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By SHAWN TAYLOR I am blessed to have received a great education. Maybe it was a time in U.S. history when educating our nation’s children was a priority, but I don’t feel anything was lacking in what... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Is it just me, or is a “formal” graduation from preschool with caps and gown a bit over the top? Do 4 and 5-year-olds really need to walk across the stage as pomp and circumstance plays and they are handed their diploma. As a parent, I am so happy my kids school doesn’t have any [...]

The following post was written by my mom, WWW. Thanks, mom!I grew up in a small town, but as an adult, I’ve only lived in suburban communities. I love where I live, but there is something to be said for being able to walk out your door to do your errands, never having to get in your car.Rachel spent the last two years getting her Master’s degree in Bowling Green, Ohio—a very small town. We were there for her graduation a couple of weeks ago and a month before that, for her recital. She lives right on Main Street in the center of town, across the street from the post office, the library, a great little coffee shop/used bookstore, and a Ben Franklin, a store I haven’t seen since I was a little girl, a store that is alive and well in Bowling Green, Ohio. Forgot coffee stirrers for an after recital party? Go to Ben Franklin’s. Want some superglue, a birthday present, party supplies, fabric, baking pans or even gluten-free pancake mix? Ben Franklin has them all. It even has really cheap moving boxes, Rachel found out, and since the store is so close, she can grab a few at a time whenever she needs more for her upcoming move. I suppose drug stores have become our modern-day variety stores, but for some reason, CVS gives me hives and Ben Franklin makes me feel like home and apple pie and everything that is right with the world. Something about the eclectic and random combination of so many wonderful things packed into one store is comforting. The minute I walked through the doors I warped back to the 60’s where every town had a five and dime store on the corner and you saved your allowance to spend there…on marbles or paper dolls or a raft. I am not normally a nostalgic person, but being in the Ben Franklin made me, just for a minute, close my eyes and remember the way it used to be. Main Street Bowling Green is also the home of several great and homey eateries. We ate fabulous hippy food at The Happy Badger, scrumptious Bulgarian food at Naslada Bistro, and Turkish coffee, Lebanese food and real Italian gelato at Café Havana. And this brings me to my post. Larry and I got food to go for the plane ride home from Café Havana as they had several gluten free vegetarian choices. We loved the food so much that I decided I wanted to try out the lentils and rice dish, a traditional Arabic recipe, at home. Lentils and rice is a staple dish all over the Arab world. In Lebanon it’s called Mdarda (also called Mjadra or Mujadara) and is traditional comfort food. What makes this dish so unbelievably delicious is the caramelized onions on top. But also, it’s easy, quick and super nutritious. It’s also very baby friendly. I decided to use quinoa instead of rice because I like adding in the extra protein to our diet and the quinoa worked perfectly. I think I even like it better with quinoa. You can improvise the recipe to suit your tastes. Add several spices or none at all. Here is my version. (If you want to make the traditional recipe, substitute rice for the quinoa.) Quinoa Mdarda 3 large onions, sliced ¼ cup olive oil 1 ½ cups quinoa, washed thoroughly 4 ½ cups water 2 teaspoons ground cumin 1 teaspoon cumin seeds 1/2 teaspoon allspice or cinnamon (optional) 1 cup brown or green lentils, washed and sorted 2 bay leaves 1 teaspoon salt Pepper to taste (leave out for babies) Toast cumin seeds in dry hot skillet until they start to brown. Set aside. Add oil to pan and saute onions on medium-low heat until golden brown, crispy, and caramelized. Meanwhile, add two cups of water, ground cumin, cumin seeds, allspice or cinnamon and bay leaves to the lentils. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Add 2 ½ cups water, salt, and quinoa. Bring back to a boil and cook until all water is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve topped with caramelized onions. Makes 4 generous servings. Rebecca has a no-cook version of this recipe. Just combine pre-cooked lentils and pre-cooked quinoa. (You could add cumin,

That beloved blue engine is back in Squamish again to fill the hearts of choo choo lovers with joy.  How many generations of boys and girls have loved Thomas the Tank Engine? I have a family pack of four to giveaway to a lucky family!! Thomas The Tank returns to Railway Heritage Park in Squamish for two separate back-to-back weekends beginning June 1 and 2. An annual favorite, the day offers plenty of fun from the ride aboard Thomas, arts & crafts, storytelling and much more! Comment below about the favourite engine in your family (Percy was here) and  I will draw a lucky winner on May 29th.    Tickets for the lucky winner will be available at will call. Good luck!!! The post Win a Trip With Thomas the Tank Engine – June 1st appeared first on crunchycarpets.com.

I am counting down the days until The Lone Ranger comes out. I love, love, love this series when I was a kid, and as soon as I found out that Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp were Tonto and the Lone Ranger, I knew I had to put this on my radar to see this summer! Have you seen the newest trailer? Check it out below! About the movie From producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, the filmmaking team behind the blockbuster “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, comes Disney/Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ “The Lone Ranger,” a thrilling adventure infused with action and humor, in which the famed masked hero is brought to life through new eyes.  Native American warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice—taking the audience on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption. Native American warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) and man of the law John Reid (Armie Hammer) are opposites brought together by fate and must join forces to battle greed and corruption. “Like” THE LONE RANGER on Facebook: www.facebook.com/theloneranger  “Follow” THE LONE RANGER on Twitter: https://twitter.com/disneypictures Visit THE LONE RANGER website: www.disney.com/theloneranger THE LONE RANGER rides into theaters on July 3rd!

My friend Eric Garcetti won.  July 1st he will be the Mayor of the 2nd biggest city in the USA.  I’ve been feeling on the verge of emotion for days, and had hoped to bawl last night… wine or lose. … Continue reading →The post VICTORY…and what I wore appeared first on Cool Mom - Funny videos on parenting and pop culture.

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I spent approximately two hours today trying to turn a half-formed zygote of a blog post idea into something publishable. Or at least something longer than 140 characters, because otherwise I could just tweet it but then I still wouldn't have anything to publish on my blog but I can't publish a goddamn tweet on my blog because then what? I go on Twitter and link to my blog and people click over and are like, GODDAMN YOU AMY, YOU COULD HAVE JUST SAID THAT ON TWITTER, WHERE I JUST WAS. AND YOU WERE. WHAT THE FUCK. UNSUBSCRIBE AND DISLIKE. Basically: Blogging a tweet and then tweeting about a blog that's basically a tweet would be a dick move, or worst case, rip a hole in the fabric of the social media universe and the whole Internet would collapse in on itself, and then Yahoo! would come buy the smoking, hollowed-out ruins for fifty bucks, we'd be all "KHAAAAANNNNN!" except it'd be like "YAHOOOOOO!!!!" and POINT IS, I saw the new Star Trek movie on Friday and it was okay. (Wait.) No. I mean, POINT IS, I scrapped the blog post I was writing because it was only 12 words long. I wrote a hell of a lot more words than 12, mind you, but there were only 12 words that were really any good. The rest were terrible and try-hard and I kept deleting them. But it's not like the first 12 words were good enough to justify me leaving them alone and being like, "Fuck this, close enough, enjoy these 12 words, Internet!" Does that make sense? (Don't answer that.) No. I remember now what my point actually is, and what I decided to tell you about instead: After realizing that my sad, tortured and overworked 12-word post was never, ever going to be sponge-worthy (HEY-YO), I was like, "If I was a GIF, I would so be that GIF of Snape flipping over a table right now." Then I was like, "Waaaaait. Snape never flipped over a table." And yet, if you start typing "Snape flipping" into Google, the top suggestion is, in fact, "Snape flipping tables" and you will see a million and one versions of the very GIF I was thinking of. POINT IS, poor Alan Rickman.  For some reason, I found this to be INCREDIBLY amusing on MANY levels, from the whole idea that I now apparently think in GIF form, and off the top of my head can picture the perfect GIF for any situation, including "deleting 12 words of a shitty blog post," but ALSO I can't come up with Alan Rickman's actual name on the first try, but ALSO ALSO I am clearly not alone in basically thinking Alan Rickman = Snape, anytime, all the time, even when flipping a table over in some slow-motion YouTube art...thing that...okay, it's really kind of weird; I just watched it and lost my train of thought. WAIT. NO. I REMEMBER NOW. So I tried to compose a tweet about the whole thing: About needing find the perfect GIF to summarize my bloggerly failings today and how that's kind of weird, right? And probably all I would ever do with one those Google Glass things, basically, just walk around being all "WAIT WAIT I HAVE THE PERFECT REACTION GIF FOR WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW," but then I would ask Google to find me that "GIF with Spock" when I actually meant Zachary Quinto and the results would be all Leonard Nimoy and EVERYTHING WOULD BE RUINED. Also, if you search for "Snape Flipping Tables" you get the GIF I was thinking about even though it's not really Snape, lolololol. Anyway. POINT IS, that turned out to be way too many words to fit in a tweet, so I wrote it on my blog instead. You're welcome. 

Teresa B, 5m4m contributor, shares her insights on how to have family devotions around the dinner table. We were compensated to write this post, however all opinions listed are the writer’s own. The dinner table is a great time for family devotions. Dinnertime provides an opportunity to connect over food while having fun, joyful and meaningful faith-building conversations. So what exactly are family devotions? The words suggest the idea of devotions with your family, which is a small snapshot of the bigger picture really. Family devotions could be described as home fellowship or parent-led devotions. My husband and I want to model for our children the reality of a genuine relationship with Christ. We teach them how to pray, how to study and memorize scripture and how to show Christian love to those around them. My husband and I are not leaving it to chance that our children will absorb a biblical worldview on their own without our instructions. We can’t simply rely on Sunday school or youth group to take on these tasks. The responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders. How We Have Devotions At Our House Our children are still quite young and we want to make studying the bible fun. A great way to inspire dinner table devotions is with wordplay. Each evening we begin dinner with a prayer and a question. Everyone is given an opportunity to answer the question. Sometimes I will even use strips of paper as a table cloth and let the children write their answers at their place setting. “Are you careful about the words you say?” “Are you as kind to your brothers and sisters as you are to your friends?” “Do you do lots of good things?” After the question has been answered, my husband will lead us in our family devotions. He has a daily family devotion schedule planned out with a story and bible verse{s} that relate to the stories. The stories help our children understand the bible verses that he reads. Each story is a lesson and the daily question, story and bible verses all connect and relate to one another. It is a time commitment, which may take us away from other pursuits. However, missing a television program or a load of laundry is a wonderful trade off to keep these devotions in our daily lives. Having this set time for fun and spiritual growth as a family demonstrates to our children what is really important. We always end our family devotions with an ACTS prayer. A(Adoration) C (Confession) T (Thanksgiving) S (Supplication) Remember to take time for prayer, worship and the study of God’s Word with your children. What do you do to nurture your children’s relationship with the Lord? Here’s Another Great Devotional Help Your family’s gathered around the table. What’s on the menu? Cold stares? Stale prayers? The same old leftover questions about “what happened at school today”? Next time you sit down to eat, enjoy some spiritual food too! Get everyone talking—and learning—with the nourishment of Whit’s End Mealtime Devotions! Encourage quality family time and pass on a strong spiritual heritage with these 90 devotions created to engage children in fun, lively, productive dialogue. Whit has always been a family favorite and will make mealtime fun, and encourage lots of great conversation. Teresa is a family lifestyle photographer who is happy homeschooling her three children in the Christian classical education theory in the suburbs of Chicago. You can find her on her blog Tiaras & Tantrums or on Twitter as @tiarastantrums.

This post on why you should exercise in your home is made possible by a review item.  This post may contain affiliate links.  All opinions are mine and mine alone. If you saw the title of my post and immediately understood what I meant, read on.  I try really hard to work out every day. I do this because, at 46, I am not really impressed with the way I look. I’ve had two children and my weight has fluctuated up and down several times. I don’t have time to lay out in the sun in our short Vermont summers or the money to travel to Bermuda. Those things combined mean that instead of toned and firm with skin that has a healthy glow, I tend to be slightly flabby and pasty white. There is no way that you’re going to find me in a gym working out next to those 20 year old, hard body college students.  My self esteem is just not that strong. Instead I have been looking for ways that you can exercise in your home and avoid the embarrassment of going to a gym. Nobody is going to see me but the cats and my husband and he knows better than to laugh at me. Exercise In Your Home One of the ways I’ve found it’s possible to exercise in your home is to invest in a Journey Gym.    Journey Gym is a health and fitness system for people who have not and will not join a gym. In other words, it’s for your average person – not someone training for a marathon or who wants to look like a body builder.  Their system addresses the top five things your average person says prevent them from working out. Their workouts are 5 to 20 minutes max. I waste that much time in a day playing Candy Crush so I know I can work out that long. They offer support. I don’t have a circle of friends that wants to exercise and eat healthy with me. It’s hard to do this on your own. Journey Gym offers Star Trainers, an online Health Community, Persistency Centers, and a Medical Team to support you. This is a system that shows results. In about 85 minutes a week (that’s the normal time of just one movie), youcan lose as much as 25-40lbs in 10 weeks. The gradual changes they suggest give you the tools to make this a success.  You start out with 5 minutes of exercise for 2 to 3 days a week. You don’t have to wake up one morning and exercise 2 hours a day for the rest of your life. The Journey Gym is affordable. There’s no monthly gym membership payment and there are no recurring fees. I don’t have room in my budget for that. So what is it? Journey Gym is a light weight, compact universal gym that will allow you to exercise in your home. It provides a total body workout and you can use it as your primary source of resistance, cardiovascular, and circuit training. It comes with 30 different resistance bands and a set of adjustable handles so you can customize your resistance level. It also comes with a set of legs so you can raise the gym and use it as a stair stepper.  Plus you get a workout DVD specifically designed for the gym with a 5 minute set up video, a 10 minute circuit tone workout and a 20 minute circuit strength workout. They have an online community at www.healthisajourney.com where you are able to create exercise videos, track your activity and nutrition, and share your progress with friends and family. When I received my Journey Gym, it also came with a fitbook which is a really handy book that allows you to make a plan for your health and fitness and then record your progress. You can track everything from exercise (strength training, cardio, flexibility) to food, nutrients, water and sleep. This is a system to get you healthy. It’s much more than a piece of fitness equipment. I also received “The Five Pillars of Perfect Nutrition” booklet from Journey Gym.  Kim Lyons (from The Biggest Loser) shares advice on nutrition, recipes, and lifestyle changes to live a healthier lifestyle.  I really love the ideas she offers in this. A healthy lifestyle is a must. You can’t