A Day Out With Thomas 2009 – North Conway, NH read more about our day here.
GIVEAWAY: By The Book: How to Take Care of My Kids
As the countdown nears an end, I host my last giveaway during this blast. On July 17th I will be meeting @MommaDJane at the airport for the first time. I am nervous mainly because I have to drive without my husband, who is my navigator! It will be okay I am sure maybe, just maybe I will be able to talk him into coming with me when the day comes.
Today I am excited because I get to offer you a super giveaway … this is an e-book but can also be found in hard cover. The book is called “By The Book: How to Take Care of My Kids” and is packed full of useful information. This book will cover every area possible for your parenting pleasure!
I have read this book in e-book format and may be buying the hard copy towards end of year!! I prefer hard bound books, but an e-book is super too, when you are in a hurry to read something, which I most certainly was in this case!
By The Book Kids: How to Take Care of My Kids
A resource meant to assist you in parenting. Ever have a caregiver for your children, walk out the door & get to your night out when you realized that you hadn’t told them everything they needed to know? This book has forms and even a website where you can go print more forms to use. It includes everything from your child’s daily routine to a nanny child care agreement.
The Mission: Putting the parent, the caregiver and the child all on the same page.
The What: A personalized manual for taking care of your kids anytime, anywhere, by anyone.
The How: The guidelines are provided, and you get to customize the forms.
Great For: Nannies, caregivers, work at home parents, anyone who may take care of your children.
This is the perfect manual for a mom like me, super busy with super busy kids who all have different favorite items, specific routines and one who has different discipline than the others.
BUY IT: You can purchase this hard cover book at 25% off by using code BTBK7757. Purchase this book online here.
WIN IT: You can win a copy of this book in e-book format by completing the below entry requirements.
Giveaway starts NOW and ends 12am EST on Jul 24th
First head on over to the By The Book: How to Take Care of My Kids and come back here with something you just love about this manual.
Next … get one extra entry for doing any or all of the following, please leave one comment each:
- Blog about this giveaway linking to both Happily Blended {www.happilyblended.com} and By The Book: How To Take Care of My Kids {www.bythebookkids.com}
- Follow @karmelpub and @brandyellen on twitter and tweet to both of us about this giveaway including the link, use www.tinyurl.com to shorten the link if you wish.
- Join my Happy Friends on my sidebar {Google Friend Connect}
- Stumble, share on facebook, add to technorati favorites, etc
Good luck and have fun!
Inbox Nightmares? Organization Tips
Are you having inbox nightmares? Do you wake up with so many emails that your eyes pop out of your head, your shoulders slump and you sit back just wondering WHEN you will be able to actually “work” today? Let me tell you that you are not alone, many work at home professionals and entrepreneurs have the same issues. What I can tell you is you have a friend, ME. I am here to help lend some tips on what works for me, and how I personally keep my inbox tidy so that I have a more productive day.
First, depending upon which email service provider you use these terms may be different. I use Gmail, and “folders” are called labels and so my terminology will reflect a Gmail account, however, I am here to answer your questions so I invite you to have a round table discussion right here about organizing your inbox, we can all learn from each other.
Next let’s start with what type of emails you receive in your inbox daily:
- Personal – family, friends, etc
- Business email – co-workers, employees, clients, etc
- Event confirmations – reservations, trips, etc
- Subscriptions – newsletters, blogs, etc
- Junk email – SPAMMERS
I would love to have a different email account for everything, but the reality is “time is money” and so I can’t spend the majority of my morning checking multiple inboxes. I have all of my email accounts set to send and receive through my Gmail account, this makes things a lot easier. If you do not currently have your email accounts set to send to one inbox, you may check your settings and set up the email accounts according to the email provider instructions so that you have all email heading to one inbox.
Let’s go on by creating a level of priority, should you read all your subscription emails first thing? Maybe, maybe not. I have an addiction to reading blogs, and so my inbox is filled every morning with my favorite bloggers updates. Reading blogs is not my first priority of the day and so I have created a label for “read later”, this easily allows me to access the new updates from my favorite bloggers at a later time in the day without having them take up space in my “inbox” area.
Once the blog subscriptions have been filed into the appropriate label, read later, I move on to delete all spam/junk emails. This is usually invitations to ning groups, reminders, and similar types of emails. I simply delete them all, mainly because I am already a part of too many ning groups and I don’t need to read through all of the new ones. If something catches my eye as possibly being an interest, I place it in my read later folder.
After that you should have mostly important emails, such of those from clients, friends or family. My family rarely emails me and if they do it’s of an important nature so I read them first. Next I move on to my client or prospect emails, if they are something that can be done later I simply file in my To Do folder.
You can also create folders such as the following as it pertains to what level you wish to organize:
- Low
- Medium
- High
As you have your inbox organized into appropriate levels of importance you can then go through each of them to review based on high priority down to low priority. This makes your day more productive! Why you ask? Well because now you will not be wasting any time on subscriptions or low priority emails, you will simply be reading and responding to those emails that require your immediate attention.
I have implemented this inbox organization strategy for months now with much success, I am curious to see what you do differently, what you do the same and what you do that has worked consistently?
Featured Review: Honest Baby Tee Shirt
I was grateful to receive an Honest Baby tee shirt for Baby K. I have some video coverage of him wearing his cute shirt that says “I’m My Mom’s Job”, which I hope you will watch later on in this post.
Honest Baby tee’s are just so cute and oh so true! There is one that says “Not sleeping through the night” and yes that would have been perfect for AJ when he was a baby. That boy never slept and still rarely does (we are working on figuring out why with a lot of testing), anyways, I just love the tee shirts at Honest Baby, bright colors, choice for every baby boy or girl.
Honest Baby also has some great toys, not that I have yet been able to buy any but holiday time is coming! Enter code honesti and get FREE shipping, how cool is that? I love free shipping!
Honest Baby has more than just great products, they are a community where parents can share their own story of real parenting experiences, read blogs, articles and similar stories in a non-judgmental community. I will certainly be spending some time over there because I love a place that shows the “real parenting” side of things. Being a parent is not always easy and Honest Baby has made a great community where you can truly relate to others and let your baby wear a tee shirt that tells the world what they are thinking in an honest way.
So if you are a parent looking to show off your honest baby, why not get them a tee? Head on over and check out the community, shop and blog. Let me know what you think of the Honest Baby site.
North Conway, NH Thomas Was a Blast
We had a blast Saturday on our Day Out With Thomas 2009!! This was a fun filled day of playing, riding Thomas, getting kids pictures taken and oh yeah Flip coverage for sure! I will have to get the video clips put together soon to place on my YouTube, Newbaby.com and MomTV.com accounts, but been busy cleaning house on Sunday to get ready for @MommaDJane’s stay on Friday, she will be staying three nights, this is my first ever house guest that is not family.
The day with Thomas was located in North Conway, NH at the North Conway Scenic Railway, fantastic place!! Small little village full of little shops, a nice common area to run (yes we let the kids get their wiggles out after arrival and before leaving). We drove 3 hours to spend a day with Thomas and I will say it was so worth every screaming kid moment 
To start, we arrrived 1/2 hour before our train was to depart. We met Sir Topham Hatt, who was very LARGE and scared AJ a little bit, but he shook hands with him along with his big sis. Baby K sat in his stroller most of the time with the exception of when he was trying to escape from the stroller, so Daddy carried him. Both Ki and AJ had their picture taken in front of Thomas and next to Sir Topham Hatt. The pictures will cost us money to buy, so we have a ticket where we can order online at a later date.
Next we went on the train to depart on a 25 minute ride, the perfect length for a busy AJ and Baby K. Both boys will be having a birthday in August turning 1 and 3, and have a very short attention span, way different than my daughter is or ever was. I did get a clip of Ki pouting because she had to share the train window with her brother (poor girl). AJ sat in the seat next to the window with on hand up on the sill and his head nearly out the window, yes we had to remind him a few times to keep his limbs and head inside that window. As the train chugged along we saw the fantastic view of the White Mountains and even spotted a family swimming in a creek under a bridge. The family waved to us and we waved back. The train was rather hot as all we had were the windows opened, no A/C, the breeze was not enough to keep us cool.
After the train went forward a bit, we started backwards, and me being the not so quick thinker, did not switch my seat and so backwards I went and dizzy I got. I could feel my face turning red, my stomach turning and my eyes watering, I was ready to get off of that train. Not to mention this was my first train ride so I didn’t realize it’s almost like a boat … back n forth motion … oh the sickness!
We had fun on the train ride, minus my stomach starting to turn and after we got off the train we proceeded to find more fun things to do. One great thing I must point out about geting on the train – they had stroller parking, FREE of charge. I love free, and I couldn’t believe the event was so kid friendly that they even thought of having stroller parking. When we got off the train our stroller was right there on the other side waiting for us, so wonderful!
After our train ride, the event was nearing an end, so we rushed to get the kids maps stamped. Oh yeah, the kids were able to get a cute map of the area and had to visit four stations, Sir Topham Hatt, storytime area, gift shop and imagination station, each place they received one stamp on their map. After the children were able to get four stamps they traded their map in for a free gift, cool thing is – they let the kids keep their map! So many cute scrapbooking items we have from this trip I tell ya!
Due to the train ride being near closing time the kids were only able to take a cute run around the hay maze and get their face painted. AJ played with wooden train sets while sissy had a pretty butterfly painted on her face. This was our last stop – Imagination Island, a huge tent full of fun games for the kids to enjoy! Although, since the event was nearing an end the kids were not able to get into the bouncy house, and so the pouting began AGAIN. Man I think my daughter should get an award for “most pouting” while having fun.
That is it for now, I am sure I will write more about this fun filled event, because it was the most exciting day of my life. I spent the whole day smiling non-stop and the last time I did that?! Was my wedding day May 2007.
Are you looking to see Thomas in your area? Visit PBS Sprout online, click on parents, then events and you will see a listing of when Thomas is heading to your area!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c7d32ad2-1cca-4cd1-958b-486e4624ac93)
You Have THREE Kids????!!!!
One thing that really bugs me is the response I get when I tell someone I have three kids, now normally people see me with the two boys – both are in diapers and they will be 3 and 1 in August – yes they are exactly 2 years and 6 days apart. I also have a daughter from a previous relationship who will be 7. Yet, no one gets why in the world we would have three children. I would quite honestly have MORE if I could, and if it was reasonable for our family, but just the three are rather costly and take up a lot of time. The children do not take up time in a negative way, but I could not imagine trying to share my attention with another one, I can already see the competition for “mommy time”. My oldest, who was raised by me being overal single for the first three years of her life, found it hard to cope with a new brother and then two years later we had another BOY. She was so devastated, she wanted a baby girl sister, but I keep telling her that it’s great to be the ONLY GIRL because now she gets Mommy and girl time ALONE without the boys! If she had a sister she may have to share that time
Well today I have a video to share with you about all the things I get frustrated with, which includes the sentence, “YOU HAVE THREE KIDS??!!” .. I hope you enjoy watching it and leave a comment with your feedback, or share your story too!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d643b967-3463-44fd-ba33-199cf71760c9)
