While watching videos on YouTube about Disney World, with my children when I stumbled across a video that two parents made for young their children while they were on vacation in Disney World without them.  They were there for their anniversary and left their kids at home with a family member but to make it up to their children they went to all of the character greetings and filmed the characters saying “Hi” to their children.  To show what great parents they were they put it on You Tube.

My favorite part of their video was when Cinderella said “You left them at home?  How sad!” Then she looked in the camera and said, “I hope your parents bring you to Disney World next time they come.”

There are many vacations you can go on as a couple that are not much fun for young children. Here are a few things that are not easy to do with a 3 year old: White water rafting, mountain biking, hiking and primitive camping, surfing, canoeing, relaxing on a beach, going to a spa, touring old churches, hiking ruins, clothes shopping, or Vegas is another place that really is not made for young children.

Disney World is a perfect place to bring your 3 year old. This is a vacation that is designed to be the most magical place on earth for little kids.  There are kids standing in awe gazing at their favorite characters from movies around every corner, shows set up to dazzle them, rides set up for them to remember in visions the rest of their life.  It is not only fun for parents, but brings tears to your eyes and warms your heart when you see how much fun and magic your kids are experiencing.

I will never forget my 2.5 year old son “driving” a race car and yet not being able to see over the steering wheel, he was so proud!  Only at Disney!  I will also never forget my daughter in her Cinderella dress and glass slippers when the princesses came out to meet her during dinner at Cinderella’s Castle.  There are so many memories and wonderful experiences my children have made each time we bring them to Disney World.

Disney World is a place that children are everywhere.  You will not be able to be in your hotel room without hearing little feet running down the hallway excited to go to the pool.   Everywhere you go you will not be able to forget that this place is made for families, nor will you forget that you left your kids at home and made them miss out on this experience.

You want an adult vacation?  Go to an adult vacation and do adult things.

You want to go to Disney World, bring your young children.  It is fun for adults, but the Disney magic is made for children!

He carefully placed it under the tree and every day he checked to make sure it was not moved and that nobody peeked inside.  He asked me every day leading up to Christmas if I wanted to open it yet?  I told him that it was really special to me, so that I wanted to save it and open it on Christmas day.

One more time on Christmas Eve he checked his present was okay before he went to bed.

When his sister woke him (and me) up at 6:55 a.m on Christmas morning to go see what Santa brought, she took off at a run downstairs, he took off after her but suddenly he stopped,  picked up his present for me, and started to run downstairs with it.

As he was running he slipped in his pajama feet and it he fell.  The present crashed with a loud thunk and a rattle sound as it hit the ground.  He looked up at me with tears in his eyes, “It is glass mom, I think I broke it!”  I said “It is okay buddy, even if it is broken, I will still love it.”  I carried it the rest of the way downstairs and set it down on the table next to where I was sitting to watch them open up their hoard of presents.

He made it through unpacking his stocking and opening one more present before he looked at me and said “Mom, why didn’t you open your present yet?”  I said, “Okay buddy, I will open it now.”

He was perfectly content to stop opening his own presents to stop and watch me.  I opened it up, I pulled it out, and he saw that it was not broken he sighed in relief.  His gift was a baby food jar decorated in tissue paper squares, that were painted on with glue,  and a small tealight candle sat inside to create a candle holder.

I told him I loved it, and thought it was beautiful and asked him how he made it, he told me he did it all by himself but the teachers cut the pieces of paper for him to put on.  Then he said, “Can you light it?” I went and found a lighter and lit it.  He stood and looked at it a full minute before he was content to go back to opening his own presents.

The most important present for my son this Christmas was not the plasma car,  not the General E. Lee, it was this handmade gift that he created with pride and love for me.   It sits in a special place on the center of our kitchen table.

I have used many different natural products that I have laying around my house or my yard.  I have used pine needles and lemon juice, I have used cloves and citrus, I have used cinnamon and apple cores but one of my favorite scents is orange peel and cinnamon.   The smell of cinnamon smells like fresh baked goods, and the citrusy smell of orange smells like sunshine.

You can use a small pan on the stove but you have to make sure that you dont simmer all of the water out and start a fire, instead I have this potpourri warmer that I have had for about 10 years that is really awesome for natural air fresheners.

My old school potpourri warmer, some ground cinnamon, and an orange

Peel an orange, eat the orange and put the orange peel into the pot.

Add 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon, or eyeball it.

Add water to fill up the pot, mix the cinnamon and orange peel, put it on the stove to simmer, or if you have a potpourri warmer plug it in.  Enjoy a fresh smelling house without adding any chemicals, phthalates, petroleum products, or chemical fragrances and protect your indoor air quality.

After driving around all summer long, collecting bugs, letting them bake on, my car looked like this.

After wetting the front of the car with the hose,  rubbing one dryer sheet over the front of my car, headlights and grill with very little effort, it looked like this.  (I guess they don’t remove the scuffs you get when your son runs into your car with a big wheel.)

So if you are like me and don’t use dryer sheets in your dryer because you refuse to put dangerous chemicals and hormone disrupting fragrances on your clean clothes, you can bring those extra dryer sheets to the garage as a very simple and effective bug remover.

Untied shoes can be dangerous, there is no support in a pair of athletic shoes if they are constantly untied. Kids dont want to stop and tie their shoes when the are playing a game or running with their friends at recess, I remember bully kids trying to step on untied laces to trip kids when we were kids. I was so tired of seeing my daughter walk off the bus with one shoe untied and thinking how unsafe that is that I decided to fix it for good.

Sure you can buy elastic or no tie laces online for 9-15 dollars but you can fix them yourself for less than $2.

1. Go to a craft or sewing store and pick up some 1/4 inch braided elastic, I bought mine at Walmart and it was under $2 for 3 yards.  I can do at least 3 pairs of shoes with this.

2. Pull out the old shoe laces, throw those germ infested things away. (They have been dragged around the gross school bathroom floor and all kinds of kid cooties that live on school floors!)

3.  Use a handwork knitting needle (also available at a craft store) to thread the elastic through the holes. If you don’t have this, you can use clear tape to form a point or temporary aglet.

4. Lace up both sides of the shoes, make sure the elastic is not twisted, I prefer to go over the sides of the shoes and have the elastic end on the underside of the shoe.

5. Using a needle and thread sew the ends of the elastic so they are folded one on top of the other, I sewed all the way to the end where I trimmed the excess off.  I wanted to hide the unfinished edge under the bottom edges of the shoes.

6. Trim off the excess elastic.

7. Finish the other shoe- your done!

Your child wont come home from school with untied shoes, they wont have to stop playing a game to tie their shoes, and they won’t have another kid step on their untied laces, trip, fall and get hurt.    It took me about 5 minutes to do this project, I am already excited for the saved time each morning waiting for my kid to tie her shoes!

p.s. For those of you worried I am handicapping my child by giving her elastic laces, I taught her to tie her shoes, she can do it. I am not worried about her going to college without the ability to tie her shoes.

One day while surfing online I was trying to find cheap tampons, I ran across a thing called a menstrual cup.  After reading user reviews watching a few Youtube videos, I quickly ordered a Diva Cup.  I have used it for a few months now and I LOVE it!!!!

Even with heavy periods, if you use a menstrual cup, you can sleep all night long with no leaks. I no longer have to worry about bringing a stash of tampons with me wherever I go.

I also liked the green aspect of the menstrual cup. With a menstrual cup, I have no waste!  None!  Not even a panty liner!

Let me tell you about a menstrual cup.  It is a silicone cup that holds your menstrual blood.  You remove it, empty the liquid into the toilet.  You only need to empty a menstrual cup 2-3 times per day, you can leave it in up to 12 hours so most people don’t need to worry about it at all during work.  It has a little stem, you insert it, give it a spin to make a form suction and it stays in place with no leaks.

To get it out, you bear down, you grab the little stem and ridged base, pinch the silicone to break the suction, pull it out and dump the contents into the toilet, rinse it out with water and reinsert it.

I had never heard of one of these and I have to tell the world that it is soooooooo much better than tampons!!!  Sure it costs about $30 bucks to start out but you will never have to run to the store for tampons, pads and panty liners each month.   I realized I would spend about $8-10 bucks each month for menstrual supplies, the last two months I did not spend a dime.

I put my menstrual cup in a cute little zipped bag, I also carry around a little squeeze bottle filled with water for public bathrooms and that is it. No more panty liners, or tampons taking up my purse.

You can swim, exercise, run, dance, and there are no leaks.  You don’t have to worry about toxic shock, leaking tampons, or wearing a sweaty pad.  I hope I never have to go back.

-Don’t just read about doing things or watch them on tv, actually do things!!!

-Teach your children about life by giving them life experiences.

-Teach your children when to feel safe and when to feel leery of others by being around many different people.

-Teach your children how to solve problems by giving them real life opportunities to practice solving them.

-You can’t create life experiences if you never leave the house.

It is a whole lot easier to not leave the house, to not have to plan ahead, pack lunches, pack snacks, pack strollers, bundle up little kids, worry about melt downs, but that does not mean you should take the easy road and stay home.

Your kids will be healthier if you never bring them out of the house and expose them to germs from other sick kids with their sticky, dirty, germy hands touching everything that your kids will touch.  How will your childs immune system deal with the onslaught of germs once they reach school age if they have not already had every one of the normal childhood illnesses?

Your kids wont have to experience mean children if you never bring them places where mean children play.   How are they going to learn how to defend themselves and when it is important to stand up for themselves and others?   There will always be mean kids, mean teenagers and mean adults, give them the life experiences and talk to them about how to deal with mean people and stand up for themselves without being violent.

Your kids won’t know how fortunate they are if they dont see poor people. If you never bring them downtown and let them see the homeless people walking out of the shelter or staying warm in the skyways.  Let them appreciate their good fortune and see first hand how some people live, teach them kindness and empathy.

Your kids need to see that there are dangerous people in the world that they need to watch out for.  Teach them to appreciate that the police and fire departments are here, show them what a burnt down house looks like,  point out to them that bad people get caught and get arrested.

Your kids will not learn to stand up for themselves if they don’t see you standing up for yourself!  If we never leave the house we would not experience that not everyone in the world are honest or rule followers.  My children have witnessed me standing up for what I believe is right by me confronting others.

Let your kids experience unfairness when they have been standing in line to go across the lily pads at the pool and a rude kid cuts in front of them. Use that as  a learning experience to teach them to stand up for themselves in the future and to say I was here first.

Show your children which people you want them to avoid because they are scary or give you a bad feeling, let them learn to trust their instincts and know that not all people are good. Give your kids opportunities to be around strangers so you can teach them which strangers are not okay to talk to.

Let your kids learn about life by experiencing it first hand, bring your kids in as many places as you can, teach them how to live life around all different kinds of people not just people who you want to associate with. Give them the skills to live through life experiences, and the real world opportunities to practice those skills.

Despite being more work, more time, more germs, more mean kids, more frightening, I bring my kids out to experience the world!

Kabob Marinade:

1 cup vegetable or canola oil

1 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

2 teaspoons dry parsley flakes

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 -2 tablespoon fresh minced garlic

Put all of the ingredients into a glass canning jar and shake until well mixed.

Kabob Ingredients:

1 lb of chicken breasts- cut into 1 inch cubes

1 lb of sirloin beef- cut into 1 inch cubes

2 bell peppers- cut into 2 inch chunks

1 large onion- cut into 2 inch chunks

1 zucchini- cut into 3/4 inch thick slices

1 tray of fresh whole mushrooms cleaned and still whole

20 cherry tomatoes

1 can of pineapple chunks

1 can of canned potatoes

Cut 2 lb of meat chicken or beef  (or both) into 1 inch cubes

Cut vegetables such as peppers onions, zucchini  into 2 inch pieces

Use whole vegetables like mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, canned pineapple, canned potatoes, whatever you like on your kabobs.

Marinate the cubed meat in a little bit of the marinade.

Marinate the veggies in a little bit of the marinade.

Reserve some marinade for brushing and sprinkling on the grilling meat and veggies.

Grilling:

Most people use kabob sticks  to make kabobs but I don’t.  Are they really kabobs without the stick?  Well frankly I don’t care. Why don’t I like the sticks? First you have to individually create each kabob pretty with the perfect mix of veggies and raw meat.  Then meat cooks slower than the veggies, or the veggies are burnt and your chicken is still raw, or the cheesy wooden kabob sticks start on fire, and the meat falls into the coals, or you impale your hand on the sharp metal kabob sticks.  It is just too much trouble to use the dumb sticks.  This is why I love making my kabobs in grill baskets!  Go ahead and skewer them when they are fully cooked to serve them on a stick if you want.

Turn the grill on high and put two grill baskets on the grill to get hot.  Place marinated meat in one and marinated veggies in the other.   I usually cook the beef separate from the chicken to make sure that the chicken is cooked through.  I usually cook the stuff that takes the longest first and then put it in a covered glass container to keep it warm.  As the veggies cook I keep drizzling marinade onto them to keep them very moist and flavorful.    Serve them hot right from the grill to the patio table and enjoy!

What you need:

1 Pound hamburger

1/2 Cup chopped onion

1 Tablespoon taco seasoning

1 1/2 Cup tomato sauce

16 oz jar mild salsa

1 Cup ricotta cheese

3 Eggs

12 Ounces monterey Jack cheese

12 oz mozzarella cheese

8 Flour tortillas

Brown hamburger and onion.  Add the following to the meat mixture: taco seasoning, tomato sauce and salsa.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Combine eggs and ricotta in a separate bowl, then other cheeses in another bowl.  Spray 9 x 13 inch pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Layer half of meat mixture, 4 tortilla shells, half of the ricotta mix and half of the other cheeses.  Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.  Bake uncovered at 350 for 30 minutes.  Let set 10 minutes before serving.  Serves 8-10 people

4 pounds beef roast
2 envelopes (1 ounce each) dried onion soup mix
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 cans (10 1/2 ounces each) beef broth
Crusty Rolls
Swiss or Pepper Jack Cheese

Directions

1. Trim excess fat from beef and discard. Place beef in slow cooker.
2. Combine soup mix, sugar, oregano, garlic, broth in large mixing bowl. Pour mixture over beef. Cover; cook on HIGH 6 to 8 hours or until beef is fork-tender.
3. Remove beef from slow cooker. Shred beef with two forks. Return beef to cooking liquid; mix well. Serve on crusty rolls with a piece of cheese melted on top and extra au jus on the side.