The movie heads straight into the wedding, with Alice sporting a rather unflattering haircut, but still doing her thing as your ultimate wedding planner. The Cullens start off with a nice humorous tone when Rosalie walks by carrying a huge piece of tree trunk asking, “What aisle?” Kristen Stewart looked really good, though she did look a bit too skinny once you saw her in the dress. Sure, women look great when they’re skinny, but they look great when they have asses as well. I wasn’t that impressed with the music at this point. I felt like someone other than Carter Burwell (who I have never been a fan of since Twilight) could have composed a much more elegant and fitting score for such a monumental occasion.

I admit, I teared up, just because it was a wedding and it was pretty. Plus, Billy Burke can really pull my strings as an actor. He’s always stood out to me as the best of the bunch, funnily enough. Jacob shows up to ruin Bella’s happy time, unintentionally, again. Edward whisks her off to their secret Isle Esme, making all us married women feel like our own honeymoon experiences could never compete with a private island off Rio de Janiero. When Bella asks for her human minutes to get ready for her first sexual experience, we’re treated to what’s possibly the worst getting-ready-for-sex music ever in some kind of pop rock song. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this continues to happen throughout the whole movie.

It’s not that the songs are bad, they just didn’t fit whatever was happening on screen. Whoever did the sound editing for this film needs to be fired for effectively making Breaking Dawn a lot shittier than it needed to be. There were quite a few end-of-tv-episode mood kind of songs played during scenes in the middle of the film that made you think, because of the trend of these types of songs, that something was ending when really it was just ordinary things happening, like Edward and Bella playing chess. And who the hell picked that god awful black and white striped shirt for Edward? He looked like he’d just stepped out of a 1980s JC Penney catalog.

After a decidedly tasteful sex scene, Bella wakes up amazingly fresh and giddy over her first time, which I find hard to believe since from what I can remember, having sex for the first time is more pain than awesomeness and she was having sex with a vampire afraid of killing her while making love. But okay, we’ll let Stephenie Meyer bask in this fantasy anyway. Edward shows her the bruises he gave her during the night and suddenly anyone with a vagina is forced to decide if they really want to remain on Team Sex Party Pooper. This was one part of the entire series that I felt like Bella had every right to be moping about because who the hell wants to be told they’re not going to have sex anymore once they’ve had it? Nice going, Edward.

After the baby begins to punt Bella, Edward packs and they return home in secret. When Jacob discovers her at the Cullens, we get the first look of her emaciated face, which was done through CGI and really done quite well. She looks frighteningly awful, especially during a bathing scene with Rosalie when we see her bones poking through her skin. Once Jacob finds out, he’s so mad that he can’t help but phase and suddenly the whole pack knows.

The wolf pack talking was freakishly awful, with what sounded like 200 people trying to talk at once. That got annoying really fast. Is it so hard to just have them mind-talking without all the background noise? Jacob returns to the Cullens on his own and when Edward and Jacob have a word outside, I’m treated with something really good, which is the complete absence of the “melting man”.

I can’t remember the precise phrasing Meyer uses in this part of the book to describe Edward’s agony, but it just doesn’t compare to the agony I felt reading such awful, cheesy, and outright stupid words on a page. Someone who has read Breaking Dawn more recently than me can remind me exactly how she phrased it, but for now all I remember is it had to do with melting and Edward and it wasn’t good. I was on Team Bella at this point.

The scene where Bella gives her lame baby name ideas was awesomely hilarious, but the party is soon crashed by the baby. When Bella’s labor begins, her spine snaps and I was appropriately horrified, just like when I read the book, though they decided to leave out the volcano of blood that came gushing out of her throat, which I’m sure Kristen Stewart was thankful for. I wasn’t all that thrilled with the sudden change to a Saw-style horror version of her birth, but the details they needed were all there and I guess that’ll have to do. I admit to being caught up in the moment when Edward is trying frantically to save Bella.

When I was reading the books, I was extremely anti-Jacob, since I couldn’t figure out why he had to be such an asshole to Bella and yet so stubbornly drawn to her, but of course this all made sense once he looked at Renesmee. The scene was handled quite well, with Jacob flashing through his future with a very pretty, older version of the girl and a recap of his first description of imprinting and then Jacob simply falling to his knees with a thud while still gazing over Rosalie’s shoulder into her eyes. It was touching to see him humbled this way. If only his soulmate didn’t look so awfully computerized. Was it that hard to find a real baby to look his way?

The wolves come for Renesmee once they hear Bella is “dead”, and a big bad wolf fight ensues, but as Edward so annoyingly states for audiences, since you would think his family wouldn’t need an explanation, the wolves can’t touch anyone a wolf has imprinted on. “It’s their most sacred law, ever.” or something cheesy like that.

As a final touch, we get to watch as Bella’s body begins to heal. I thought the effects they used for her inner body dying were really cool, but watching her outer body transform was even cooler. It ends right where book fans would expect, with Bella’s eyes opening blood red.

That being said, people who are watching the movie that haven’t read the book were probably extremely frustrated with the entire experience. The whole first half of the movie is full of a storybook wedding, then a storybook honeymoon, then a droopy pregnancy. It’s purely for women. When the story finally begins to pick up, the movie ends. It made me glad that I couldn’t convince the Mr. to come because I know he would never have forgiven me for dragging him to see such drivel. And yet, as a fan of the series, despite the small flaws and the detestable music, the movie was overall a pretty enjoyable experience for me.

Seriously though, fire that sound editing team before they can touch Breaking Dawn 2.

The movie starts out at a rather slow pace, with background story of the troubled relationship between Tommy Riordon (Tom Hardy) and his father Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic that tore his family in half 14 years ago. After a rather unpleasant reunion with his dad, Tommy joins a gym nearby that trains fighters in mixed martial arts. On a whim, Tommy offers to spar with the gym’s prize fighter, Mad Dog Grimes and in short, totally kicks his ass. This is how Tommy begins his ascent in the fighting world. He recruits his father as his trainer, on the assurance that this doesn’t change their relationship.

Meanwhile, the story is building around a grand prix martial arts event called Sparta, put on by the guys behind Tapout in Atlantic City (as opposed to Las Vegas for the UFC). The film’s focus then shifts over to Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), who is Tommy’s estranged older brother. A former UFC fighter, Conlon is now a high school physics teacher (a character presumably based upon former math teacher and UFC champion Rich Franklin) and after a smug banker informs Conlon that he’s going to lose his house due to the banker’s own shitty advice, he enters the fight scene again by signing up for a parking lot event. After word gets around, Conlon gets suspended from his job, which then forces him to start fighting again. He joins an MMA gym run by an old friend named Frank and begins training with Frank’s prized fighter headed for Sparta.

There isn’t much suspense leading up to the event, since the trailer outright tells you that the final event ends up being the two brothers, but what was surprising and appealing for me was that while MMA was the medium for the story, the story itself was strong, emotional, and well laid out by Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton. While both brothers share a common hatred for their father, we eventually learn that Tommy harbors a lot of hatred towards Brendan as well. Running from the abusive Paddy, Tommy had gone west with his mother, only to watch her die. Brendan, torn by his yearning to be loved by his father and by his love for his girlfriend (and now wife) Tess, stayed behind. His relationship with Paddy eventually dissolved.

The brothers continually abuse their father back for all the years they endured with him, rebuffing any and all of his attempts to make amends and this makes for a particularly emotional scene with Paddy as he regresses back into his alcoholism. While the fights leading up the finale were rather predictable, with Tommy simply tearing through everyone and Brendan fighting tooth and nail to the top, you really had no idea who was going to win and how it would all go down and this made for a great finale. In the end, the movie delivers an emotionally packed finish, which brought on rolling tears on my part.

One particular downside of the movie was the actual cuts and shots of the fighting. Having watched hours and hours of live UFC fights, it was a bit of a push backwards as far as watching fights go, with the “necessary” shrieks of supportive fans or loved ones stuck in the midst, side plots, and lots of quick flashes of close up fighting that made it rather confusing to watch. Rounds went by in astonishingly quick succession and while this is done quite frequently in Rocky films, MMA bouts have a mere three rounds. I felt a little more time could have been put into the rounds rather than making it feel like you were watching a recap of a fight. Still, the takedowns were exciting and the coaching from Frank felt authentic.

The excited reactions of Conlon’s high school principal (Kevin Dunn) were refreshingly amusing and not all that far off from my own reactions while watching exciting fights.

The movie provided a few amusing cameos, with Rashad Evans and Stephan Bonner appearing as MMA experts, Nate Marquardt as a fighter, and WEC referee Josh Rosenthal as the Sparta referee. It pretty blatantly rips off from real people in the UFC, with Conlon modeled after Rich Franklin, the Russian fighter Koba clearly based on Fedor Emiliananko, a mouthy announcer with a heavy five o’clock shadow as the Joe Rogan of the film, and it felt to me like Mad Dog Grimes was loosely based on Rampage Jackson. It didn’t bother me all that much, as it all seemed to work in the context of the story. I still don’t really dig the title of the movie. I mean, I understand why they chose it, but I feel like it’s a very lazy choice of title and was actually awfully unfitting for the film.

All in all, I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of emotion that they packed in. I’d gone in expecting a movie that glorified MMA, but instead, director Gavin O’Connor used MMA to tell the heartbreaking story of two brothers torn apart by domestic violence and their road to reconciliation.

What can you say about peanut butter?  It can be too dry, too oily, or have poor taste. There’s certainly mediocre peanut butter. I’m a fan of Skippy SuperChunk, and the Safeway brand is fine.  I had high expectations of Planters because as we all know, Planters knows nuts.  I was not disappointed.

Naturally it comes in creamy or crunchy; it’s no contest here, my whole family is nuts! The ingredients are straight-forward:  peanuts, sugar, oils, salt.  The crunchy is stuffed with nuts but still very spreadable, and is neither dry nor oily.  It has a wonderful roasted peanut taste that sent me back to the jar for a spoonful!

The kids loved it.  Hubby loved it on his pre-workout morning toast.  It’s a hit in our house, and I already spent all the $2 off coupons I printed so we could stock up on it cheap!  While I expect the price point to eventually match other premium peanut butters, the introductory price is quite attractive.  I’m happy to recommend Planters Peanut Butter to peanut butter loving families!

I got a buy-one-get-one coupon for Johnsonville Original Bratwurst Patties.  I didn’t think I’d get to use it because this is a really new product and the awesome BOGO coupons usually expire before the products get to Fairbanks.  Imagine my surprise when I found them at Walmart!  They were $8.32 a box, which was six patties (two pounds).  A little expensive for our everyday budget but a nice price for a specialty premium meat.

The first thing I notice is they are 350 calories and 28 grams of fat each: this is not diet food.  The second thing I notice is they are almost as thick as a regular bratwurst.  As the grill was low on gas Hubby did them on my griddle.  Following instructions resulted in a perfectly cooked patty.  We served them with sauteed peppers, onions and mushrooms on Oroweat Whole Wheat Sandwich Thins, with mustard, of course.

Final Review of Johnsonville Original Bratwurst Patties:  HOLY COW this is some serious cave-dwelling he-man carnivore food! The patties are probably 3/4 of an inch thick and taste, well, just like a Johnsonville Brat.  I’m reminded of Stephen King’s story “The Stand” (the novella, not the movie) and the boys making “cowboy drumsticks” by molding burger around sticks.  Absolutely delicious.  Now, if I had my druthers I’d like to see a thinner “petite” version, because it was probably as much meat as three brats. However I’m of the minority opinion on size:  Hubby ate two, Kiddo had one and a half, and picky eater Junior ate all but a bite of his.  If you like brats and grilling I would totally give these a try.

As I write this on August 15 the BOGO coupon is still available online.  I don’t know how long it will be there, but you can try…  click here.

I don’t like manju.

I guess it might be the fact that I just barely tolerate azuki beans. Then there’s the not quite tasty and flaky crust that sends crumbs flying in 10 different directions upon the first bite. It’s just one of those things that I pretend to like just because I simply have to tell people how great it tastes, when really all I do is try to swallow it without spitting it out. Then I get my kids to eat it or take it to work and pass on the guilty-must-eat-to-be-polite feeling until it’s all gone. I mean, some people must like it, right?

Anyway, this leads to a visit from my family. When I saw the box of Big Island Candies coconut manju from my Aunty B, I had that old feeling of dread. Still, I was definitely more willing to try it since it was filled with coconut instead of overly sweet beans. They were individually wrapped in the usual Big Island Candies wrapper and were about the size of a silver dollar.

What a total shocker, this thing tasted amazing. I loved it! It was like a soft shortbread cookie with a perfectly sweetened chewy coconut middle. The coconut wasn’t shredded, which can turn some people off, and it wasn’t too sweet. It simply tasted like sweet coconut and blended very nicely with the outer, buttery cookie outside.

This is the not the manju I’ve eaten in the past and I’m glad that someone finally had the bright idea to put something else into the middle of it and to make a tastier outer crust.

The biggest disappointment of this thing was that it was too small. What I’d first thought of as a positive thing (less of the manju to try to enjoy) is now a negative. I found myself wanting to hide the box so that I could eat them all. My husband doesn’t like coconut, so I could count on eating his. My son doesn’t really like to try new sweets and isn’t into them in general, so I just kinda forgot to offer him some.

This left Baby Girl, who loves coconut and loves sweets and loves cookies so she was my main competition. I let her eat two, then gave her one for school for a snack. The rest were all miiiine!

The box says they should be consumed within 7-10 days of purchase, which may be why I can’t seem to find it for purchase online, which is a terrible shame. This is definitely going on my list of “Please bring from home” items whenever my dad comes to visit! If you happen to be in Hilo for a visit or live in Hilo and are looking for a new omiyage (besides the same old cookies) to take with you to the mainland, definitely give this a try. I give it two thumbs up!

A woman from Obol gave me a call and chatted with me a bit about my blogs. She was awesome and cheerful and I got my bowl just a few days later.

My first impression that for some reason did not register while looking at the pictures from their site is that the bowl is MEGA HUGE. Seriously, if you look at the photo, you can see that the lady’s hand doesn’t even span the whole bowl. The “milk” area of the bowl is very deep, with a tilted upper section for you to put your cereal in. Thankfully, standard size spoons do not drop in and disappear unless you’re using a kid spoon.

The slanting of the bowl surprised me, along with the space under the upper section. This makes the bowl tall as well as wide. The oddball underside is designed so that you can hold the cereal bowl while eating, presumably so that you can sit on your couch and watch tv with a firm grip on your bowl while you eat. It’s a very handy way to just sit somewhere and eat without a table.

That being said, the size actually bothers me. It feels like you’re eating cereal out of a serving bowl and with the bottom section being so deep, it’s very hard to gauge how much milk to pour. However, this is something that I’m sure just takes getting used to. After using this bowl repeatedly, you’d of course be able to eyeball your milk level to your satisfaction.

The odd shape did concern me in the area of storage. Does this thing stack? It already takes up a lot of space in the cabinet and hogs quite a few bowl slots in the dishwasher and so the thought of having to take up a ridiculous amount of cabinet space if I buy more has made me reconsider purchasing more. I inquired with Obol and they tell me the bowl has a 50% nesting capacity but I’m having a hard time picturing how the bottom would fit into the lower section nicely without being able to do it myself.

Price wise, this thing is pretty freaking expensive for a single bowl at $19.99 plus $9.95 shipping. The price has gone up too, since a previous review I read from their site says the bowl was $15. One consolation is the fact that this product is designed and manufactured in the United States, so there’s much less worry about seeing your bowl on the news with traces of lead, arsenic, or cadmium like certain awful products from China.

Another upside is that with a $20 price, this makes a really, really great “small” gift for a co-worker or boss’ birthday or a Christmas grab-bag gift. It fulfills a pretty standard price limit for gifts and is also a useful, unique, and impressive item.

One way to avoid the shipping charges is to go and buy it at a store. Brookstone carries the Obol in stores and they recently released new colors of the bowl: Lime and Tangerine!

I realize it’s just a photo, but having seen an Obol in person, the amount of milk in the Tangerine photo bothers me. That’s probably something close to 2 cups of milk in there, which reinforces for me the fact that the bowl could stand to be smaller. I mean, I tend to eat about 1.5-2 servings of cereal in one sitting, but I can fit this in a much smaller bowl.

The one thing that I think is almost guaranteed is that if you have kids, they will go insane over this bowl. I have a 7 year old and a 5 year old and the two of them have been fighting over who gets to use the bowl each morning and I’ve had to instate a every-other-day policy for them. If I want to use the bowl, I have to eat before they wake up.

I also have to admit that I’ve used the Obol to get my son out of bed. That kid stays up late playing computer games (he’s five…) and so in the morning it’s like trying to wake up a sack of potatoes. Twice so far, I’ve whispered in his ear, “I’ll let you use the big bowl for breakfast if you get up right now.” He’s shot out of bed both times. He coined the term “The Big Bowl”.

It makes sense that this would appeal greatly to children, since it’s basically a freaking water slide for your breakfast. To a little kid, few things are cooler than that.

This brings size into the picture again. It’s way too big for kids, so I inquired with Obol and they said that they are developing a version for kids, which made me very happy and once that’s available at Brookstone, I’ll probably go down and buy that as a surprise for the kids since we have a store here in Honolulu. Who knows though, maybe the novelty won’t be as great if it’s not The Big Bowl.

For my own testing, I went with the biggest offenders I could think of: Rice Krispies and Captain Crunch. Whenever I happen to buy a box of Rice Krispies, I find myself just shoveling cereal into my mouth in a race against sogginess. This is obviously not very fun. With Captain Crunch, the cereal actually does benefit from slight soaking as everyone knows the carnage that the cereal wreaks on your poor mouth when eaten totally crunchy, but Captain Crunch is also one of the most disgusting cereals when completely soggy. It reduces down to a yellow porridge with a pukey consistency.

The best part of the Obol is that it gives you the ability to walk away from your bowl and come back later without compromising your eating experience. So if you sit down to eat and then suddenly out of nowhere your kid is yelling from the bathroom for help with wiping, you can actually get up and come back and everything’s fine. Or maybe your phone rings and someone at work keeps you on the line for 10 minutes. Your cereal is still separated and crispy.

I also tried the bowl with Chocolate Cheerios, but found that with the swoop and scoop method of eating, my milk wasn’t as chocolately at the end, which is one of my favorite parts of eating a chocolate cereal. I can see this being a similar issue with sugary milk at the end of a bowl of Frosted Flakes, but in my opinion, crispy Frosted Flakes is well worth the sacrifice of sugary milk. I’m just not willing to make the same concession for chocolate.

The bottom line is that this bowl is fantastic for some cereals that taste best when crispy such as cornflake and sugary kids cereals, but can be a bit of a nuisance for cereals that work fine in the good old cereal bowl already sitting in your kitchen cabinets. Cereals that need some soaking, like Honey Graham Oh’s, are a good example of one that doesn’t necessarily need this.

Overview

The pros of the bowl include:

• Size great for eating a lot of cereal, should you like to do that.
• Handy underside for holding the bowl while sitting on your couch.
• Kids love it.
• Allows you to get distracted while eating cereal for breakfast.
• Allows you to eat certain cereals at a leisurely pace instead of inhaling it in a race against sogginess.
• Comes in three different colors and is available at Brookstone locations.
• Price makes it a great small gift for coworkers and friends.
• Dishwasher safe.
• Made in the USA.

Cons of the bowl:

• A really big bowl. If you’re hard up for cabinet space, this kinda sucks. And while kids love it, it causes them to waste a lot more milk when they serve themselves (if they don’t drink the excess).
• Since it tilts and I still haven’t confirmed how well it stacks, I don’t know how well it stores and whether it’s good to have multiples for a family.
• Very costly to purchase online, for a total of about $30 per bowl and $23 if you buy the 3 pack.
• Takes up a lot of space in the dishwasher.
• Will probably encourage you to overeat cereal with size and deep milk bowl area.

Follow Obol on Twitter and like them on Facebook.

It took me a while to get to it, as I knew it was an evil child movie and I tend to find those boring and outdone, especially after I’d just watched the terrible Case 39. Really, that was an awful, awful movie.

There are of course the evil child classics that remain untouched as the masters of child horror, such as The Exorcist and The Omen. Orphan doesn’t quite touch that level, but if you ask me, it came pretty damn close without really jumping the shark.

The movie stars Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard as Kate and John Coleman, who have been going through a rough patch in their marriage after Kate’s miscarriage and subsequent battle with alcoholism. However, they’ve made it though and to help heal wounds and do something good, they decide to adopt a child to help fill the void of their lost daughter.

They travel to the St. Marina Orphanage where they meet charming young Esther, who is upstairs painting while the other children have a party. She’s a very pretty child with grace, artistic talent, and an exotic Russian accent. The Colemans are immediately taken with her and the nun in charge of the orphanage, Sister Abigail (played by CCH Pounder), has nothing but glowing things to say about her. The Colemans take her home to meet their son Daniel and daughter Max, who has been deaf since birth.

Psycho Esther, Qu'est-ce que c'est

Things seem to be going well and Esther seems to be adjusting nicely despite the cold shoulder from her new brother. Then she starts school and a punky girl picks on her. She grabs her book in the hall and Esther goes completely apeshit in front of everyone. Yeah, something’s definitely freaky with this kid.

Eventually, Kate begins to smell something rotten in the state of adoption and she tries to talk to John about it, but he’s predictably blind to what she sees and says that returning her to the orphanage is out of the question. Kate calls in Sister Abigail and of course now the woman has lots to say about how she’s had a funny feeling about this girl! She promises to look into her original orphanage more and leaves.

Sadly, Esther has other plans for her and after throwing new little sister Max in front of the nun’s car, takes a freaking hammer to her head and bashes her skull in right in front of little Max. I don’t know how they filmed this stuff with this little girl but man was I cringing in terror over the cold, calculating look on Esther’s face. While Sister Abigail is missing, Kate starts to dig on her own and makes a call to a Sarne Institute in Russia based on a note she saw in Esther’s little book. She only speaks to an orderly and inquires about any children that might have been born to a patient and doesn’t really get anywhere, but she emails a photo of Esther to the main doctor.

Things continue to escalate, with Esther trying to kill Max by releasing the parking brake of the car while Max is in it at the top of a hill. She tries to burn Daniel to death in his treehouse. Kate loses it and goes ballistic on Esther’s face (yeah!!!) at the hospital where Daniel is and she’s then sedated and placed in a room at the hospital while John takes Max and Esther home. This is where the movie enters Mega Creepytown.

Is there anything more wrong than a 10 year old girl dressed up like a whore? Sure, she looks great, but god is this a disturbing image. It doesn’t seem to be made any better by the revealing of the eventual twist because you know in the back of your mind that this girl really is 10 years old, acting as though she’s seducing a man in his 40s.

While she’s in the hospital, Kate gets a call from the doctor in Russia, who informs her that Esther wasn’t a child of a patient, she was a patient. She suffers from a dwarf condition which makes her appear to be a child when actually she’s a grown woman in her thirties, prone to violence, and a known murderer. Kate rushes home only to find that she’s too late: John lays on the ground dead, stabbed with a knife. Max is hiding in the greenhouse while Esther stalks her.

Eventually, Kate gets the best of her and saves Max, but of course, this is a horror movie and villainous scary children cannot die after only one attempt. Kate and Esther end up battling it out under a frozen pond and as it nears the end, Esther cries out for her “mommy” Kate to not let her die. How does Kate answer? She smashkicks her to the face with the line, “I’M NOT… YOUR FUCKING… MOMMY!”

It wasn’t quite “Smile, you son of a bitch!” or “Get away from her, you BITCH!” but it was still pretty amusing. Overall, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it as I’d gone in assuming it was going to be a travesty of a movie. I cringed. I actually cried out when Esther was at her worst. I didn’t figure out the ending at all until it was revealed. So while it wasn’t an evil child classic, it was definitely worth my time and probably isn’t the best movie for couples looking to adopt little Russian children.

Seriously, I’d have second thoughts, no matter how many times I told myself it was just a movie. Isabelle Fuhrmann was that convincing. She was probably around 10 when she did this movie, so who knows what kind of psycho she is in real life. The fact that she’s now been cast as the psychotic knife killer Clove in The Hunger Games should say something right there about her creepy factor.

It took me a while to bust it out. For some reason, I felt like it was going to go the way of my box of Multi-Grain Cheerios, which is gathering dust as we speak, so I just put it away and forgot about it.

Then one morning as my son made this heartbreaking crushed face at me when I informed him that Daddy had inhaled the last of the Cocoa Krispies the night before, I dashed to the cupboard and Chocolate Cheerios came to the rescue. At least, I hoped it would. I had no idea how they would taste. I poured a bowl for myself to see.

The end result is that a week later, we’re halfway into the second bag. They’re light and crispy with a delicious chocolate taste and they don’t become soggy at the blink of an eye, though like most cereals, you can’t leave it sitting around in milk as you la-dee-dah around the house getting ready. The rings come in two tones, so I’m guessing the light ones have less chocolate, which helps them to reduce sugar and calorie content. Of course, I shouldn’t forget to mention that it leaves you with a wonderful bowl of chocolate milk to gulp down at the end of the bowl.

Nutritionally, they’re very low in calories at just 100 per 3/4 cup serving (without milk). Sugar content is moderate at 9 grams per serving (the same as Honey Nut Cheerios), which is 3 grams less than Cocoa Krispies, 5 grams less than a bowl of Smart Start and 10 grams less than Raisin Bran. For a hit of chocolate in the morning, that’s something I can get behind.

Whether these make a coupon book again or not, I’ll definitely have to pick up more boxes on my next Costco run. The awesome part is that if you don’t have a Costco nearby, Amazon offers Chocolate Cheerios under grocery subscription for just $2.45 for an 11 oz box. That’s like almost half the price of my local supermarket on sale. Heck that might even be cheaper than Costco, provided Costco boxes cost more than $7.50 a box. (I can’t remember how much it was)

Second image courtesy of the Cheerios website.

A few months ago, I found out that there is a sequel to that book, Japanese Children’s Favorite Stories Book Two. Written by the same author, Florence Sakade, Book Two brings a new collection of favorite children’s folk tales. Although the artist is different, the styles are very similar, bringing continuity between the two editions.

I read through the whole book with my kids and although they enjoyed all the stories, some of them did start to feel a bit repetitive. The telling of Urashima Taro didn’t seem to come across very well in translation, as it ended rather abruptly without really making the moral of the story clear. My kids were a little confused by it because it wasn’t exactly clear on what Urashima Taro had done when he opened the box.

To be fair though, even after reading up on the story online, I’m not sure what the moral is. Curiosity is bad? It’s a bit hard to explain that to kids because really, what did Urashima Taro do to deserve such a fate?

There were a couple of typos in the book, but with colorful art with every page turn, it’s hard not to enjoy it as a bedtime book. My kids often request it and I even recognized a folk tale that is the basis for one of Final Fantasy XI’s special events called Celestial Nights, which was The Princess and the Herdboy.

The book is 96 pages with sixteen short stories. Priced at around $16.50 on Amazon with an audio CD to go along with it, I think it’s worth the price considering it’s a hardcover. While it may not have the same quality of stories as the first book, it’s still a worthy sequel to a wonderful book.

This book was sent to me for review from Tuttle Publishing. I was not paid to write this review.

Spring Clearance Sale: Books from $1.99 & Up, plus get deals on DVD, Toys, Music, & more!

Moping in bed and stuck in the room with Old Nan as usual, Bran refuses to go when Theon arrives to tell him he has a visitor. Not that he has much choice, as Hodor arrives to carry him downstairs. I can’t express how happy I was to finally see him get to deliver a line.

“Hodor.”

Oh, wait. That’s his only line. That poor actor.

Once in the hall, we see that the visitor is in fact Tyrion, just returned from the Wall to visit Bran on his way to King’s Landing. Despite the chilly reception he gets from Robb, Tyrion offers Maester Luwin the plans for a special saddle that will enable Bran to ride a horse. Feeling sheepish for being so aggro, Robb offers the hospitality of Winterfell to Tyrion, who promptly refuses, choosing instead to spend the night at a whorehouse.

From here we see an added scene between Tyrion and Theon Greyjoy, one of the many necessary to fill in the gaps of history and character background that books can so easily handle, but shows cannot.