family

Extreme Sports Kiddie Style

October 31, 2009 By Amanda Leave a Comment

So earlier this week my children decided to take up the extreme sport of laundry basket sledding (SO wish I had a photo to share!). Whilst Mommy was attempting to catch up on some pointless and depressing new, my two small people decided the would ride my large laundry basket down the family room steps while Poppaw looked on. After two apparently successful goes at it, KG decides it’s safe to add KJ to the mix. Placing KJ in the back of the basket and herself in the front (displacing the weight), they begin their descent. Alas, too much weight in the front causes the basket to flip and the smallest one to go flying ending in a crying bloody mess.

Luckily it was just a bloody nose, but it was enough to send KJ into hysterics and to stop Mommy’s heart for a minute (and ruin my favorite shirt). Afterwards, a ban was placed on all future indoor sledding expeditions.

But wait…

There’s more…

Not to be outdone by little sister, KG later stacks KJ’s potty seat on top of our toilet and attempts to climb up Mt. Killamommy to procure herself a small drinking cup from the cabinet. Surprisingly (only to her) the mountain comes crashing down, giving me yet another heart attack. Thankfully, she was not hurt; no blood was shed, no bones were broken. However, there is now a ban on indoor mountain climbing also.

As a side note, she did manage to get the cup before the toilets came crashing down. Sigh.

I swear my kids are out to kill me…or each other…or both.

Have your kids ever done anything crazy (read: stupid) like this?

Filed Under: Mama Says Tagged With: family, KG, KJ, trying to kill mommy

A Halloween Party to Replace the One that Wasn’t Whrrl Story

October 30, 2009 By Amanda 1 Comment

Be sure to click through to see the Whrrl Story!

Clue#2: You can find the next clue where my girls have their faces painted.

Filed Under: Mama Says Tagged With: family, Halloween Party, KG, KJ

Wordless Wednesday: Two for One: Fall Festival Joy

October 27, 2009 By Amanda 5 Comments

Wordless: Two For One: Fall Festival Joy

These fabulous pictures are part of Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday HQ.

Check out more of High Impact Mom’s Wordless Wednesday Photos too!

Clue #3: You’ll find the next clue where I try to break through.

Filed Under: Photo-blogging Tagged With: Fall Festival, family, Joy, KG, KJ, Photo-blogging

Gratituesday

October 12, 2009 By Amanda 1 Comment

gratituesday On a day like today when I’m exhausted and beyond tired of the way my family (the people who are supposed to know me and love me the most) treat me dirty, it can be extremely had to find things to be grateful for. I know…it’s whiny. I actually have a lot to be grateful for.

My children are healthy, smart, and kind…they have an amazing capacity for empathy.

My husband loves and supports me in all of ventures. He adores me and has been supportive of all my dreams.

The chance to give the teachers from our Special Education Department a box full of school supplies and a $75 gift card to use as they see fit, thanks to Office Max and Mom It Forward.

My church family is supportive of all my dreams and only slightly gives me a hard time about the time missed there.

My blogging friends, they love me just the way I am. They support me, they care about me, they worry about me, they encourage me…and when I don’t want to write they make me. My blogging friends are amazing…they love me despite the whining, the complaining, and the attitude I almost always have.

What are you grateful for today? Has someone touched your life this week and you just have to share!

This post is shared at Gratituesday on Heavenly Homemakers!

Filed Under: Thankfulness Tagged With: bloggy friends, family, Gratituesday, thanks

Ghost Town in the Sky as Seen by Our Family (Whrrl Story)

October 6, 2009 By Amanda 1 Comment

Family Vacation to Maggie Valley, NC Whrrl Story

October 6, 2009 By Amanda Leave a Comment

Many of you may have noticed I have been away for a bit, over the weekend my family and I packed up and drove down to the Smokey Mountains for some family fun with my sisters and new nephew, Holden. Here’s a look at our time in the cabin…stay tuned for Whrrl stories about our adventures to Ghost Town in the Sky and Biltmore Estate.

Filed Under: Community Impact Tagged With: Camping Trip, family, Maggie Valley

Top 10 Ways to Green Your Halloween

September 21, 2009 By Amanda 5 Comments

We decorated our house this weekend in the spirit of Halloween/Fall. After adding about a bagillion pumpkins, planted some gorgeous mums, and added some hay bales (which will cover our garden after fall) I thought it might be nice to share with you my top ten ways to green your Halloween. I asked some of my friends to share what they do to make their Halloween more green too!

Top 10 Ways to Green Your Halloween

*Claire from The Mom Claire suggests “Hay stacks are cute for decoration and can be used as a beautiful addition to your garden after Halloween is over!”

*Mom Most Traveled says to “Green Your Halloween by using a costume that can go in the kid’s dress-up box. Or that came from there.”

*Wendy Hagen also suggests you “borrow a Halloween costume or buy 1 at thrift store. or pray that your kid wants to be something you already have.”

*Kim from CraftyMamaof4 says of costumes:” my daughter uses one of her dance costumes as her Halloween costume that year. Sometimes we take them apart and we put them back together as something different.”

* Ilina Das Ewen also suggests: “We’re having a costume swap with a bunch of kids so we can reuse old costumes…saves money and reduces the waste of tossing out stuff that doesn’t fit anymore.”

*Create your own costumes. KG is going to be Strawberry Shortcake this year and we are making her outfit from clothes we already have in her wardrobe. All we added was a little paint to an already stained white tee.

*Use a Cloth or canvas shopping bags, or pillow case, to collect candy in. Saves on plastic bags.

*Give treats the little treaters can use again, mini-decks of cards, erasers, small boxes of crayons (on sale right now @ Walmart).

*If attending or throwing a Halloween bash, try to use locally grown/produced foods and products made locally. Try the local farmers market for great decorations and tasty treats!

*Hosting a party? Send evites rather than paper cards/flyers, also try using recyclable paper products or even better use reusable products (plates, napkins, silverware).

Ok, I’ve two more tips for greening your Hallowing..because I couldn’t leave these out:

*Use all the pumpkin parts. Roast pumpkin seeds, use the pulp in pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, or yummy pumpkin rolls.

*At the end of the holiday, store your Halloween decorations in a tub in your attic or garage so you can reuse them each year. (Great money saver too!)

Now, go drink some apple cider and take time to enjoy nature this Halloween.

I’d love to know what you do to make your Halloween more green, so please share with me!
Check out more things that work from We are THAT family’s Work’s for Me Wednesday.

Final Clue: You’ll find the prize info where you can learn more about me.

Filed Under: Green Living, Mama Says Tagged With: family, Green, Halloween, Top 10

Labor Day Weekend @ KY State Parks Whrrl Story

September 8, 2009 By Amanda 1 Comment

Be sure to click through to view the story. Last weekend we took the girls camping and to Big Bone Lick State Park to see some dinosaur bones. What did you do this weekend? Take a look at our story:

Filed Under: Mama Says Tagged With: Big Bone Lick, Dinosaurs, family, KY State Parks, Staycation, Whrrl

PUR Water Filtration Sytem Flavor Options: Review and Giveaway (CLOSED)

September 4, 2009 By Amanda 16 Comments

Update: Comment # 11 (Betty R.) is the winner! Congratulations!

We drink a lot of water in our house. I mean a lot. When we were still buying bottled water I was buying two 24 packs of bottled water a week. That’s a lotta water and a lot of plastic to sit in the landfills for 1000 years.

PUR Water Filtration System Flavor Options About a year ago, we invested in a PUR water pitcher. Not long after we got it I dropped the top and broke it. Not that it affected the purifying or really even the use of the pitcher, but it did affect the pouring and my spilling.

Since there wasn’t actually anything wrong with the pitcher itself, we did not replace it and would still be using it had I not been asked to review the new PUR Flavor Options recently.

Not A Fan of Flavored Bottled Water

Now, I must tell you I am not a fan of bottled flavored water and was a little apprehensive about trying it out. However, when I got a chance to try the Flavor Options out I was pleasantly surprised. Since the pitcher allows you to control how much or how little flavor you add to the water, I didn’t have to worry about taste overwhelming me. Also, the flavor wasn’t overly sweet (if you don’t hit the button 3 times) and didn’t have the artificial taste so many bottled flavored waters do.

School Lunches

With the addition of a little flavor I have found my girls are drinking even more water than previously and I have started adding a small reusable bottle of the lightly flavored water to KG’s lunches. She’s drinking it up and always asks for more when she gets home from school!

Filter Life Indicators

What was my biggest pet peeve in the old pitcher design has been eradicated with the addition of the automatic filter life indicator (which is a fancy way of saying a flashing light tells you when it’s time to change your filter.) I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

I can never remember to change my filter or when the proper time to do it is…or inevitably, we just quit using it or buy a new filter several months later. The new indicator flashes green when the filter is ok and doesn’t need to be changed, flashes yellow when it’s almost time to change, and flashes red when the time has come for a new filter.

Save Money

FYI: For all you frugalistas out there-You can save up to $600 a year drinking filtered water instead of bottled water!! That’s not a number to sneeze at, we could fund our trip to Disney World I keep telling the kiddos I’m going to take them on.

Community Responsibility

Another great thing about PUR is every time a PUR product is purchased, they donate a portion of their proceeds to Children’s Safe Drinking Water- an organization “focused on reducing sickness and death resulting from drinking contaminated water.”

We all know how important drinking water is to your health and the health of your family and now PUR has made it so much easier. Not just for my family, but for yours also!

Giveaway

PUR is giving away 1 PUR Flavor Options pitcher to a lucky reader!!

TO Enter:

Head over to PUR and check out all the different flavors available, then come back here and tell me your favorite flavor!

Extra Entries:

(You MUST comment separately to say each method)

*One bonus entry per day: Tweet “Win a PUR Flavor Options Water Pitcher and Keep Your Family Healthy http://tinyurl.com/mbdsrm ” Retweets don’t count.
*One bonus entry: Adding High Impact Mom to your blogroll.
*One bonus entry: Subscribing to High Impact Mom
*One bonus entry: Friend High Impact Mom on Facebook

Rules:

*Contest is open to all U.S. residents where legal under local statutes.
*Void where prohibited.
*No purchase necessary.
*Valid email address required. Entries with email addresses visible to the public will be deleted and are not valid.
*Valid entries will be received beginning Friday, September 4, 2009 thru 11:59pm Friday, September 11, 2009.
*Winner will be selected at random based on the list of valid comments using random.org.
*Winner will be notified via their email address and have 3 days to respond to the email from amanda(at)highimpactmom(dot)com

Good Luck! Happy Winning!

Don’t forget to enter one of our great giveaways we have going on this week!

Disclosure: PUR Water Filtration Systems sent my family a Flavor Options pitcher and two flavors to keep so I could do this review and giveaway.

Filed Under: Giveaways, Reviews Tagged With: family, Flavor Options, Giveaways, PUR, review, Water filters

A Morning To Do List Makes Our Mornings Run Smoother

September 1, 2009 By Amanda 2 Comments

Works For Me Wednesday Morning To Do List Makes Mornings run so much smoother Since KG started school three weeks ago, I have been struggling to find a way to make our morning run smoother. It’s not that she’s difficult to wake, it’s just that she is her father’s daughter and has little to NO motivation. In fact, I had been spending the majority of the morning urging KG to hurry up and eat, then prodding her along to the rest of her morning chores.

By the end of last week I was at the end of my rope. I had had enough. I just couldn’t figure out why this brilliant child who amazes people daily with her intelligence had to be reminded every day what she needed to do next.

Her schedule never changes. Wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush hair, brush teeth, put on shoes, make bed, and grab back pack. Late last week I ran across a magazine article suggesting we make a To Do list for her to follow. Ingenious! I am a lover of To Do lists!

It was SO simple, I just typed up a simple list with all the things KG needs to get done each day. I slipped it in a page protector, taped it to the fridge, and added a handy magnetic dry erase marker. With the addition of a timer our mornings run oh, so much smoother. I set the timer for 60 minutes (the time she has before we must leave) after I wake her. KG loves the responsibility of marking items off her To Do list and I love the ease of our mornings!

For more things that work, be sure to head over We Are THAT Family.

Don’t forget to enter one of our great giveaways we have going on this week!

Filed Under: Mama Says Tagged With: family, KG, School, works, Works For Me Wednesday