Until recently, I had not heard of Ta-Ka-Radi. However, now that we have it, we can’t stop playing it. This is a game that is perfect for the family. Ta-Ka-Radi involves players constructing a tower with spaces in-between three chosen tiles per level. After the tower is built, each player takes a turn pulling out a tile from any level and putting it on top.  The only rule is that you can’t touch the other player while they are making their move!  Now, if you are like me and live with an engineer, well, you are at an instant disadvantage!  However, even though I haven’t one yet, we have had a ton of fun playing with this.  This is too hard for Will and Madison to play.  However, they take the wood tiles and built towers with them every day.  They loves these just for their own use too.  Ta-Ka-Radi is made by a family-owned company in Maine. The tiles are made from native Maine hardwoods, and the game is packaged in personalized re-usable tote bags. Ta-Ka-Radi makes a fun and unique gift for the holidays and is great for a lot of family fun!

I have to apologize for not picking the winner sooner.  I had this brilliant idea to upgrade my blog to WP 2.7 yesterday, and well, things did not go well.  It took me all day yesterday to get my blog back into working order.  Now that it is working correctly, WP 2.7 isn’t too bad.  It is just going to take some time to get use to it.

The winner is Jessica Gugel! I will be emailing her shortly for her information! Congrats!

This is another unique toy from Oh! Toys.  I think my husband was just as excited to play with this as Madison.  This too is for ages 3 and up.  However, this does come with marbles, so if you have kids younger than three, you need to be very careful (the rule here is that Madison can’t play with this unless Will is napping).

Again, this is another toy that I like, because it makes my kids think. It requires them to think and do problem solving using creativity.  There are no bells and whistles; yet, Madison played with this for a good two hours the first day we took it out of the box.  Basically, what you do is make a track for the marble to work its way down. Right now, Madison is making pretty basic tracks with it. However, daddy did help her make a more intricate system like this one:

Also, clean up is awesome.  All of these pieces fit nicely into a bag that comes with it!  You don’t have to worry about how you are going to get all the pieces back in perfectly so you can close the box.  I also love that this is a toy that Madison can grow into.  Right now, she is only making very basic designs.  However, as she gets older, I know her designs will get more intricate.  This will also make it through the wear and tear of several children too.  It is made with good quality materials.  TheCugolino set contains 37 pieces and is 100% compatible with cuboro’s classic system.

Now, are you like me and impressed by the selection of unique toys from Oh! Toys? If so, I have the giveaway for you. Oh! Toys has offered to give one of my lucky readers a $25 gift certificate to their site. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave a comment on this post. Go check out Oh! Toys and tell me what you would use this gift certificate for!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
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This giveaway will end on December 9 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents only. Good luck!

As I have mentioned before, my family and I take a lot of trips up to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now, I live in Chicago, so that is about a four hour drive without hitting any traffic.  This can be a really long drive when you have a four year old and a one year old that you are trying to keep entertained.  There are just so many movies you can watch.  Plus, I like my kids to use their imaginiation, and these Tell Me A Story CDs do just that. Each CD has about 8 stories on it of varying lengths.  The Tell Me A Story CD is about seventy minutes long, and The Tell me A Story 2 CD is about sixty minutes.  I love that each story is told by a different narrator and has its own music.  Let me add, the music on the CDs is awesome.  Needless to say, I was surprised to see that Laura Hall is the composer (If you don’t remember who Laura Hall is, she was on Whose line is it anyway!).  These stories draw both you  and your in.  I often found myself sitting on the edge of my seat wanting to find out what was next.  We took these on our last to trip to Green Bay, and they passed the keep the kids busy test.  Madison (my four year old) actually wanted to listen to them more than once!

If you don’t want your kids sitting in from the of the television set all day and want them to use their imaginiation, you need to get these Tell Me A Story CDs.  They will keep your child both busy and happy!

As many of you may know, the majority of my friends and family live about four hours away from me. That means, that it is a long distance phone call for me to talk to them. When I found out about Tokbox, I was pretty excited to try it out.   Now, this is super easy to use.  I tried it out with a few people, and they were all impressed with the clarity of both the image and the audio.  I’ve tried other programs before (**cough**yahoo messenger **cough**) that the video was choppy.  When you’ve got little kids using these programs (which I have Madison talk to her cousins with it), they don’t understand the choppiness.  Mom doesn’t really care for it either.  However, there was no choppiness, no lagging, and really I have no complaints about Tokbox.  It took me less than 5 minutes to sign up for the service and get a chat started with one of my friends.  Now, the coolest part is that you both don’t even need to have a webcam (though the person initiating the call does I think).  Once you have your account set up, all you have to do is hit invite, and it will give you a link to pass onto the person you want to talk to.  You can even put this on your blog and/or social network profiles.  Then your visitors can click “Push To Talk” and connect to you in real time.  I’m not adding it here, because I really don’t think you want to listen to screaming kids which is usually how my day goes.  You can even record a video and email it someone too!

If you are looking to connect online, TokBox is the way to do it.  The clarity of the video and the audio can’t be beat, and it is so easy to use!