Disney Channel

Say what you will about the Disney corporation, but you have to hand it to them; they do a great job of giving kids what they want. From the High School Musical(s) phenonmenon to the Disney Channel "Happy U Year" shout outs, they have kids fascinated. I just visited http://www.disney.com/ and saw the New Year shout outs my girls put on there. They are really cute. I sent them to my family so they could see them as well. All of the videos on the site are clean, short and a great way for kids to communicate. Disney has done it again!

Benazir Bhutto

Just read the news that Benezir Bhutto has been assassinated. How sad, how disheartening! I always admired her. What will become of Pakistan? Hopefully peace and calmness will be restored. By whom, that is anyone's guess at this point.

Rest in peace, Minister Bhutto. At least you tried.

Waiting 'Til the Last Minute!

This is soooo not like me, but I have waited until the last minute to do my shopping. There's not much time for me to write about it here, but I still need to run to Kohl's, Target, American Eagle, Old Navy, and Finish Line Sports. All this to do and so little time. Most of my time is eaten up in traffic and travel time to get to the stores. Not knowing my way around very well doesn't help me much either. To top things off, my mother-in-law is here for a three week visit and I feel like I need to entertain her. I think I will leave her to her own devices today and trust that she will get my 6 year old off the bus at 11:25 this morning. I've got to get going! Have a very merry one!

Mailing Packages-UPS vs. USPS

This is something new to me. I have never had to mail my Christmas gifts before. I'm afraid I am not going to get my stuff off in time for it to arrive by Christmas. I also don't know which is better; UPS or the United States Post Office. It all seems expensive to me, so I really need to just get my stuff ready to go--still making some gifts!--and get them out! I guess whichever place I see first will be the postal service I choose.

Paid Online Surveys

Have you ever been a member of a paid survey site? I have been doing surveys for a few years now and have found that some of them really do pay for the "work" you do. The one I have been a member of the longest is LightSpeed. Unfortunately, when our big move happened, I forgot about, and didn't have time to complete surveys, so I sort of lost track of what I had done. This morning it occurred to me to logon to the site and see what was going on with my account. I was discouraged to find that 2000 of my points had been forfeited because I didn't exchange them for money or merchandise in the allotted period of time, so I will have to start adding to what I still have and try to get back to where I was. I think I was saving my earnings to get some sort of gaming thing for my kids, but now I think I will just get the cash. Anyway, if you are curious about the whole survey taking gig, you should check out the LightSpeed site at http://www.lightspeedpanel.com and see if you would like to join. Of course, you will not get rich, and like me, if you don't keep up with it, you could lose what you earn, but it is still fun to fill out surveys if you have a little extra time on your hands.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Weight

I finally got to read my "People" magazine yesterday and just wanted to throw the whole Jennifer Love Hewitt weight thing onto my trash heap. I don't understand why the media and the entertainment industry has to be so critical. I thought that Jennifer looked like a normal person. I wish we could see all celebrities as they really are. Everyone fluctuates with their weight at different times in their lives. I don't see the big deal. If an actress gains a little weight, rumors start about being pregnant or being a pig or some such stupidity. If an actress loses weight rumors start about drugs and eating disoders. No wonder people don't know what normal is. If you read tabloids or watch any of the so-called entertainment news shows, no one is satisfied with the way a person looks. Thank goodness there are people like Jennifer Love Hewitt who, while those kinds of things hurt her feelings, she is able to rise above it and be true to herself. That to me is normal and noble in this day and age.

LED Christmas Lights: A Tangled Mess!

Last year I joined the bandwagon and purchased some LED Christmas lights to decorate our landscape. LED lights are supposed to be better for the environment and they use less electricity to light. I think proponents of LED lighting also claim that the bulbs don't burn out. Anyway, I purchased a couple of boxes last year for my blue spruce in my front yard. I say that I purchased only two boxes because the darn things are so expensive. The regular light strings are really cheap, so it is a shock when you see that a string of LEDs are $20.00. This year we live in a totally different house, but I had to make my lights work because it just isn't in our budget to replace any of our other Christmas lights with regular, let alone LED lights. I thought I was being super careful last year when I put all my lights away. I wound the strings around newspaper bolts and put them in totes; all safe and sound. Today, I took out my lights and started stringing them around my porch and the few trees and shrubs we have here at our new house. I got to the tree that I wanted to put the LED's on and they were so incredibly tangled that I felt like Chevy Chase in the "Christmas Vacation" movie. I stood there trying to get the wires untangled for an hour! I got so frustrated that I had to put them down and go inside for awhile. On my second try, I got them untangled, and strung around my tree, but I was exhausted! There must be something about the wires that makes those lights prone to entangling themselves. I had put them away in the same manner as my regular lights, but during their off-season the LEDs wormed their way into a nearly hopeless tangled bundle. They are way too expensive to just toss in the trash like I have been known to do when my old ones got so tangled, so here is my advice if you choose to use LED Christmas lights: be very meticulous when you put them away so you don't end up with a mess like I did!

I've Lost That Christmas Feeling

Perhaps you have read the children's book, "The Polar Express" by Chris Van Allsburg. It is a sweet story that the movie industry ruined when the movie version of it came out a few years ago. At any rate, the book sort of gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling when you read it. It has always been one of my favorite books to read to my girls, except for this year. I just can't seem to find that same "Christmasy" feeling this year. I want to have it. I want to be happy and want to make this year's Christmas a memorable one for my girls, but my heart feels heavy. Last week we took the girls to a Christmas pageant that a local private school put on. It was well done; with live animals and all the traditional Christmas hymns were sung by the choir, but still I'm just not feeling it. We had a lovely snowfall a couple of days ago, and even that didn't help lift my spirits. I am out of sorts. We are living in a new place and I don't talk to anyone other than my children and my husband (when he is speaking to me), I am far away from my family and won't be observing the traditions we started when we lived close to everyone. I keep praying every night that we get some good news, or that something good would happen in the world or just here at home so I feel like I'm not just going through the motions of life. I want to be inspired. I want to do good things. I want to be happy. I want to truly believe so that I can hear the silver bell jingle again!

Safe Toys for Christmas

I have recently been doing a little research on some of the toys and electronics my children are interested in receiving for Christmas. Let me tell you, what I have learned is that researching for information and searching for safe toys feels like an impossible task. My biggest problem is that my children are older. They range in age from 15 to 6. They still want toys and games for Christmas, but all the information out there is for infant and toddler toys. Are older children immune to the effects of lead, arsenic, and all the other heinous chemicals the Chinese are trying to poison us with? My youngest daughter wants a dollhouse. I have been hardpressed to find anything that has proof that the wooden ones don't have lead based paint and that the plastic ones are safe. My eight year old wants some Hannah Montana stuff--also a concern. My older ones want games and electronics, but who is to say that they are safe? I decided earlier this year that I would try not to purchase anything with a "made in China" stamp on it. It seems that everything is made in China or has parts that are made in China. It has been an impossible goal to set for myself. The other thing that is frustrating is that American made toys are few and very limited in scope. Not only are American toys hard to find, they are also terribly expensive! So, what am I to do? I don't have a solution yet, but if I come up with one, I'll let you know~

Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass

So this Friday, the much advertised "The Golden Compass" movie opens in theaters. When I first saw the trailers for the movie, I thought it might be a film I would take my daughters to. Nicole Kidman stars in it, so I thought it must be good. Now I am not at all sure that my family and I will be going to see it. I had received several of the e-mails regarding the author and what the series of books is about. I am a Christian, so I checked out what snopes.com had to say on the matter. Sure enough, the information I had been receiving is true. This fellow, Pullman, is a self-described atheist and agnostic (can you be both?) and has written this series of books in response to the Narnia collection by C.S. Lewis. I am all for freedom of speech and I think that everyone should be free to express themselves in any way they see fit, but I have decided that this movie and these books are not appropriate for my family. I usually like to see movies before I pass judgement on them, but for this one, I think we will just pass on it. I hope that others who believe in one God will do the same--just pass it by--and don't spend your money on the movie or the books. Everyone is entitled to watch and/or read whatever they want, but as for me and my house, we will not support something that doesn't fit what we believe.

It will be interesting to see what Nicole Kidman has to say about all of this because I was under the impression that she is a devout Catholic. I wonder if she has read the series of books and what she thinks about them. Some reviewers of the work claim that not only is the series anti-Christian, it is specifically anti-Catholic.