Road Trip

Just wanted to let you know I'm not neglecting the blog. I have just been pretty busy with moving and visiting family. I am currently in the middle of a 2 1/2 week trip all the way across the country to our new home in the east. And yes, we are driving with our children the whole way. Its going to be more than 3000 miles because we are not exactly taking the quickest route as we will be visiting family along the way. So this brings me to the question I would like to ask all you resourceful people out there. Is there anything you do to make road trips with small children more fun? Of course, I have the DVD player and some coloring books and small toys and plenty of snacks but if you know of anything else that can help I would very much appreciate it. I think after 50+ hours in the car we might run out of things to do!

Language Lessons

Here is a good question from Kristi. This is something I'm concerned about too.

"My son is about to start kindergarten and I am worried about the bad language that he’ll hear at school. How do I teach him about bad words without giving him more information than he needs? I don’t really want to list off every bad word in the dictionary, but I feel like he needs to know something about them. Help!"

Friday's Faves: Magazines

Anyone subscribe to a magazine that they love and they actually read and find useful? I don't really get any magazines right now but would if there was a great one I'm missing out on!

The Worn Out Word

Here is a question from Sarah:
"What is a good idea for old/worn out scriptures? Scott and I both have a set or two that we just don't know what to do with. We thought of giving them to investigators, but one set is too worn for that to be a good idea. I thought of saving one for Emma, but that's quite a few years away before she starts to need them, and she probably wants her own set with her name. Anyway, I'm at a loss, since I doubt a Used bookstore would take them, or the library (my fail-safes for other books)."

The Paper Problem

I recently ran across this article about what to do with children's artwork and projects. It had some great ideas so I thought I'd do a post about it.
Here is what we did this year at our house. I put all of Tyson's stuff from preschool, storytime, church, etc. in a box and kept it over the course of the school year. In June we got the box down and took a couple of hundred pictures of him with all of his projects. (It's digital-they are free!) Then, he helped me take most things to the trash. We saved a few of the favorites and put them in a binder. He was totally okay with it once I explained that we don't have room to keep everything and he will be able to look at it all whenever he wants in the pictures. Eventually I plan to make a photo book out of the pictures.

Here is a picture of something my sister has done. She has an unfinished basement so she just wallpapered her walls with artwork. She also keeps the favorites in notebooks, though.
Here are a few more ideas my sister gave me:
Magnetic paint: An easy way to hang up and display artwork.
Ikea has a bunch of cool magnet strips you could hang on the wall for displaying artwork. This one http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30117169 is only $0.99!
Scan artwork and just keep it in a file on the computer. Make photo books of the best pieces every so often.

Any more ideas out there? What do you do to manage the TONS of papers your kids bring home?

Videos on the Blog

From Rachel:
"I am having a dickens of a time getting a video posted on my blog. Basic question, how do you do it?

Here's what I've gone through already... I learned how to convert my .mod files to .avi since blogger only accepts certain kinds. I've edited my video to less than 100MB since that's the limit blogger accepts. I've tried uploading it to blogger by clicking on "new post" and the video link. For about 3 hours, it says the video will appear when its complete, but it never happens. I have no idea what the deal is!!!

Any blog video geniuses out there?"