Another cooking blog I came across that you need to check out is Cooking With Kimberly.  The first thing that will catch your attention with this blog is her beautiful header.  There is so much food in there that I couldn’t even name it all.  It is a great attention getter.  Some of the other things you really need to check out is some of her advice posts.  I personally enjoyed the one on how to peel an onion.  I’ll be honest, I never thought of doing it this way.  It is defintely something I will be trying the next time I have to make something that has onions in it.  Her category listing also makes it very easy to find what you are looking for on her blog (makes me want to recategorize my cooking blog!).  She even has cool food gifts! If you are looking for a great cooking blog to check out, this is your one stop shop!  There is a little something for everyone (except if you are looking for instructions on speaker mounting — that one you’ll need a home improvement blog!).

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.

I happened to catch Oceans Thirteen the other night on HBO and ended up staying up half the night.  I am a huge fan of the Oceans Trilogy, and this movie does not disappoint at all.  Basically, the boys shut down the venture of a backstabbing hotelier (Al Pacino) because the guy double-crossed the Reuben (Elliott Gould).  By the boys, I mean George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle, Shabao Qin, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Bernie Mac, and Carl Reiner.  Without giving too much away, I want to say that Ocean’s Thirteen is more like Ocean’s Eleven.  It has the fast pace needed to keep your attention yet you know the guys won’t be looking for jobs in San Francisco. They should be set for a while again.

One of the greatest kid’s franchises out there has to be Sesame Street and their book A Perfect Picnic does not disappoint. It is short, so it keeps even the littlest ones attention.  It is about a picnic that all the Sesame Street characters were trying to enjoy and all the things that go wrong!  However, even though lots of things happened that should have ruined their picnic, they are still happy and together in the end.  The illustrations in this book are awesome.  The story is also written in verse, so that 2nd and 4th lines on each page rhyme.  It’s just an overall good kids book.

The Adventures Of Elmo In Grouchland is one of cutest kids movies I have seen a while. Elmo won’t share his blanket with Zoe (his friend) and ends up losing it in Oscar’s can. He journeys to Grouchland to get back his blanket and along the way he learns a lot about taking others feelings into consideration. Huxley (the villain) has his blanket, along with a lot of other things that don’t belong to him and Elmo tries to get his blanket back. It definitely teaches the kids about sharing without them even realizing it. It is a little over an hour, so it perfect for little ones attention spans. There are even a few jokes thrown in there for the adults! However, this is truly a kids movie. You don’t have to worry about diet pills or adult language here. It is a Sesame Street classic with all the gang.

This is another new show on the Discovery Channel. I am not sure, but I think somebody did some market research and thought we need more shows about/in Alaska. Unfortunately, I have to disagree. I love Discovery Channel — I hate this show.  Honestly, I feel like I am watching Survivor.  If I wanted to watch that, I would tune into regular TV.  When I do find something interesting in the show, the people on it start whining again and ruin the moment.  I just find that The Alaskan Experiment annoys me more than anything.  I don’t find it interesting enough to keep my attention.  (If you haven’t seen the show, it is about a couple of teams that get dropped off in different parts of Alaska and they have to brave it on their own out there for 30 days).

Have you seen this show?  What do you think?

Mia Reading is a computer game that Madison has been trying out for me. The age on it is 5-9, so she is tad young for it. That being said, we played it on the easiest setting. The first thing I was impressed with is the animation. It is highly detailed. My adult games aren’t done this well. You can control Mia by using either the keyboard or the mouse. This is good since Madison likes to use both. The goal of the level we were playing was that she had to direct Mia to find various items. Sometimes she would have to play various games to get the item. I had to help her a little. However, I did expect to have to help her a lot more than I did. She was able to locate most of the items without my help. Madison loved this game. We actually had to pry my laptop out of hands to get her to quit playing it. It completely held her attention, and I loved that it was educational. I would highly recommend this game to your little ones.