I am picking my three favorite responses to win a code for a free box of these designer Fruit Roll-Ups. Each box is a $30 value so this will be a great price to get to give away to our readers.

Please leave a comment and tell me your favorite back-to-school treat to pack in your children’s lunch box. Don’t be shy and please include your recipes! Please submit your response by Friday, July 18th at 8 PM (Eastern Time).

Good luck and I can’t wait to get some inspiration for my son’s lunch box this year!

In honor of Kimberly Clark’s new partnership with Box Tops for Education, the company is launching the “Rock Your School” sweepstakes to offer parents a chance to win 100,000 Bonus Box Tops, plus an exclusive concert featuring Radio Disney Star Jordan Pruitt.

How to Enter

Parents of students in grades K through 8 can enter the sweepstakes daily June 28 through Sept. 15 via tear pads in participating retail stores or online. More than 1,000 winners will enjoy prizes, including 1,000 Bonus Box Tops and autographed copies of one of Pruitt’s CDs. One grand prize winner will win a Jordan Pruitt concert at their child’s school and 100,000 Bonus Box Tops. Winners will be selected at random from all eligible entries on or around Sept. 22.

The music is inspired by a variety of time periods and has lots of kid’s favorites (Dr. Knickerbocker, Old Dan Tucker) and dance music that the parents might be able to appreciate (You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, La Bamba, Day-o) which is a great balance between the two. This is not your typical Wiggles-fare and the Wiggles even get into costumes and have cartoon type sets for each of the songs. There are twenty new songs on this DVD, which will be included in their next tour(with the new-to-me Sam Wiggle).

What do my kids think though? Well, my children aren’t very big Wiggles fans and haven’t watched this show in a long time, but they absolutely love this DVD of dance music. They both dance and sing along to all of the songs and it has given us a chance to show them some of the original songs on You Tube (original=Muppets versions) which has been really great for all of us.

Suggested Retail Price- Listed on Amazon for $8.99

Website for More Details- The Wiggles

Congratulations to Jennifer and thank to everyone who entered!

RuMe Reusable Bags come in a variety of trendy patterns and are an extremely roomy bag. Although the bags are roomy, they roll into a teeny tiny roll that is then wrapped with a velcro closure, taking up hardly any space at all. The bags are squared on the bottom so they are easy to fill, and they weigh practically nothing so they are easy to keep in your purse or glove compartment so you have them with you when you need them.

The patterns are so pretty though that I am planning to use this one when we are at the beach as my beach tote this year. I think it also will make a fabulous library bag!

Suggested Retail Price- $28.50

Website for More Details- Delight

What Is XFLOWSION?: According to the front of the DVD, it is a triple training program with yoga, martial arts, and dance. It uses principles of each to create a more difficult routine than the three workouts offer separately.

Here are the pros and cons of the workout:

Pros: The music is amazing! This is probably the best music I have ever had on a workout DVD. It was not annoying or cheesy, it was really good…almost distractingly good. The workout routine felt very easy, but I was huffing and puffing within ten minutes of beginning it. The workout is varied and held my attention the entire time, without a ton of repetitions. The instructor encouraged you through the entire routine and also stressed the importance of taking everything at your own pace. The workout is also divided into three different types including a body blast, amazing abs, and a calm down dog routine. Pretty much, it has a little something for everyone.

Cons: The people that are doing the workout are all turned in towards the instructor, which made it very confusing which side you were supposed to be working on. There was not a lot of instruction into difficult poses, but just an assumption that the viewer would know exactly how to balance their knees on their arms. There was a lot of unnecessary talking that focused more on a Zen type experience rather than instructional information on how to go into poses, which I found a little distracting at times. Some of the poses needed a few more verbal cues than just the actions that are provided.

Overall, I think this would be a great routine to add to your workout DVD library, particularly if you are a fan of yoga, pilates, or even Tae-Bo. This routine is something that takes a lot of strength and endurance (as I laid on the floor in a ball at one point because I had to take a break), but it would be something that you could grow with and is different from your normal routine.

Suggested Retail Price: $59.85 for four workouts, two guidebooks, and two audio books

Website for More Details: XFLOWSION

In my opinion, you can find cute girl stuff just about anywhere, but I really struggle to find cute clothing for boys.  And cute clothing for boys that appeals to their hobbies and interests? Extremely rare to find!

You want amazingly cool shirts with dinosaurs or creepy crawlies on them? This kid’s line has it. This Eoraptor shirt even has a reptile texture to the dinosaur, making it even cooler in my son’s book! They carry a variety of shirts that would make any boy smile- ants, lizards, sharks, dinos! Oh my! The possibilities for creepy things are endless.

The girl’s stuff is beautiful too, but moms of boys know how difficult it is to find cute boy stuff that doesn’t sacrifice on style or quality. The prices are mid-range, but would would make a great birthday gift for any little one!

Suggested Retail Price- $22 for super cool dino shirts

Website for More Details- Gimos Kidswear

This site is made for moms. PearBudget is an online financial tool that you can use to maintain and track your expenses. Why is it made for moms? Well, the design is extremely clean and the program is very straightforward.

When I first started tracking our own family budget, I used a simple lined notebook and wrote down the categories (mortgage, car insurance, car payment, gas, groceries) and then I would write down what we should spend and what we did spend. Those little notebooks held everything I could ever want in a budget and I refused to upgrade to a digital format. I did finally relent to Quicken, but I just haven’t found anything that has the simplicity that I desire in a budget program.

This site is designed just like my notebook. You pick your categories and expected expenses. Then you put your receipts into the form and it will tell you how you are doing on your budget. That is it. Simple and easy.

An online subscription to this subscription based service is only $3 per month, but you can try it for free for thirty days and see if it would work for your family.

Now what would you say to a LIFETIME membership to PearBudget? Well, I am offering one lucky reader a lifetime subscription to this service with no strings attached.

If you are interested in enjoying PearBudget for as long as you live, please tell me how you currently keep track of your budget. Feel free to share your budget pitfalls or glory days (like a sweet little notebook with chicken scratches).

To enter this contest, please leave me a comment by July 2nd (Wednesday) at 8PM eastern time. I will choose our winner at random.

A big thank you to Simple Mom for sharing our name with PearBudget so we could share this with our readers!

Good luck, everyone!

A while back we reviewed the very popular Flip Video Ultra camcorder. We loved the price and the fact everything about it was well designed and simple. At the same time, that simplicity did come at a cost. The zoom made the video quality get pretty bad and you could only record an hour worth of video before you had to dump it to your computer. In addition, with high-definition TVs and movies being all the rage, it wasn’t capable of taking video anywhere near that kind of detail.

For those looking for something on the higher end of the consumer market, Sony has a line of high-definition camcorders with a slew of features that are sure to satisfy. The unit we’re reviewing is their HDR-SR10 model seen here:

Unlike the Flip, the SR10 looks and works more like a traditional camcorder, but it’s nothing like those bulky old-school beasts your parents used. For something so small, it’s packed with an astonishing number of features. In fact, the marketing material has nearly 20 logos for all the different technologies they’ve stuffed into the SR10. Most wouldn’t mean much to most moms, but there are several that we found of interest:

Amazing picture – The video records at 1920×1080 resolution, which is the same as the highest quality HDTVs out there. It also has 15x zoom which is wonderful when you can’t be right up by the action. We were able to zoom in on our cat’s nose from the next room.

Videos that won’t make you sea-sick – It compensates for your shaky hands, though it can’t work miracles. Skip the Red Bull before taping your kid’s birthday or you’ll be cursing your seizure-like movements for years to come.

Surround sound – Yeah, this thing record in full surround sound. Hollywood ain’t got nothing on you now!

It’s a digital camera too – A flip of the switch and you’ll instantly be taking high definition photos of the action. No need to carry two cameras on your vacations!

On the downside, we struggled when trying to convert the videos into a recognizable format on the computer. You can burn them from the camera straight to a DVD with a button push which is awesome, but when we tried to convert them so we could upload to Vimeo, we had all sorts of problems. We haven’t figured out if this a problem with the software that comes with it, which wasn’t the easiest to use, or if we just need to break down and read through the manual.

Then there is the price. Retail on the camera is $999 which is quite the investment. A quick search online revealed prices closer to $700, so do your homework first.

Another interesting possibility with this camera comes in the form of the oddly-named “Sportspack”, which contains a water-proof case for the SR10. Being from Indiana, I don’t know of a whole lot of sports kids play that would require me to be underwater to film. They also promote it as a way of keeping the camera safe in inclement weather, which would be a more likely scenario. But again, who plays sports in a hurricane?

If you would like to record such exotic events, the bulky case will set you back about $200.

Overall, we loved this Sony camera and look forward to taking some great shots of our children. A big thank you to the Sony company for letting us test their new camcorder!

Suggested Retail Price- $999.99

Website for More Details- Sony

All of the games that we have gotten have been great, but the Mario Kart Wii game has been in hot rotation ever since the Nintendo company contacted us and asked if they could send us some products to try. It is so bad right now that we are fighting over who can get a turn to play it and my son is talking about this game to anyone who will listen… and I do mean anyone!

This game comes with a steering wheel that has a spot in it for you to snap in your Wii controller. Once you have snapped the controller into place, you can begin using it just as you would a steering wheel and you can use different characters, cars, and racetracks for racing.

I am not big on driving games (probably because I hate driving), but I am LOVING this game and it has different levels of difficulty for every level or age in the family. You can play as a single player, against other players, and you can even play on the internet against people from all over the world. From a learning standpoint, this game even shows you where on the globe your opponent lives, adding another great teaching moment for kids.

I can’t rave about this game enough! The game has enough secret codes and levels that I am sure we will be enjoying this game for a long time and it is a game that we each enjoy equally.

Nintendo loves to hear about your family experiences with their Wii system so they have now made a little site where you can share your own family story. Just visit the My Wii Story website and share how this product has helped your family!

Website for More Details-Mario Kart Wii