What seems like long ago was only 2 years ago, but when the little one was in the 3^rd grade I remember a project they had to do for their science fair.  Their job was to make a “robot”,  and write 3 sentences on what job your robot would do to make your life easier.  These robots did not have to work, and it would almost seem unheard of for a 3rd grader to have a working robot.  She came up with the idea of making a dog walking robot, and asked her daddy for help with this.  He was more than happy to help her.  Oh, And help her he did.  When they were done this robot had it all.  It had moving parts, and even lights.  I was surprised that it didn’t walk, but hubby told me that he tried to add that but because he didn’t have any industrial hand wheels it wouldn’t work.  It was ok, and the little one didn’t care about that because she had lots of fun making it with her daddy, and daddy had lots of fun at the fair showing off to all the other dads.  It’s like my one brother always tells me… “It’s a man thing.”

It’s that time of the year again time to go school clothes shopping for the little one.  This is not easy, and takes forever to do because she’s so tall, and she has to wear misses clothing sizes.  Half of this stuff is not for a kid her age, as they are made for older kids.  So when she finds things she likes I have to tell her No.  This reminds me of when I was young, and I would give my mom a hard time because I didn’t like her taste in clothing.  She would tell me that one day when you have a kid I hope she does the same to you so you can see how much fun it is to shop.  Oh how I now wish I was a good kid growing up because she’s worse than I was at times.  Sometimes I can’t blame her like with the school clothes.  When it takes all day to shop for 3 outfits you just don’t want to shop anymore.

My little one has found something new to do.  She saw her daddy on Facebook playing games, and ever since has been playing games on my Facebook account.  She is too young to make her own, so we allowed her to use mine for just the games.  Well today she told me that she’s getting married.  WHAT?  That’s right, you heard me.  It is time to send out the wedding invitations.  My kids got herself a hubby in her little virtual world, and I’m fine with that as long as that’s where it stays.  On the other hand when I told hubby about this he was upset, and not because his little one got married, but it was before he did.  I just don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of them.

I was talking to my sister who moved out to MO.  about a year ago.  She was telling me how she felt the government was screwing her with her SSI.  This is because they cut her ssdi by 100.00 dollars a month, and now she’s having a harder time paying her bills than she was having before.  Now I don’t know how anyone can live on the money that they do get from SSI, and live on it.  I also feel bad for her when she tells me this, and don’t know what I can tell her.  I can’t even help her because I’m also having a hard time paying my bills, and that’s with my hubby having a job.  So all I can do is listen to her, and hope that helps her feel better.  I told her originally that MO. wasn’t going to make anything better, but she did what she needed to for her family.  Paying bills with chickens, and feed doesn’t work in every state.

I’ve only lived in N.J. so let me start by saying that I don’t know how things are in other states, but in this state when it come to getting good health insurance quotes I think it’s harder than pulling teeth.  Now I understand that different people have different needs, and not all insurances cover these needs.  With all of the different kinds of coverage packages out there finding an affordable health insurance is not easy.  If you go too cheap they don’t cover everything, and some even make you pay first, and wait to be reimbursed for your money, and most even have co-pays for each doctor’s visit.  I also feel some doctors take advantage of this by making you visit them 3 or more times a month giving them more money that you don’t have.  This makes it even less cheaper, and this also makes it hard for people both young, and old to get good health insurance when they don’t have a lot of money.  As far as the state helping you out what you have to realize is that you need to make very little money in order to get health insurance, so little that I don’t know how they expect you to live.  With the economy most of the U.S. is facing I can’t imagine most people being able to afford health insurance at all.  What do you think?

Sometimes hubby just drives me nuts with the way he runs his company.  He is not only an owner, but he’s also a worker, and manager of the company.  I’ve tried to get him to let me help so that he doesn’t have to do it all.  The way he does things just drives me nuts, kind of like his document management system… It works for him, but noone else.  This because he puts everything in piles all over, and to me, and anyone else this would look like a big mess.  He can tell you not only where it is, but how many papers down something is.  This amazes me how he can even run a company with a system like this, but he has done it for over 15 years with no problems so far.  

I ask is this way of doing document management a man’s way of doing things, or is my man just weird.

I recently got to try the Auntie Anne’s NEW lemonade mixers.  I had the strawberry lemonade.  The drink had a light taste of strawberry, and the lemonade was not too strong.  It was just right for a hot day.  The one we had was very good tasting.    Hubby, and the little one tried it, and they loved the taste as well.The lemonade mixers come in 5 different flavors and they also have slushy types making them even better on a hot day.

We were given the opportunity to run a contest.  The winner of the contest will receive a $5 gift card from Aunti Anne.  Read on for the details on how to enter the contest.

To enter follow these instructions…

Main Entry:

Go to the Auntie Anne website, and tell me which Lemonade Mixer you would most likely want to try.

Additional Entries:

(Comments can be on any post that you would like, or any posts that you would like on any of the 4 sites.  Just enter a comment telling me where you commented.)  Posts can be on: MyBlogs4U.Com, DisneyContestBlog.Com, GameBlogs4U.Com, ReviewsBlog4u.Com, and MomsBlogs4U.Com

Contest will run from 8/4/2010 through  8/25/2010.  The winner will have 3 days to contact me.  After 3 days a new winner will be randomly pulled.

We received a $5 gift card from Auntie Anne.  Receiving this card had no effect on the review that we did leave.

Being that I’ve blogged for Dole in the past I am occassionally asked when they want me to get the word out about new products.  I was asked if I would like to have a Smoothie party to get the word out about their new frozen fruits.  Now in my house we love having parties, so we said yes.  I invited some friends, and family over.  For doing this Dole sent me a box of party supplies, and some gifts for my guests as a thank you.  What was in the box were cups, straws, Dole coupons for me, and my guest, picture coasters for my guest, and a 10 dollar iTunes gift card for me.  I was told that I could find smoothie recipes at Dole.com.  This was a good thing because I never made a smoothie before.  I also found out at the web site that you don’t have to use the frozen fruit for just smoothies.  People had a lot of cool recipes on the Dole website.  I found a simple smoothie recipe.  To make it the recipe called for vanilla yogurt, Dole bananas, and Dole frozen fruit.  It doesn’t get any simpler than that, so that’s what I went with.  The website also showed that there were at least 13 different kinds of frozen fruits to choose from at the supermarket.  The store by me only had 3 kinds, and they were blueberries, mixed berries, and whole and sliced strawberries.  My mother in law told me the one by her had mango.  That does sound like it would have been a good smoothie.

Now when party time came we had at least 20 people here between the adults, and the kids.  I started to make the first batch with no problem, and it went fast.  Everyone loved it, so on to the next one.  That’s when we had a big problem.  My blender went bye-bye on me.  Now this was not good.  One of my friends said they would lend me theirs, but there was no need because I remembered that I had a smoothie maker.  Now with the kids happy we moved to the grownups.  I made the next ones, and this time I wanted to show everyone how easy it was to do.  Well now I know why they say too many cooks in the kitchen is not good.  Some wanted to know why there was no juice.  Hubby said that’s why my mixer went.  I told them that the recipes that I got from the Dole site didn’t call for juice.  Then someone said the coupons have a recipe on them that call for juices.  To make everyone, and hubby happy I added a little water to the mix.  By doing this it made a little more smoothies, and everyone agreed that they were still just as sweet.

Everyone had a great time, and even shared some recipes on how they would use the Dole frozen bags of fruit.  When we were out of smoothies the kids and adults were a little upset, but I used 4 bags of fruit, and everyone got at least two smoothies out of it.

I would like to thank dole for the opportunity to have a smoothie party, and my guests for making time to come.

We were given the party kit so as to review the Dole frozen fruit.  Receiving this kit had no effect on the outcome of my review.

Hubby was telling me that the next time we go camping in Mays Landing that he would like to look into staying in their cabins that they have instead of using our camper.  So I asked him why because we would spend more money to stay in a cabin, and they don’t have everything that we have in the camper.  He told me that in the camper sure we have a bathroom, stove, and a sink, but in the cabins they have log beds that are bigger than our bed in the camper, and that would make it more comfortable for him to sleep in.  Now maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t feel that’s a good reason to spend more money a night.  Maybe I would if we were staying in a tent, and not a camper.  Maybe I feel this way because I’m short, and the bed fits me just fine.  The other problem he has with our camper is that he hits his head when he walks straight.  If he thinks he hits his head a lot now, then he would hate having a “triangle camper.”

Out of all the game consoles we have in our house, and we have a lot of them, I would say that the Wii is my favorite.  I just love that I can play games with my family, and get a work out while doing this.  Sometimes when I have time and no one wants to play a game with me I’ll play some games by myself.  The one thing that I hate is that when the little one has friends over to play games with her afterwords I never can seem to find all the Wii accessories.  I would suspect that the reason she does this is so that I can’t play the games.  This would probably be true if it weren’t for the fact that that she never can find them when she wants to play either.  So I told hubby that maybe we should get an accessories box of some kind so we don’t have this problem.  He had a good point when he said it would be a waste of money because for it to work she would have to use it.  The other problem we have is that our little one has a serious issue with putting the controllers back on the charger.  We ended up going out, and purchasing another dual charging unit, and we hope it will help with the dead controller issue.

How do you keep from misplacing, or losing your Wii accessories?  How do you keep your controllers charged?

Once in a while I read some of my junk e-mails when they look interesting like the ones that say “buy phentermine“.  They go on in the ad about how it’s a safe appetite suppressant, and with diet and exercise it will help you lose weight.  Now I don’t know how true this is because I’ve never used it, but they had an ad for the over the counter diet pill that advertised to buy 3 bottles and get one free.  That was a 120 day supply of 240 caplets.  Now I did the math on this, and that means I would have to take two pills a day.  Now I think it’s kind of funny when I read anything that tells me that you have to take a lot of pills to lose weight because I remember when I was a kid watching the cartoons.  I am sure you know the ones that when they had to lose a little weight they would have a pill on their dish, and everyone else had food.

Why do so many companies have to be on the diet wagon?

The one thing that I’ve noticed since I lost a lot of the weight that I needed to lose is that over the past few years how I still feel like I’m really big.  When I told this to one of my friends, who is a little heavier than me, she told me that it’s not that I’m big, but how I carry my weight.  I also thought what does she mean by that.  She says, and I quote, in her case she is fat all over, and that’s why she looks thinner, where I’m all belly, and look heavier.  Even though I diet, walk and do a little cardio I do need to fit in a good ab workout to help me get rid of the rest of the belly fat.  The only reason that I believe anything she says is because she reads a lot of those diet books, and has been losing weight too.  She also has given me good advice before.  Who knows maybe she’s onto something.  I guess the only way to find out is by trying it, even if it’s the one thing I so hate much.

When I go for my daily walks I run into a lot of people that ask me if walking is how I lost a lot of weight.  I tell them that it helps, but that I had to change my eating habits too.  You can always tell that it’s what they don’t want to hear.  I lost weight by diet, and exercise.  Just so you know… there is no quick weight loss.  What I’ve learned over the past two years is that if you want something then you have to work at it.  I also know that it’s not fun, but I will say I look and feel ten times better than I did two years ago.  It also is a learning thing for me because I did slip out of my routine for a little while to take a break, and I found out how fast you can gain weight back if you don’t maintain, and keep up with how you do things.  All I can say is that there is no quick fix once you lose what you want to lose, and if you stop working at it and go back to your old ways it will come back faster then it came off.  Someone once told me that for things to change you must change.  I’ve learned this is true whether or not I like it.

When my brother and his new wife were having a baby I decided that I wanted to do something nice for them.  So when they had a stroller down on their gift registry I thought that would be what I would get them.  I mean how much could a stroller be?  Well all I can say is wow to how much strollers have changed since I had my little one 10 years ago.  I wanted something nice, and useful.  I was looking at this baby jogger city select stroller, and it looked way cool.  It has 16 different configurations.  It even had some add-ons like a bassinet, and if they ever needed it they could get a second seat kit.  I was very happy with the stroller that I had found until I saw the price of $ 500.00.  This was a lot more than the $ 200.00 I wanted to spend.  So when it came closer to the baby shower I just went to the store, and got them something they had on their gift registry, and they loved it.  I loved that in the end they got something nice and it didn’t cost me the $500.

As I get closer to the age of 40 I find myself getting worried about getting old.  I want to more to make sure that I don’t look really old.  One of the things I worry about is wrinkles, and getting rid of them without painful or high cost Botox injections.  I saw an ad for a wrinkle serum that claims that it has powerful anti aging ingredients.  I went down the page to read about what the prototype 37-c reviews say, and everyone had lots of good things to say about how it works.  The one thing that I couldn’t find anywhere was its price.  I guess that true beauty has no price.  If the price was there then this means that I have something new to worry about because I don’t look good in glasses.