We had a very interesting episode at my house this morning.  Will had a little diaper accident that ended up all over my living room floor (and let’s say it wasn’t pee!).  Not only did it smell, it was stuck to the floor (I know, I know TMI, but I could have taken pictures!)

What does a mother do when incidents like this (and yes all mothers have at least one of these with each of their kids)?  Well, first you clean up the kid involved.  I also lucked out that it was Will’s nap time, so I was able to put him down and not have him getting in the way of cleanup.

Once Will was down for a nap, that’s when the real cleaning starts.  I have always loved pinesol.  It does say on the back not to use on wood.  However, I have always used it on my hardwood floors, because it is one of the best cleaners out there on the market and have yet to have a problem.  I have yet to find anything that matches its cleaning ability either.  However, I have always had one major complaint:  the smell.  I personally could not stand the lemony smell (Courtney just corrected me — it’s not lemony — it’s pine :P).  However, PineSol has come to rescue.  They now have flavors (or is it called scents?)!  The one I used on our little accident this morning was the “Sparkling Wave”.  I love it!  Not only did the PineSol clean up the mess, it left my living room smelling awesome.  There was no overwhelming lemon — just a calming sea smell (which after the morning I’ve had, I definitely need).

I would definitely go try this out if you haven’t yet, and tell me what you think.

I love bloggers who aren’t part of a niche (I have one of those blogs myself).  You really get a good glimpse into their lives and who they really are.  Ruminations of a Small Town Mountain Boy is one of those general blogs that once you read one post you are hooked. You’re not going to read about acne treatments or anything like that here. Instead, you find a greathodge podge of information regarding blogs the author likes to why he misses the mountains.  I love that his sister even pokes fun at him in some of the comments.  I absolutely love this them.  It looks like a blue jean pocket and leg.  It is the most unique thing I think I have ever seen on a blog.  Definitely check this out if you are looking for a great read!

Madison and I have been reading both the Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten and Let’s Get Ready For First Grade.  These books are great.  Even with Madison only being four, we are able to do activities out of both of these books.  The first thing I love is that we can write with our felt tip pens on these books and then erase when we are done with the activities.  The activities are also very age appropriate.  We are able to do some of the activities, because they worked on them in preschool.  However, there are a lot of things we will be working towards.  In the kindergaren book, there is a list of skills that we should be working on with Madison like knowing our address and phone number, taking turns, and recognizing your left and right.  Now, Madison knows a bunch of things on that list.  However, there is a good chunk of things she doesn’t (like knowing her left and right).  There are a lot of skills in these books that we will be working on all summer, so she’s set for preschool again in the fall.  I’m glad we have a fun way to work on them.

If you are ever in Green Bay Wisconsin and you have kids, this is the place you must go.  You can easily spend a morning there and not spend $20 (unless, of course, you head over to the food stand).  We just took our kids there, and they had a blast.  The tickets are a quarter a piece.  For the kiddie rids, you usually only needed one ticket.  Now, if you are in the need of an acne treatment (which would mean the bigger kid rides), then those usually were 2 tickets.  For rides, they have everything from the scrambler to a ferris wheel to a merry go round to bumper cars.  There really is something there for all ages and it is quite affordable.

For the last couple of weeks, we have been trying out a projector from Projector123.  Let’s just say that it has been such a big hit in our house that Bill now wants to buy one.

Can you guess the movie on the left?  It’s Cars.  That picture is on one of my walls in the basement.  We didn’t have any white walls to use, so that picture is on a blue wall.  It made it slightly darker (we shined it on the white door to see the difference).  I’ll be honest — I was impressed.  The picture was so clear and crisp.  It also was huge!  I wouldn’t have needed my contacts to see it!

Now, I didn’t take a picture of this but we set this up with our PlayStation 2.  Madison tried both Star Wars Legos and Indiana Jones Legos on here.  It was awesome. The characters were taller than Will.  He just ran up and down the wall touching the characters.  It was quite humorous to watch (and I should have video taped it but I didn’t think of it at the time!)

After the kids were in bed, Bill and I tested it out with a non-kid friendly movie.  Madison and Will’s movie were made to be crisp and clear.  How would a real movie hold up?

You should be able to guess this movie pretty easily.  I took this picture from the side to show you how movie theater like it was.  We just hooked up two speakers, and it was like being in the theater (we were just missing the popcorn).

Even though we used this for a lot of fun movie nights at my house, there are so many more uses for it.  I have seen these used at weddings, graduation parties, and memorial services that I have been too.  Its a great way to show a montage of pictures easily.  At the rate of $99 for a weekend, you can’t go wrong.  They FedEx it to you and they even give you a return label to FedEx it back!

We allow my four year old daughter on the internet.  Yes, we are right there and monitor what she is doing.  She is only playing games on Noggin or Disney Playhouse.  However, I do worry about when she gets a bit older  Did you know that:

• 41% of unwanted sexual solicitations, 29% of unwanted exposure to sexual materials, and 31% of harassment occurred when children were online with their friends. (I can believe this due to the IMs I get.  I have it listed in my profile that I married, and I still get IMs from men wants who knows what).
• Law enforcement officials estimate that more than 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment.
• 1 in 5 youth ages 10 to 17 received a sexual solicitation or were approached online.

These are just a few of the scary statistics out there.  I like to think that I am always going to know what my kids are doing online.  However, I know that isn’t always going to possible.  That is where GuardChild comes in.  It does exactly what you think it does.  Its all about protection, education, and community.  You are able to protect your family by blocking pornography, stopping online predators, and monitoring instant messages, blogs, chat rooms (AOL, MSN, and Yahoo) email, and even what your child is doing on MySpace.   You also are able to join the members community which will give you hundreds of articles, parent resources, educational sites, and family-friendly entertainment sites.  Lastly, there is community. Guard Child has a blog that allows you to share concerns and successes, learn from online safety experts, and contribute articles, advice, and questions.

The saying that it takes a village to raise a child is still true. Things have changed so much since I was little. I can only imagine what it will be like in a few years when Madison will be trying to hide what she is doing online from me. However, I do believe in being proactive and software like this is exactly what you need.

The Discovery Channel is awesome.  I have another show on there you have to watch.  It’s called When We Left Earth, and it is all about the space program.  You get to watch the real footage from when man first went into space, and when he went to the moon.  I know the next show is going to show the Challenger mission.  The reason I find this so interesting is that I wasn’t even born in the time frame of the first two shows.  It is one thing to read the history in a book; it is another to actually see it unfold in front of you.  You can feel the tention in the room while you are waiting to see if they actually make it into space.  They even interview the people involved now to tell you what they thought back then.  The technology they had back then (there was no such thing as dell memory chips) is just mindblowing. It is hard that they made it into space with what they had.  I accidentally caught this one night, and I am glad I did.