ABC Mouse

So I finally broke down and looked into ABCMouse.com for my kids. So far it seems like a good deal. It is supposed to be $79 for the year. You can have up to 3 children linked on the site with their own "classrooms". They can choose thier own teacher to talk to them.

 

They have different levels for your children. I have a 5 year old, 4 year old, and a 2 1/2 year old. They are all at different levels, but I started them all off on the Toddler Time. Billy has been rolling through the lessons, so I will move him up to pre-school next week.

 





Beau only wants to play games to set up his hamster cage, and Baby girl is working on puzzles.

Right now, ABCmouse is running an offer for a month's free trial period. I signed up and after I pressed submit they sent me an offer for a discount as a first time user. So my total fee was April as a free month. So my payments are made in May for $59. I think thats a pretty sweet deal! It's a total of $60 for 3 children. Which means for a year of learning activities I pay $20 for each child. That is not a bad deal at all. You can also use the device on up to 4 items. The three children can be using the websites on computers/laptops and the parent can be working on it too. There is an option to have a special class work, the parent can pick and choose what their child should learn. It's awesome so far!

Hotel Transylvania - for kids?

Ok, so back story, My oldest son Billy HATES scary movies. He will cry or scream and ask you to turn it off. Sometimes the movies isn't even that scary like Disney's Brave, he really doesn't like the bear scenes.



So I wasn't quite sure how he would react to seeing Hotel Transylvania, but my other two kiddies wanted to watch it. So we put it in our Xbox player to watch in the living room. I told him he was welcome to sit down and try to watch it. If at any point it became too scary, he could leave and watch tv in his room. He ended up sitting with me and watched the whole movie! He loved it and didn't find anything scary. Like most films these days, there were a few inuendos for the adults to catch, but I was pretty happy with the overall child factor of the movie. It's been voted on in my house that all 3 children want to purchase it. =)

New way to watch your favorite shows!

So my best friend turned me on to Series Cravings a few months ago. They don't have all the shows, but they do have popular ones like True Blood, Dexter, Lost Girl, and even shows like The Walking Dead.

So I was able to catch up on The Walking Dead, because I barely came in at Season 3. I've watched Lost Girl on cable since it came out. I've never sat down for Dexter, but I was able to almost completly catch up on The Big Bang Theory!

They have some other shows that I've never heard of like Revolution. I just started watching the series. It's pretty good. Apparently it started on NBC, so you can check your local listing for it. It started again on March 25th. For the entire information on it, check out the NBC homepage or its Wiki page.

Chasing Mavericks

I decided to hit up the Red Box by our local store and rented Chasing Mavericks today.

 

I have to admit I liked it! I love Gerard Butler and his co-lead Jonny Weston was amazing. He really reminded me of the actor from the Blue Lagoon.

 

Chasing Mavericks is about "When young Jay Moriarity discovers that the mythic Mavericks surf break, one of the biggest waves on Earth, exists just miles from his Santa Cruz home, he enlists the help of local legend Frosty Hesson to train him to survive it." according to IMBd.

 

I would definitely suggest renting or even buying this film! Some of the movie story lines and biography are different, but its still an over all must see. 

Pope Francis I

Religion in my house is Catholic. My husband was Lutheran when we met, but last year he was baptized Catholic.

All of our children were baptized Catholic by the same priest, Father Dikete. We attend church most of the time at my Grandmother's church, but sometimes we go to the church down the street. It's a lot easier to keep my children quiet and in their seats for 30 minutes at 530, than for an hour - hour and a half at 11 in the morning.

So today, as my children played, I could get one at a time to watch but the language barrier didn't seem to keep their attention, I watched CNN.com as they kept the Vatican tv on showing the white smoke...

As we waited, we finally got the name of the new Pope. I was able to find his wiki page and copied his Crest.

I took out most of the color. You can click on the picture and print it out. I have my children coloring it and trying to find out other cute activities to get them included in this historic event. :)

Hope you have fun!

Angry Birds

My oldest son loves Angry Birds. It started off as playing on a friends phone, I will forever internally hate him for showing my 4 year old that game. Then my brother downloaded the game on his phone. Then slowly the game made its way on my phone, the iPad, then slowly Daddy's kindle when he returned.

His obsession with the games branched out with my mom's help to apparel, stuffed animals, games, and decor. So when asked what party theme he wanted, ta-dah... it was Angry Birds. So after searching & researching ideas for Angry Bird parties I kept all the stuff together on my Pinterest Angry Bird board. I used a lot of these ideas to help get my own.

We used my digital camera until it decided to die, my phone was low on battery, and right now my iPad is out of commission so I dont have a lot of pictures from our cute decorations. I found really cheap birds nests at target in the dollar section and put those on each table with eggs & blue feathers. We decorated with his Angry bird toys. I'm trying to find someone with photos of those.

My mom ordered 2 pinatas for $25 each from the corner pinata store, but I can never remember the name of it.

 

 

I finally ordered another moon bounce for him. I haven't ordered one since his first birthday. We kept having to get the kids out to do our activities, it wasnt worth the hassle. So I prepared this time with allotted bounce time and less activities. We taped Angry Bird pictures on either side of the entrance.

 

I had "Bird food": our healthy selection of foods like Veggie tray, fruit, nuts, Angry bird cheese its. I had "Pig food": our very unhealthy 'pig out food' like chips, dips, candy, King pig finally got the eggs and made them deviled! hahaha...

 

I took a picture of the homemade pizzas to my local Cici's pizza and asked them for 4 angry bird pizzas. This was the result! Even better... they were the same price as a regular pepperoni pizza!

 

We bought two cakes & attached them together with a brand new angry bird game for decoration that later became a toy he could play with after it was washed.

 

We played pin the crown on King Pig. That's my brothers wonderful artwork.

 

I had blue tablecloths because thats his favorite color. We supplemented colors with red & green. WE had a few tables that had the official angry bird table cloths. Out cups, plates, napkins, etc were from Party City.

 

Oh we also used an edible marker to draw pig faces on green gumballs.

 

It was a hit, he was happy & loved the whole party!

 

Happy 5th birthday.

Homemade Playdoh Goo....

So I figure more time with kids less time on pinterest and farming is always good. So last night I found some recipes on pinterest for homemade playdoh. I seemed to have everything I needed.
I found a recipe here that asked for 1/2 cup of conditioner, 1 cup flour, 2tsp oil, and food coloring.

She said she substituted the conditioner for koolaid. So I have koolaid.... so I used koolaid. I'm thinking now that maybe I should have added water...

My 2 yr old was excited to help make it before play. So I had her pour in all the measured ingredients.

We finished making it, kneading it, and the color finally set in.
So she got to play with it and is extremely happy I let her use my cookie cutters.

My son finally emerged from his room. Billy had pre-k this morning and of course is avoiding his homework again. So when he came to me, he saw his sister playing and automatically started to take out her jewels, which in turn made her scream.

So I pulled him away from her and guided him to the kitchen. We tried this recipe to see if it worked any better. I have Ivory soap. This seemed greasier than the oil and it wasn't clumping any better than the previous playdoh recipe. He liked the blue coloring we added to it.

I don't know. Try these recipes and let me know if they worked for you.

I was really trying to avoid having to cook the recipe because the kids aren't that patient. So now I'm debating whether I should whip ot up right now in Green before Beau wakes up so it's cooled and ready. Hmm?

It's been about 30 minutes with the children playing. Forming, kneading, grinding, etc. It seems like the second recipe has become more managable. The first one is completly crumbled now and greasier. So, live and learn.


*pictures will be added later after I upload them from the camera. ;)

New Look

So it's super bowl sunday... Oh, I'm sorry... Super Bowl Sunday!!! Yay!!... Not so much. I'm bored. My kids are still sleeping, my husband is at his dads for the game.

Okay, so not so much, my little monster woke up. :) He is my son that needs constant supervision and no discipline works on him. I.e. I started the pancakes, handed him a cup of milk, he didn't want it, but instead of saying it he laid it next to him on the couch to slowly pour out.. Ugh.. a mess and he's been up for 5 minutes...

I figured I could work on my blog. So I opened Paint and started designing... the original was all in yellow... then light yellow... and finally this gray.

I put 3 bees, in the center stripe of each one is the color representing my children. :) I like it.

So now, I have to figure out the rest of the blog. I started my googling HTML code. I used to be able to play with the codes when I was on Myspace. I re-designed my page almost every week. Some of my friends even asked me to do their pages. This HTML Tutorial is great and can take you through the whole process.

Then I went through Blogger and used the template changer... and now Voilia! A pretty blog. Hope you like it better!

Change my blog

It's so boring. Maybe because its the generic stuff you can get on here. But I really want to change it. I haven't done url and html since Myspace was popular in 2003... I could find any code on the internet and change it to change the colors I wanted, change my font, whatever. Change pictures, but no use, no rememberance... Ugh...

Any ideas?

G.. what....gggeee... say it again... ggeee.. yes!

My son pronounced G correctly! Whoop Whoop. I'm super excited. Although Billy is super smart, most people can't understand him because he has bad articulation.

 

Speech therapy has not started yet, Yeah I know, still... ugh. So his teacher, my mom, my hubby, and myself have all been working with all the kids to pronounce words they are getting wrong.

 

And Billy asked for a G! He came and handed me the ninja turtle figurines. Can you put a "B" on mine? Sure

Can you put a "G" on Beaus?

What?

A ggee, can you put a ggee on Beau'?

Say it again.

What

G

gggee.

Yes!

Gee?

So good baby! I'm proud of you.

Yeah, I said ggee and now I can say it. I don't make them sound like dee's any more.

 

Whoop whoop!