We often travel to Wisconsin to visit my family. It is a 4 hour drive, so are always looking for ways to keep the kids busy and entertained.  Bill hates to stop, so it is a long four hours.  A great item to check out for car rides, bedtime, and really any time is the Giddio Audio Adventures.  We listened to the Billy Brown Goes Hiking CD on our drive home, and it was a life saver for us.  Will was super crabby, and the only thing that made him quit screaming was this CD.  It definitely holds your children’s attention.  It is geared towards kids aged 3 – 7 (though it worked on my 1 year old too!)  This is actually pretty cool.  Instead of a narrator reading a story, there is a full cast.  Everyone has their own voice.  I love that it makes my kids use their imagination.  I’m not the only one who likes this either — it has won several awards (Dr. Toy’s Best Products 2007, several iParenting media awards, and Creative Child magazine’s Seal of Excellence).  We ended up having to listen to it more than once, because they like it so much (run time is between 30 – 45 minutes depending on which CD you are listening to).

I love that you can even try this out.  If you go to their site, you can download Billy Brown And The Mystery Package for free!  You can also print off the CD covers and have your kids color them!  I highly recommend checking this out as a great alternative to TV!

Do you have problems taking pictures of yourself with others? Do you find your arm ending up in the shot? Do you find that you aren’t in any shot, because you are always taking the picture? Do you find that you and your subject have to pose awkwardly just to get you both in the picture?  (Thanks to Christine for use of her arm picture).

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to get an xShot.  What is an Xshot?

XShot is a telescopic stainless-steel rod that adds three feet of reach to any point-and-shoot or hand-held video camera. It is super easy to use. All you need to do is screw your camera into the Xshot to get to work. No screwdriver is required! You can make the xShot 9 inches all the way up to 37 inches. Want to see how easy it works? (Thank you Julie for the pictures!)

The first picture shows you how the xShot works. The second picture shows the actual picture that was taken. Its pretty awesome, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t it be nice to be on vacation and not have to ask a stranger to take your picture?  I personally found it super easy to easy.  I had no problem putting my Cybershot camera on there and taking lots of awesome pictures (unfortuntaly, my camera is broke, and I can’t get any of my pictures off.  I am waiting for a cable to fix this problem from Sony).  My fear was that I wasn’t going to be able to take steady pictures.  It was actually super easy.  I had absolutely no problems with it.  I found the xShot super lightweight (it’s only 5 oz).

When can you use this?  Some perfect times would be when you are traveling, hiking, camping, vacation, the beach, parties, concerts, sports events, etc.  I know that the xShot will be an item that will come with us no matter where we go!