Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

So our lovely city got it’s first Costco at the end of May, before that we would have to drive at least an hour and a half to hit the closest one so we never bothered with a membership as it was closer to drive to the US for grocery deals and unique items.

Now that Costco is here, I’m having mixed feelings about it. For a large family like ours buying in larger size quantities from Costco has been cost cutting, but I’d personally rather be buying more local fresh products and less prepackaged convenience foods. I’m also a numbers person, I know my prices and what’s a good deal, but they often change their prices without notice. They get you hooked on a product at the lower price and when you return to get more it’s gone up in price. This I really don’t like about Costco!

So how do you make warehouse shopping work for your family? Do you stick to certain staple items and deal items, or do you get your entire grocery orders there each week? I can honestly say, I’ve rarely stepped foot in my regular grocery stores since they opened. The other hard part of shopping there is the impulse purchases made in the General Merchandise section. Hubby and I did manage to each get a new pair of prescription glasses at a  really great price.

So are you a fan of warehouse clubs, or do you find you end up spending more money in the end?

I absolutely love summer and the sunshine. I’d be perfectly happy in a warm climate all year round, but alas I live in Canada a country with four distinct seasons. When mid to late August rolls around every year I get anxious and antsy knowing that if there are things I wanted to do or accomplish in the warmer months it’ll now have to wait until next year.

Some things I really wanted to accomplish this summer that will now have to wait:

1. Teaching Mr. L. how to ride his bike without training wheels.

- The odds were really stacked against us with this. Firstly Liam’s bike (that was given to us by a kind CPO’er) was stolen in broad daylight right from our driveway. Fortunately we did have  a replacement bike but he found it really hard to pedal. In the spring I had envisioned us hanging out at Harbour Passage taking family bike rides all summer, but this was also thwarted by overhead construction on the City’s Harbour Bridge closing down the Cranberry Trail for the entire summer and next summer too. Boo!

2.  Getting to PEI for Camping

-Although we did get to do two weekends of camping I would have really liked to camp over on PEI again. The last time we were over was the summer of 2008 for just 2 nights, it would have been great to spend an entire week at Twin Shores Campground, but vacation time did not permit this summer. Instead we were able to take a few long weekends camping in Sussex and at my mothers summer place in Wickham on the St John River. (see photo at the top of this post)

3. Magic Mountain in Moncton 

-Magic Mountain is Atlantic Canada’s largest waterpark and since the kids really enjoyed Calypso Park outside of Ottawa I thought it would be great to finally be able to take them to Moncton’s smaller scale version. I’m still a little optimistic that we may still be able to fit it in, as I just received some free passes from a friend and they expire on Aug 31. I won’t completely rule it out yet.

4. Having friends and their families over 

-Each summer I say we’re going to have more get-togethers with friends, but we never seem to make it a priority. Although this year these efforts may have been discouraged by number 5 and not wanting to have to crisis clean everytime we wanted to have anyone over.

5. Getting the house organized and decluttered 

-Last summer you may remember I hired a professional organizer to help me with some hotspots in the house, specifically the basement/family room area. I’m happy to say that this area, is still “relatively” decluttered. I can’t say the same for the rest of the house, especially the kitchen and my new pantry. As well since Costco opened in town, my fridge and deep-freeze could use a good once over.

6. Teaching the boys to swim independently

-I had high hopes that the two bigger boys would be swimming independently this summer, but we just didn’t get out to my dad’s pool enough. Sadly we only got one swim day in at dad’s all summer and Ciaran missed it as he had pneumonia. I had thought about enrolling the boys in outdoor lessons, but was worried that the weather may not cooperate and with my skinny little microboys they’d be freezing and not want to go on foggy or overcast days. This turned out to be a mistake as this has to have been the best summer we have had in 20 years in the city!

I know there’s lots of other things that I’m missing, but these are the things that have been weighing on me the most as summer winds down. I know we’ve been extremely fortunate this summer to be able to do a fair amount of travelling. We’ve been able to take advantage of some great travel deals and even got to take my mother-in-law on one trip with us to Sebago Lake in Maine while Kenz was away at summer camp. I just can’t get that nagging feeling that I didn’t get everything accomplished and it makes me just a wee bit sad.

-So long Summer Twenty Ten, you will be missed!

Your friend,

Cara

So far this summer my 13 almost 14 year old has been moping around, not doing much of anything. The first week of the summer she went to an art camp for teens at our local Arts Center and really enjoyed it, but since she’s not done much of anything but some artwork on the computer and babysitting her youngest brother on baseball nights for a couple of hours here and there.

Last week she did the above fabulous illustration using Paint and it got my mind going that I could hire her to do my new banner image for my Blog. We’re upgrading to a newer version of Wordpress that has a theme to allow you to customize the top banner image to a photo or image of your own. I gave her a deadline and some elements that I’d like to see in the banner and have been checking in daily to see the progress. I can’t wait to see the finished product!

We just got back from a great stay in Ottawa! What a wonderful city for families to visit so much to do, see and learn!

We spent 4 nights at the Marriott Residence Inn Downtown and were able to take advantage of the Chip Trip Discount so we got two of our nights half price! Residence Inns are set up great for families, most units have a full or mini kitchen with a full size fridge, sink and microwave to take advantage of. This property also had a free full buffet breakfast including a make-your-own Waffle station, scrambled eggs, sausage, beans, fruit, cereals, bagels, muffins and I could go on and on! It was the highlight of my morning!

Our visit was a combination of meeting up with friends that live locally and getting together with some CPO’ers, some that I’ve had the pleasure to meet before and others I got to meet for the first time! Here are some of the things we got to do while in the area  and a few that we missed but hope to be ale to do on our next visit with the kids to the area. We will definitely be back!

Parliment Hill- Changing of the Guard

Plan to arrive a little early around 9:45am for the Daily Changing of the Guard Ceremony at 10:00am (weather permitting) all summer long. I think this is a definite must see and the boys loved the musical March!

The Canadian Museum of  Nature

We met up with friends of ours that have boys that are 2 and a half and almost 4 and they thoroughly enjoyed their visit! We didn’t do the entire museum but did get to see the Dinosaur/Fossil Gallery, The Chorus of Colours Frog Exhibit and RBC Blue Water Gallery. Liam was pretty upset we didn’t get to see Bird Gallery but hunger was calling. Here’s a few candid shots:

If camping is you thing there’s a few campgrounds in a the area, one that some of our CPO’ers stayed at was Rideau River Provincial Park We headed out for a get together one afternoon and for thos interested there is also a discount  for Ontario Parks for half price Day admission via Chip Trips. Most of the gals knew about them so the guys ate the front gate where wondering where everyone got them..LOL

The park seemed like a great campground, one that I would definitely like to stay at possible in the future. The boys had a great time splashing around with all the other CPO kids! Can you guess which ones are mine?

Calypso Park

Brand new to the Ottawa area this summer is Canada’s largest water theme park Calypso Park!  We had a fantastic time at this 100-acre facility! There was something for everyone including rides all of us could do together.

Plan to arrive early and on a weekday if possible, we went on a Monday and there was a police officer directly traffic right of the highway exit. The park opens at 10:00am. we got there just before that and it was great timing. We had to wait a few minutes to redeem our passes at the gate. The park is a little pricy at $32 and $25 (for under 1.32metres) but I redeemed some Airmiles for passes for everyone.

Once we got in we headed straight for the grassy area in front of the huge Pirate structure and grabbed a picnic table with an umbrella and left our stuff there for the day. Here’s a few photos from our fabulous day there

We missed out on a lot of other things to do in Ottawa so that just makes me look even more forward to going back again!

Last night as I was slaving over a hot steamy stove and oven making spaghetti and garlic cheese bread, I got thinking that I need to plan my meals according to the weather. So how do you meal plan in summer? Do you sit with the weather forecast in one hand, the sales flyers in another while juggling your kids’ evening sports schedule? Or do you have a better system for the dog days of summer?

Another challenge is the location of my eat-in kitchen/dining room. Around dinner time, my kitchen is like a sauna as this is the time of day that this side of the house gets the most sunlight and this side of the house has the most windows- a large 3 pane bay window, a window in the backdoor and another window over the kitchen sink. So on a warm day combined with all of these factors it can make dinnertime a challenge.

I know using my slow cooker would solve a lot of my woes and I tend to try and fit in at least one or more slow cooker recipes into my plan, but sometimes by the time dinner rolls around no one ‘feels like’ having what was prepared due to the weather or the kitchen temperature or because we need to rush to get out the door to baseball.

So my question is to all of you great meal planning parents out there- How do you tweak your meal plan for busy summers?

CHIPS!  Did I really say that? I have to admit I have a weakness for potato chips. I crave these salty snacks all the time and when I found out that I could save money on one of my favourite things to do [read: Travel] I was intrigued!

Enter Lays Chips and their newest promotion Lays Chip Trips. Each specially marked bag has at least 5-15 bankable points, with new flavours offering 2x the points! It didn’t take long before we had a few hundred points banked with family members and friends helping.

If you’re planning on doing any traveling or even just hitting up some local attractions this summer, you’ll need to stop by the Lays Chips Trips site and check out some of the rewards.  Many are vouchers for buy one get one free entrance to attractions, for as little as 5-10 points. Then there is even rewards for Marriott and Quality Hotels across the country, that you can cash in 50pts for a voucher to Stay one Night, Get the Second Night 50% off! All you need is a working printer and a salty tooth and you’ll be on your way to saving this summer!

We’ll be using our first Chip Trip Reward this weekend at the Quality Inn Halifax, I’ll be sure to come back and write about my experience using the voucher. I love to travel, but I love saving money even more. When I plan our trips, I try and stretch my dollar as far as it can go, so this promo really has me excited. Even if you’re not planning on using the travel rewards there are also food offers -free kids meals at Boston Pizza, there was also a $5 Subway Gift Card Offer, but I think that they may have exceeded their quota on that one.

So thanks Lays, for this great promotion and I hope some of you can take advantage of some of the ‘trips’ they’re offering!

I knew the time would come that my dear daughter would not want to tag along on family trips, but I didn’t think it would be this soon! She’ll be 14 in the fall and her next closest sibling (all boys) is 7.5 years old. She’s just not interested in doing the same things that the boys are interested in, and makes sure her opinion is heard loud and clear.

Lately we’ve been allowing her some more freedom to opt out of family activities, as when we force her to join us, she makes it known pretty quickly she does not want to be there and everyone is soon miserable as well.

How do other families with age gaps like this deal with this problem? I really don’t want her to miss out on our family travels to Ottawa and Montreal this summer, I would really like for her to come, but am I sending mixed signals by giving her the option to stay home with grandparents?

Two weeks from now she’s going on her Class trip to Quebec City for school for 4 days, and she said that’s the only trip she really wants to go on this summer. I can’t imagine, not wanting to travel. I loved each and every family trip we went on, but I also only had one brother who was 20 months younger than me. Perhaps having 3 much younger brothers would have been pure torture to me as well?

I really hope I’m doing the right thing by allowing her to opt out, I’ve been struggling with this for weeks!

Our Food Revolution began last Sunday and I’m happy to say it’s been going better than expected! I knew L-man would be the challenging one in the house. He was a great eater as a baby and toddler then suddenly became extremely picky. He was even pickier than I was as a kid and that says a lot! Sunday night I made a homemade spaghetti bake. It was basically spaghetti with meat sauce, some added Parmesan cheese , 2 eggs, a layer of cottage cheese all added to a 9 x 13 baking dish topped with mozzarella and baked for about 20 minutes. L- man likes pasta and eats canned pasta like zoodles so I tried to get him to give this a try. He wouldn’t even try a bite!  The little two really enjoyed it, but he was not going to try it at all!  Dad put us foot down and said we weren’t going to make a separate meal for hm and we went on with our evening.  We watched episode 1 of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and it was like a lightbulb went off after the show. I asked him if he’d like me to heat up his food and he actually ate it! Finally progress!

I think I may also have the boys off of chicken nuggets!  They were grossed out by how they were made and then next night I made some homemade popcorn chicken and corn on the cob and they loved it! I explained that the chicken I made was real breast meat and not the leftover bits and they were asking for more!

The next night we watched another episode and again the kids were eager to try things out! This time it was a stir fry with fresh veggies. The boys helped me chop up broccoli, yellow sweet pepper, Carrots, onions and garlic. We stir fried it all with chicken and some broth and served it over rice noodles! A huge hit, even L-man got into the action with wanting to stir the dish. We hit a little road bump on Wednesday, our littlest had surgery that morning and I was exhausted by supper so I knew we would have to do take out. Fast food would have been easy but with the progress we had been making I knew this would be one step back. I opted for pre-cooked rotisserie chicken instead.  I prefer to make mine in the slowcooker, Memphis Style but time was not on my side, so I ordered a few side dishes ( mixed veggies and baked potatoes) and  it wasn’t too a horrible meal! There was a little bit left over so I was able to make some lunch the next day with the chicken and made wholewheat chicken quesadillas and the boys requested some pizza, so instead I made pizza quesadillas and baked them in the oven.  They were a huge hit!

I hope week two goes as smoothly. I’m planning on making the meal plan together with the kids this week to see if can get them to try even more foods this week!

A few weeks ago hubby and I had a funny discussion after getting our 5 and 7 year old settled down for bed one evening about iPhone and iTouch kids apps.  Who would have thought when we first got these devices over 2 years ago, that the kids would also benefit from them and enjoy them as much as we do.  The other thing we wondered was how many other parents allow their kids to use these pricey gadgets? I know 2 years ago, I would never have thought there would be as many apps geared towards kids like there is now.

I even stumbled across this website that is entirely dedicated to apps for kids: http://www.bestkidsapps.com

So I thought I’d share a few apps that I currently have on my iPhone that our boys have been enjoying:

 Lego Photo

What little boy doesn’t like Lego?  Lego Photo can take your iPhone’s images and Lego-ize them!

Tic Tac Toe

Play against the iPhone or 2 player, this is a game that is always great for killing time.

Math Magic

One of the better Math apps out there as it also contains multiplication and division along with addition and subtraction.  You cantime yourself, and randomize the equations as well. There’s also a control panel that parents can customize.

Early Reader

This is a great app for kids just learning sight-words and phonics.  It also has sound to it, so kids can repeat what they’re hearing although you should be forewarned the phonics voice does speak with a slight accent, so my 5 year old did tend to repeat words with the accent. It’s pretty cute to hear!

If you’ve managed to read this far I also wanted to include that “I’m participating in a contest at Best Kids Apps, a blog about iPhone apps for kids, for a chance to win an iPad.”

Also check out CPO’s Feature

Top Mobile Apps for Families

This past weekend we took the kids away for a last minute impromptu trip to Maine.  I got a great deal on the Marriott for the night and wanted to pick up something we ordered for Finn so it worked out nicely.

When we go away, we try and book a hotel with an indoor pool.  The kids love to swim and it’s a nice way for the whole family to do something together. The pool at the Marriott was quite small and it being a Saturday night it was fairly busy too.  We followed in a dad and his young daughter who was perhaps 4 years old, and entered complete chaos. There was about 5 boys between the ages of 8-12 all acting extremely rambunctious.  Diving into the pool, running around the pool deck and cannon balling until it, splashing people sitting on the side of the pool, throwing a ball back and forth and hitting people all while their parents sat along the poolside saying nothing.

Hubby brought Finn into the pool and he was so petrified of these boys he clung to his dad, and ended up with getting a face full of water numerous times.  Ciaran my tiny 5 year old wouldn’t even go near the pool he was so scared. This whole incident reminded me of a recent CNN article that was discussed at length on the TodaysParent.com Forums about how babies should banned from planes, movie theatres, restaurants, and any other public place for that matter and it sparked up a heated conversation about not just babies but all childrens behaviour in public places.  I can tell you one thing, if my kids ever behaved the way these boys did, they would be out of the pool immediately!  It was clear that there were younger children in the pool, but these parents did nothing, they did not say a word to their kids. I know hubby was ready to blow a gasket in the pool especially when they came very close to jumping on Finn and he may have exclaimed a, “Please be careful guys!” I’m just wondering how you would have handled a situation like this?  Eventually I got in the pool and made sure to stand directly in the middle of it so these hellions could no longer run and jump in, or they would have landed directly on me.  The other dad with the young girl was clearly annoyed as well, but did not say anything. I’m just wondering what others would have done in this situation?