I personally believe books always make great gifts. We have installed into our children how important reading is, and you can tell. Both my one year old and my four year old can often be seen flipping through books without Bill or me even around.  This is why I l love companies like GiftLit who make it easier to give books as gifts to both children and adults alike.

GiftLit has an advisory board of librarians, educators, authors, and industry experts that select the books that are sent out, so you know these are great books. They have books for every age too!  They have books for toddlers on up.  They way this works is you pick with selection of books you want.  If you are looking at the kids books, you can choose which age group you want.  For adults, you can pick anything from fiction to mysteries to history.  You can also choose how long you want your gift subscription to last.  You can buy them in 3, 6, or 12 month increment.  The best part of this is that this is the gift that keeps on giving.  Instead of the one present you get Christmas morning, you can potentially have a gift every month of the year.

We have this come to our house, and we love it.  The books are great quality books that I would have never thought to check out.  Also, what kid doesn’t like to get mail for them?  Actually, what adult doesn’t like getting a present in the mail each month?  This is truly the gift that keeps on giving, and I am deciding which book lover in my family is getting this.  If you’d like to get this for yourself or as a present, just make sure you use the code LISA1130, so you can get 10% off your order!

Brighter Minds Media has now introduced Bob The Builder Can Do Zoo. It has already been awarded three awards — that’s how good it is!  I let my greatest kid tester in my house try it out — that would be Madison who is 4.  Since we have gotten the game in the mail (thanks Family Review Network!), Madison goes around singing “Bob the Builder . . . We can do it  . . . Bob the Builder . . .  Yes we can”.  That has been my house for a week now.  However, I don’t actually mind all the much, because we really like this game.  As soon as I found out the Diner Dash (my favorite computer game ever) was behind this, I knew we had a winner.

Bob The Builder Can Do Zoo has 3 modes of play – Story, Free Play, and Sticker Book.  There is also 6 animal habitats to build,  7 unique learning activities, and hundreds of stickers to collect for building achievements.  There are three levels, so it is quite easy to pick the level that is best for your kids.  You are able to play in both English and Spanish.  There are also many skills taught through this game – problem solving, critical thinking, object classification, planning and time sequencing, pattern, size, and spatial recognition, and shape and color identification.

Why is this game a winner in my house?  That is actually pretty easy.  First, this game works on our desktop that is 8 years old.  Most games won’t work on there, and we actually consider that Madison’s computer.  When a game works on there, we all cheer for joy.  The second thing that I loved was that she was actually learning something while playing.  There are a lot of games out there that are just mindless, and I would much rather have her playing games like this.  Next, the price is right.  It should retail around $19.95 which is very cheap and affordable for a computer game.  Lastly, Madison can play this herself.  I didn’t have to help her at all.  She is only four, but that say a lot about this game.  It is truly simple and age appropriate.  Nothing is more frustrating than to get a game for her, and I have to play it because it is too hard to do and/or navigate.

If you are looking for a great Christmas or birthday present, I highly recommend Bob The Builder Can Do Zoo.  It was a big hit in my house and will be in yours too!

I want to thank everyone who entered. It ended up being an awesome giveaway — with all of the extra entries I had 348 entries! Who knew pasta was that popular? (Now, if I was giving away some sexy swimwear I wouldn’t have been as surprised. LOL) Onto what you all want to know:

Since that image is pretty small, the winner is comment #2 which is Connie from BrainFoggles!  I will be emailing her shortly!

Did you know that the stamp rate increased today? I had to mail the invitations for Will’s birthday party out, and I didn’t have any forever stamps. Instead, I had a bunch of 41 cent stamps. Nowadays though, I think the Forever Stamp is really your best buy. Why? Once you buy a Forever Stamp, you can always use it even if the rates go up.  I didn’t buy these the last time I needed stamps, so I got to spend my afternoon with two kids in the post office buying penny stamps.  What a waste of time!  Needless to say, I bought 100 Forever Stamps!

On Tuesday night, my family and I tried the new Pizza Hut Tuscani Pastas. They are 50 oz containers of either Creamy Chicken Alfredo or Meaty Marinara. You don’t have to do anything special — you just order it just like you do when you order pizza. The pasta dishes are $11.99 and feed a family of four. As you can tell from the picture of Will, this was a big hit for our family. We ordered the Meaty Marinara, and there was not one noodle left. When Pizza Hut was twenty minutes late, I was all ready not to like the pasta. However, it was piping hot and it was good.

Not only do you get the pasta, but you get five breadsticks with your order too! Pizza Hut has the best breadsticks ever, so this was a nice addition. This is something we are definitely going to be ordering again.

Now, if you want to try this at your house, I have a great deal for you. I’m having a giveaway for anyone who lives in the US. I will give the winner a a coupon for a free pasta dinner from Pizza Hut. I’ll make it super easy too and give you several ways to enter.

1. Leave a comment on this post. One comment only please and let me know everything you did for your entries in that comment.
2. Blog about this giveaway linking to this page or my home page.
3. Stumble this post.
4. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed.

I’ll be running this contest until May 16th at 10PM CST. Good luck!