanted to go outside and play.  I went out with them to do a little yard work between swing pushes.  Taylor started moaning and rubbing her tummy.  I asked her if she was going to throw up... no.  I asked her if she had to go poop... no.  Touched her head... cool.  She's fine, just ate too much, right?  She climbs to the top of the slide.  I have my back to her as I am cursing the squirrels and/or bunnies for yet another half eaten tomato, when suddenly Jaden screams.  I turn around and am flashing back to the days of chillin' on the couch at Mom and Dad's watching Double Dare.  Taylor diarrhea'd down the slide!  I scoop her up and tell her to STAND STILL and don't touch the poop!  I run inside, lay a diaper pad down, and start running a bath.  I go outside and Mike is swatting flies away (why do flies like to eat poop??)  Taylor is upset and feeling a little crappy (hehe!)  I get her all cleaned up and back outside we go!  Now, what on earth do I do with poopy pants?  Teach those darned squirrels a lesson, that's what!  This is where it gets a little disgusting.  I sprayed her pants out right by my tomato plants because guess what Taylor had for dinner the night before... CORN.  Enjoy, my furry friends!  Bwahhaahhhahha (evil laugh)!

Well, apparently T had a little virus.  She was acting fine the next morning but didn't eat much of her breakfast.  Around noon, the babysitter called me.  Taylor was having "loose stools" again and wasn't feeling well.  I went to get the poor baby.  After her nap, she seemed to feel a little better. 

Jaden: "My tummy hurts."

Wednesday morning, I head to Walgreen's to pick up some children's Pepto.  Obviously Jaden wouldn't take it and Taylor cried because she wanted more.  No fevers + no throwing up = to the sitters.  Guess what?  They were fine!  No yucky reports for the day when Mike picked them up!

I went to Michigan for a little shopping trip with my mom that day.  I was literally two minutes away from home and Mike calls me, "You should probably go a different way because there is water coming up out of the street and kids (not ours) are playing in it."  I detoured around the block because the police had already taped off the water and were actually standing guard.  The girls had already eaten supper and were ready for bed.  We got them down and I went to make dinner for Mike and myself.  Spaghetti.  Small problem... the water had been turned off.  We called 311 and we were told, "There is a water main break on your street and because the children in the neighborhood were playing in the water, it needed to be turned off.  We wouldn't want a child to slip and be run over by a vehicle or drown."  So basically because parents have no control over their kids (or just don't care) we don't have water... nice.  They estimated that the water would be turned back on around 1:30 a.m.  We opt for Pizza Hut take-out.

After dinner and a little Big Brother, the storms start up.  It is pouring down rain and really windy.  All of a sudden, darkness.  The power went out.  J cries because the storms woke her up and she is scared.  It was really bad out.  We were tempted to go down to the basement, but I didn't want to wake Taylor up if it wasn't necessary.  So, Mike sat with Jaden and we both watched outside and listened for a tornado siren.  Eventually, the storm passed.  We called the electric company and they guessed that power would be restored around 2:30 a.m. 

No water.  No power.  Nice.

Everything was back to normal the next morning!  The shower spit some yellow water at first, but then it was ok!  After work, we came home and had spaghetti.  Mike's mom was on her way over so we could go to a meeting at J's preschool.  I went to do dishes and again, no water.  Luckily, it was turned on by the time we got home so the girls could get a bath. 

It's been a tiring week.

BUT, I did get some good news!  Disney Family Fun saw my post on the Hit The Road badge and loved our road map idea!  They want to feature it in their next issue along with a picture of my girls!  You all will have to go out and buy the October issue when it comes out so you can see these cuties:

Way to go, girls! 

TGIF...

Wunning

I am not a runner.  I have never been a runner.  To me, the only reason to run was if someone was chasing me.  BUT, I have always wanted to learn how to run.  I see people doing it and they make it look so easy!  I have friends talk about "going out for a run... and it just felt so good!"  In my head, I always reply with, "bull crap."  Naturally, the only thing to do was to add it to my Life List! 

14. Train and run in a race.

Like some of my fellow bloggers, I have started the Couch to 5K running program.  It is quite the challenge for me!  I am training with my BFF and we prefer to call what we do, WUNNING.  We walk and then we run and well, RALK sounds dumb.  So, we wun.  We wun every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening after the kiddos are in bed.  The only problem is, it's always after dinner and if you have ever wun after dinner, you know what I mean when I say that my food starts to eat me from the inside out!  It sucks.  One night was super busy so I didn't get a chance to eat dinner before my wun meet-up and you know what?  I felt great! I breezed through the wun and felt like I could go more!  Then I stopped at Subway on the way home and get a foot long veggie sub, ate the ENTIRE thing, and hated life.  Last night, I had chicken noodles and mashed potatoes two hours before our wun and my legs turned into knives that stabbed me with each stride.  Last night killed me.  Last night sucked.  But we did it!  Having each other for support makes it so much easier.  Had I been wunning on my own, I would have wun straight to Starbucks, had a venti iced non-fat raspberry latte, and wobbled home.  Actually, I mentioned that idea to Jennie and she just smiled... I think she was considering it a bit :o)

What?  After all that rambling and you're just NOW telling me that you're not familiar with C25K?  Well, allow me to educate you!  Basically it is an outlined running program that takes a couch potato and turns them into a 5K runner in two months.  Training is to be done three time a week.  We are now on week three.

• Week 1, Day 1: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 1, Day 2: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 1, Day 3: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 2, Day 1: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 2, Day 2: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 2, Day 3: Brisk five-minute warm up walk. Then alternate 90 seconds of jogging and two minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes.
• Week 3, Day 1: Brisk five-minute warm up walk, then do two repetitions of the following: Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes), Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)
• Week 3, Day 2: Brisk five-minute warm up walk, then do two repetitions of the following: Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes), Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)
• Week 3, Day 3: Brisk five-minute warm up walk, then do two repetitions of the following: Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds), Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes), Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)

Those three-minute stretches make me want to wun in front of a twuck.  I don't know how I'll make it to (or survive) next week when we have to do this:

• Brisk five-minute warm up walk, then: Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes), Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds), Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes), Walk 1/4 mile (or 2-1/2 minutes), Jog 1/4 mile (or 3 minutes), Walk 1/8 mile (or 90 seconds), Jog 1/2 mile (or 5 minutes)

We officially begin measuring our distance in miles.  Oh boy...  Luckily for us, our race isn't until September so we can stretch it out a little bit.  BUT, our race is not a 5K.  It is 4 miles.  I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...

Post-it: 600.0

Water Golf

Can businesses get flood insurance?  What if your business is a golf course and it looks like this:

source

source

These photos are a little old but I didn't take any and these are the best that I could find on the net.

Mike and I drive past Lakeside Golf Course every morning.  Last week, the water was to the flags!  I can't even imagine the stress that the owners are under.  Last weekend, we had GREAT weather! They could have had so many people out on the course... but it is under water.  It's crazy!  The water level is actually finally starting to go down.  You can see the greens in some spots, but still.  I'm sure the mess that the flooding leaves is just as bad.  I think we should come together and figure out how to play water golf.  Instead of holes, maybe they could have buckets?  Instead of golf carts, they could have paddle boats?  They could have floating rafts to hit the ball off of... I think I have a great idea!  I'm sure there are a few courses in my city that could take advantage of this :o)

Thankfully the rain has FINALLY stopped!  We had great weather this past weekend with temps in the 90s!  I'm going down to Indy this weekend to the Vintage Indiana wine festival.  The park where this is held is also on a river.  As far as I know, it is not flooded.  I'm just hoping for great weather!

What has it been like where you live? 

Did it finally stop snowing, Lora? :o)

Glee's Anatomy?

Well, I had another post scheduled for this morning but after last night's Grey's, how in the world could I NOT talk about it? 

It probably won't surprise you to know that I "like" GA on Facebook.  They have been posting a lot about the music event episode lately, so I knew before watching that it was going to act out the songs that have been made famous by the show.  I was super pumped and had heard that Sara Ramirez (plays Callie Torres) blew those songs out of the water!  I did however, forget the plot... I know, HOW?  Remember, I do not read up on Grey's, I do not watch commercials for Grey's, I don't like to know anything about the characters or plot prior to watching (besides GA on FB).  I assumed that the music event they had been talking about would be clips from past episodes with Sara singing in the background.  Boy, oh boy was I wrong!

If you remember last week, Arizona asked Callie to marry her and then the hit a truck.  Huge monster cliffhanger!  This week started with Callie through the windshield of Arizona's car.  She saw herself standing there.  From the first second of the show, I was at the edge of my seat!  And then she started singing.  It was amazing and beautiful and perfect and I cried a little.  I LOVED it.  I thought to myself, "This is going to be perfect!  Callie will be singing while she watched her friends work to save her life! GENIUS, Shonda Rhimes, genius."  Que Owen Hunt.  What the heck?  He broke the suspense that the beginning of the show had.  He took away from the trauma; I mean come on, this isn't just any patient... this is CALLIE! 

Throughout the show, the whole cast sang.  I thought their voices were great and I felt like a proud mama duck watching them sing all of those songs.  The only song that I thought could have been left out was the faster one (I don't even know if I had ever heard it before).  It didn't fit at all.  The plot shifted, the characters were out of their element, it was just awkward.

The story was great.  Actually, it was probably the best of the season (duh!).  Emotions were raw and out there.  Meredith admitting to Derek that she was jealous of Callie for getting pregnant on accident when all she wanted was to have a baby gave me goosebumps.  The scene where they are rushing Callie to surgery while she was sitting on herself, singing "Grace" rates in the top 10 best GA scenes ever.  Also up there was the scene of all the doctors scrubbing in together before the operation while "How To Save A Life" was being sung.  I too was singing... and crying!  Or what about when the helicopter landed and Addison jumped out??  Epic.

As far as the entire episode as a whole goes... Do you remember way back when ER decided to do their live episode?  Do you remember feeling all excited about it, thinking you were going to see real doctors work live on TV?  No?  Well I was a little younger then and the line between real and fiction was a little blurry... Anyway, most importantly, do remember being felt let down by that episode?  I remember wishing I hadn't watched it because I was hoping for and imagining so much more than it actually was.  This is where I can stand and applaud Rhimes for a great (not awesome) job!  You exceeded my expectations on so many levels!  My only beef is that the music event was during Callie's trauma.  I felt that it took away from the personal, intimate connection fans have with the cast.  I was crying for Callie, Arizona, and Mark.  I would have liked to hear those songs played in the background and make the show more intense.  But, what's done is done.  I loved the episode, I love Grey's.  I will watch and love this show forever!

Here is an audio clip from the music event:

Edward Fans Need Not Apply

Ah Thursday... sweet Thursday :o) 

Once again, I found a site that I love!  A Year of Slow Cooking is this amazingly awesome site where you can get ANY recipe you could imagine... for the CROCK POT!  I love it.  Stephanie is a super crazy lady that decided she would cook a meal in her crock pot every single day for an entire year!  She did it, too!  I can't imagine... I love my crock pot but I don't know if I could go a whole summer without burgers on the grill!  Not only did she slow cook everyday, but she took photos and blogged her recipes too!  I know. 

So I'm printing and printing and printing all of the recipes I think my family could enjoy... at least pretend to for the hour or so we are sitting at the table... when I came across a recipe called 20-40 Clove Garlic Chicken.  At first, I was SURE that was a type-o.  Surely she meat 2-4 cloves, right?  Nope!  In fact she wrote, "Thank you so much, Veronica-----this is a fantastic recipe.  She usually uses about 20 cloves of garlic, and I tried to go up to 40 cloves, but ended up only having 33 in the house to use."  That is a CRAP LOAD of garlic!  That sounds so overpowering... I have to try it!  Obviously I already have our menu planned out for this week but I'm definitely going to modify next week's menu to fit this craziness in!  On each of her posts, she has "The Verdict."  What did she say about this dish?  "This is wonderful! The onion and garlic had a mild, nutty garlic flavor that was a bit sweet. Some of the larger cloves of garlic that were still intact were kind of strong---they itched my nose. The kids ate the chicken (no onions or garlic for them) dipped in BBQ sauce. Adam and I each ate 3 drumsticks that night, and I used the leftovers to make some amazing fried rice last night."  I'm still shocked at that number...  I guess I'll just have to try it and see! 

I think you all should have this dish next week too!  I'm renaming it to Insanity Chicken though.  Fix it, blog about it, and let me know what you think!  Crazy, I tell ya!

The Epic Return...

...of JACKIE DeSHANNON LIVE!

And now for our curtain call.

Yes, a bottle of wine was the precursor to our rendition of Hallelujah.  Doesn't matter.  Whenever Jax and I get together, we immediately fall back into our Jackie DeShannon days :o)

We went shopping earlier and found a super deal on ball scarves at Old Navy! 

Oh, and I found the perfect sparkle top for MODG to wear while giving birth!

Like it, MODG? 

Ok, now go ahead and watch our video again... you know you want to!

The previews before the movie...

I have to tell you, I have an amazing post for you... just not right now... or maybe even today. But hold on to those horsies because IT.IS.EPIC. and you for sure won't want to miss it (especially you, Lala)!!  Until then, I leave you with my new found snack and no, I'm not pregnant.

Yes, that is a half of a Hershey's square sandwiched between two Cheese Its.  What?  I like my sweets and salties mixed!

Stay tuned.... it's EPIC ;o)