Cheap Travel Tip of the Week

Since we just got back from the beach, I have a little cheap vacation tip to share with you that I haven't read about on the internet.

Before we left to go to the beach, I hit Blockbuster to pick up a few new DVD's for the kids to watch while we drove 9+ hours to Florida. One of the movies that I really really wanted to get was "Return to Neverland" otherwise known as "The New Peter Pan" round these parts. Disney just put that film back in the vault not to be seen for a few years and I neglected to buy it.

So I rented that movie and a few others. I asked when I was checking out if I could just go ahead and buy "Return to Neverland" and the clerk informed me that I could NOT.

Sadness.

But I went on my way.
Then the next day, when I busted the movies out on the way to Florida...I noticed on my receipt it said,
Return to Neverland: Rental charge-$3.99
Buy it on April 1st for $19.99.
Well okay then. I will do that.

But I also rented Disney's Robin Hood.
Robin Hood: Rental Charge-$3.99
Buy it on April 1st for $3.99

What? $3.99?
And it said the same thing for Cinderella.
Wanna know how much Cinderella costs at Target? $19.99.
Same thing for Robin Hood.

I just went ahead and DID NOT RETURN THE MOVIES.
I am SOOOOO CRAZY.


So future lesson learned. Buy all movies from the rental store that has to be going out of business. FAST. Also, the markup on those things must be unbelievable.

Brilliant

I saw this on Lifehacker.com today and it made so much sense to me.

I mean, we don't have SUPER complicated TV around these parts, but just with TV plus a cable box AND DVR and kids that like to watch DVD's...it can get a little hairy to communicate to babysitter's or just visitors to the house how to operate our little remote control system. Plus I know people (*cough* my sister Shellie *cough*) who have pretty complicated systems that altogether shutdown if you hit just one single wrong button. And we wouldn't want the Amazing Race to not get recorded would we?
Speaking of that:
Dear NBC, could you please STOP airing your "Best of" series on Sunday nights? It is sending my DVR into overdrive and bumping the Amazing Race. You are not going to win this ratings war. You might as well give up. If you really want to make it interesting? Bring back My So Called Life or The Cosby Show. But the Best of Saturday Night Live Game Show Parodies? Give me a break.

We Hack Our Kids

Asher has been escaping from his room wee in the early hours of the morning. For some of you with less sleeping kids, you might be saying to yourselves, "give me a break" but my kids have been sleeping until 8am since they were three months old. So Asher making appearances next to my face 6am has been more than a rude awakening.

So we have been trying the clock method. We told him he is not allowed to leave his room until he sees a "seven" on the clock. And this has worked remarkably well. I mean, he is leaving his room at 7:01. So Matt came up with the brilliant idea to "reset the clock" back one half-an-hour. So then "seven" is actually "7:30".

I think it is quite brilliant!

Addendum to my Target Post

I already have discussed my much beloved Target in a previous post here. But, I just read another post about the Target Pharmacy on Parent Hacks about how you can REMOVE the stopper from an old Target pharmacy bottle and put it in, say the Children's Tylenol or Advil bottle.

Umm brilliant?! I struggle with these bottle because all they come with is a little cup and Lucy is too little to drink successfully from the cup. Oh, Target...I love you even more.

And since Lucy decided that running a 102 degree fever today was a good idea, I will be putting this little tip into action.

Play "Bam" to Clean Up Fast

I saw this post on Parenthacks.com this morning:

"Play BAM! to get the kids to clean up quick (and have fun doing it)
Bill's got the trick for getting kids to clean up their toys:

This hack is aimed mainly at small children, since their toys are designed to take a beating. Also, not for the noise-intolerant. :-)

To get my kids (3 and 5) to put their toys away (typically in some sort of toy box), we play a game I call "Bam!" which involves grabbing everything on the floor and hurling it into the toy box while yelling "BAM!" as loud as you can. They love it, especially if you join in the racket with them. Takes about 30 seconds to completely clean a 12 x 12 room.

You may want to explain to your children that this is for "at home" only, not during playdates, day care, kindergarten, etc, when others may not take this behavior the way it was intended. :-)"

Well we played it tonight and it worked like a charm! Asher was having the time of his life yelling "Bam!" and throwing his toys into our toy basket. I kept saying, "You have to BAM IT!" So then he was saying, "Bam-it!" as he threw his toys into the basket. I just discovered a nice little cover up for if the word, "dammit" sneaks out of his mouth, since that is happening with regularity now.

Anyone have a solution to solve my sweet little son's potty mouth that doesn't involve throwing him off the deck?

Hey I'm FAMOUS!

My suggestion for how to get your bathroom's clean with two kids underfoot is listed on Parenthacks.com today! Congrats to me!!!

Well we made it...so far

We are in Winter Park, Colorado. We left Asheville yesterday at noon and drove to Columbia, SC. Then we left Columbia by plane at 6:30am, flew to Houston and then onto Denver. In Denver, we boarded a bus with the assigned team and drove up to Winter Park. We are in a hotel until Sunday when we get to move into camp. So here is how it went:

Phase I: Asheville to Columbia.
We left right when we wanted to at noon. Asher and us all ate in the car and both of the kids took a nap. Asher watched some Wiggles on the ipod and we got into Columbia, pretty much without incident. It was great. We arrived at the Sloan's where Matt's sister Buffy and her twin girls were waiting on us! It was the first time that we got to meet Zoe and Tori and my oh my are they cute!

We put Asher down for a real nap in the pack and play and all of the girls played. Well Lucy played and Zoe and Tori grunted and ate.
About 5pm the barrage began when Nate, Watts and Maggie all arrived to play. Linda and Mark got home from work, David and Mary Lane came over and it was a zoo! But it was so great to be around family and all of the kids playing together. Then we ordered pizza and celebrated Asher's birthday! Asher's great grandparents even arrived for the celebration. It was great fun!



Then, Matt introduced his family to the camera on my laptop and how it can distort your face so you look ridiculous. Here are a few of the favorites:






I am not lying when I say...EVERYONE took pictures. It was one of the funniest things that I have seen in a long time.

Then everyone left, we put the kids to bed and stayed up too late getting ready for today.

PHASE II: Columbia to Houston
Matt ended up going to bed around 2am. Then Orbitz kindly placed a complimentary phone call to Matt at 3:15am to let us know that our planes were ON TIME. uggh. Then Asher decided he wanted to get up at 3:45 for the day. So Matt got up with him. Lucy and I got up at 4:30am, got dressed and into the car. Matt was not especially fun during this phase of the trip. But he gets a pass on that since he only got one hour of sleep.
We got the airport and the guy checking us in was not happy to be there either. So that was fun. We managed to get the kids through security and to the gate. But we kind of lost track of time and had to be paged because the plane was close to leaving us! We boarded the plane and Asher played and Lucy slept. It rocked.

PHASE III: Houston to Denver
Asher was so tired from being awake since 3:45am that as soon as the plane left the gate, he was sound asleep. Lucy, on the other hand decided that was a good time to play the role of classic screaming baby on the plane. I am not kidding when I say, SCREAMING HER BLOODY HEAD OFF. She wanted a bottle and I messed the bottle up and it was leaking all over the place. I coudn't get it fixed without standing over a sink and no flight attendants were very helpful. Finally after ten minutes of cursing and sweating and unbelieveably dirty looks from other passengers, a flight attendant approached and offered to help. He took the bottle and dumped it out and brought it back full of the perfect temperature water. Lucy took her bottle and was asleep within minutes. Glory. Everyone slept-except me for most of the flight.

PHASE IV: Denver
We arrived in Denver at noon. Our bus was not coming the airport unti 2:30. So we had two and half hours to kill. Which wasn't that bad because both kids needed to burn off energy. So Asher ran around like a maniac until he was literally falling down he was so tired. He hit his head hard twice on the floor of the Denver airport and has two magic eggs on his forehead. We got on the bus, very tired and very worn down by whining and just general crankiness. The addict needed a fix from the Wiggles and we caved to his demands. He fell asleep in about thirty seconds and so did Lucy. They both made it for about an hour and with one hour left, they both decided that they had "had enough of traveling. thank you very much." And so they just fussed and were crankpots for about an hour. Then we made it to the hote;.

PHASE V: We are in the hotel.
We have made it. But both kids are sleeping in pack and plays about three feet from each other. I am pretty sure that Lucy is getting sick and might have an ear infection. So we'll see how this plays out for the next three days.

I am sitting in the hallway typing this because I am downloading 30 Rock off of itunes so that I can watch a little something before I go to bed. Sorry for the giant recap, but I am simply amazed at how well this trip went. A little complaining and whining I can handle. Giant meltdowns and getting kicked off of planes...I can't deal with that and I am so relieved that did not happen to us today.

By the way, best parent hack travel tip so far. Buying black felt for helping to make the room dark. We aren't using it for that purpose, instead I draped it around Lucy's pack and play so that she can't see us and wake up, Asher can't see her and wake her up. Also, it blocks out light from getting in her face as I get ready for bed. I am POSITIVE that I will be traveling with black felt for years to come.

Play Date

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the twins to share just yet. So I thought that I would post some pictures from the play date that we had this morning.

Last year; Natalie Knauer, Ellen Troyer and I, all found out that we were pregnant at the same time. We all talked about how fun it would be to have play dates together. I thought that it was a good idea, but we probably would never make it happen. Well, we have stepped up the ante.

Instead of just a play date, we have a "play share". Two moms have ALL SIX kids, tag teaming the little kids and the big kids and one mom gets the morning off. We typically get all of the kids together by 9:30am and the "off" mom picks her kids up by 1pm. So two of us get to hang out and play, while all of the kids play. It is definitely chaotic and LOUD with a nearly five year old, a nearly three year old, nearly two year old and three six-eight months olds. But with two moms, it is definitely doable and the off mom comes back having gone shopping, cleaning their house or with a fresh pedicure!

So here are some pictures as we had the play share group at our house this morning while Ellen went birthday shopping for Hadley (who is turning five next week).