But for the love of god my Feed Reader is damn boring these days. Mostly for the same reasons that have kept me from posting anything remotely interesting lately. Life. The last two weeks of school with all it’s performances and ceremonies and meetings are a time suck. And then there all that lovely weather luring us outside – you know to actually spend time with our families. Don’t worry I’ll be boring dazzling you with pictures soon.
But there is something else going on too… those who are writing – at least in the last week or so – have been droning on and on about the whole Review Blog/MommyBlogger/Who’s Really a Blogger debate and frankly it’s painful. Boring. And painful. Please please please stop. It was remotely interesting over a month ago when it all started but seriously we are all way way over it now.
Stop and go back to talking about poopy and posting pictures of your kids with things up their noses. Cause poop is funny and so is stuff up your nose. I like stuff up the nose stories. And I like to hear about the funny thing that happened today. Tell me please! I read your blogs to laugh and be entertained, not to think. And certainly not to read some 3000 word rant about how the term Mommy blog is a misnomer or why review blogs are either the evil or the best thing going. Stop!!!
I would kill for a picture of a kid with french fries in his nose or a guess who pooped on the potty/graduated from kindergarten/went to prom story right now.
Okay, if I haven’t mentioned it lately here… LOVE my Kindle. I have the original version and I love it, love it, love it. I have read more books in the 5 months since I got it for Christmas than in the last 5 years. I’m reading all the time now. (Much to the dismay of my little blog here)
But I will confess, I haven’t gotten too much into the online content that’s available. I thought I would but when I found out that each blog has a subscription price I decided that frankly I could read them blogs for free on my iphone. And I really thought it was just for the big fancy blogs like Huffington Post and whatnot.
That being said it doesn’t take away from the cool factor I felt when I after reading that The Daily Blonde posted her blog on Kindle I went out and did it myself. Look!
And then of course I had to see what it might look like on the Kindle screen so I subscribed to my own blog <dork>.
Over all, I don’t really see this as a replacement for reading them on my iphone and I’m thinking if your enough of a gadget hound to have a Kindle then you probably have a smart phone that will do you just as well for this.
Okay not exactly like that but it’s 2:30am and I’ve been inhaling paint fumes all night so I’m probably making no sense.
Here’s what really happened, I think. Maybe I’m wrong.
Erin wrote this awesome post last night about how how people who call themselves bloggers but are really just reviewers (and especially those who don’t clearly say that’s what they are doing) kind of suck.
Awesome.
I completely agreed.
And then I tried to say so … only it went like this:
Me Said: Hell Yeah! High Five! Shoot the idiots AND the horse the rode in on!
She Said: I got no problem with horses, horses are cool.
Me Said: No man, the horse sucks because if it weren’t for the horse the idiots would still be somewhere else instead of here.
She Said: Horses are beautiful creatures that I’m quite fond of
Me Said: Down with Horses! Horses Suck!
She Said: I’m trying to be patient and gracious with you but I didn’t write a post about horses, please stop talking about horses.
Me Said: I know, you’re full on right about the idiots. I still want to shoot a horse though.
She Said: Go to bed
Only I didn’t go to bed. I wrote this instead. Which just probably proves she was right and I’m the idiot – just not the horse riding kind
OMG! I stumbled on this stuff at the store this morning and I’ve about eaten the whole box.
In fact my only problem with it is it’s way overpriced for what you get 5 little 1 oz packages. But holy crap is it good.
I was intrigued by how they were getting away with using the name Smartfood because to me that name meant the white cheddar stuff but I looked it up and evidently Frito-Lay owned that name so they’ve repackaged the brand I guess.
If you’re willing to pay the price - The new stuff is Yummy!
This is the Nickelodeon Hotel in Orlando. When you are 7 (or 3 or 5 or 11) this is pure heaven on a stick. When you’re a parent, I found, it ain’t so bad either.
We did a brief 2 day/1 night stop at Chez Nick this past week during our spring break. Just like everything else, the recession is hitting Florida tourist attractions hard and as a result Florida residents are scoring big time with Resident Discounts. We paid $135 a night but I did meet someone who said she got her room for $79 on Travelocity.
The Nick is pretty popular with Florida parents anyway because the pools and waterslides and funky rooms and characters and at hotel activities provide enough entertainment that you really don’t have to go anywhere else. It’s the perfect weekend getaway for anyone with kids who lives in driving distance. So I had heard a lot about it but we had never gone. I was anxious to see if it lived up to it’s reputation.
It totally did.
The main attraction is of course the Lagoon pool. It’s huge and has 7 waterslides. It’s surrounded by a putt putt course, basketball courts, a baby slash area, and some hot tubs.
What I really liked about it was that it has a zero depth entrance and that largest section on the right never got deeper than my three (almost four) year old could stand up in. In fact she could walk all the way up to the rope you see where becomes thin (just to the right of the lifeguard stand)
She’s too big and to enjoy to baby splash area, she wants to be in the pool with the big kids but she’s not a swimmer yet and she was able to play happily in waste deep water here while the adults relaxed against the wall. The older kids were happy to play here as well because the shallow depth kept the water very warm and the waterslide water was freezing – they would regularly bounce back and forth.
The waterslide area on this pool does not dump into water but onto that spongy playground material that surrounds the whole pool (yeah! no concrete that is either slippery when wet or so rough it tears up your feet!) so even none swimmers can play in this waterslide area without fear.
Beware though: Because every day at 4:45 there is a Mass Public Sliming!
The Oasis Pool is deeper Min 3 feet but I don’t think it got over 5’. The 11 year old with us could stand in all parts. It’s slides are a little faster and they do dump into a pool of 5 feet of water.
The rooms lived up their reputation for coolness.
I had seen mixed things about the rooms online but in my experience the rooms were great. In fact compared to the rooms we had and Disney’s Caribbean resort last year – Nick was much nicer, more up to date, and had much less wear and tear. The linens and carpets were fresh and clean. You get a two bedroom suite with a queen for the adults and bunks for the kids. Each kid room has a character theme – we had Danny Phantom, the adjoining suite our neighbors had was Sponge Bob. There is a living room area and a kitchenette as well.
One thing I will have to say that Disney does better was food – where we had a big variety of low cost food at their resort. At Nick bring as much of your own food as you can manage because the pickin's are slim unless you want to pay $20 for entrees in the Cafe. The “Mall” area had a grill with burgers and hotdogs, a Subway, and a Pizza Hut. We managed off that for 2 days and the under 5 year olds ate free with an adult but if we were there one more day we would have left property to eat.
We spent most of our two days in the pool but there other things to do. Most of the activities and shows were additional charges. We didn’t do the 4-D experience or any of the other shows. We did let the kids do one craft since we had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon and they made tie-dye t-shirts for $15.00 (each).
Overall I would say that it’s a great weekend place but I’m not sure if it would hold up for a whole week if you were going to Orlando for a longer stay. Don’t get me wrong the kids LOVED IT but I think 2 to 3 days is the right amount of time for the amount of fun they provide.
Unpaid Unsponsored Parental Review of the Nickelodeon Hotel Resort in Orlando Florida
Okay so the we’re watching the guys/gal in the International Space Station and they are all decked out in their fancy red white and blue mission suits – right down the matching star and stripes socks. Then they open the door and in comes the shuttle crew – completely underdressed in Dockers and baseball hats – evidently it’s golf shirt day on the shuttle. No little flags on their sleeves, no mission patches, no sign of rank. They look more prepared for a round of Skins at the TPC than they do space flight.
This just sits wrong with me – spacemen should be in spacesuits! Dresscode Fail!
I should probably start this by explaining that my 7 year old has a DS. She begged for it for her birthday and we got a red one for her. Six months later I’m happy to know that for her, it was/is more of a status symbol than an obsession. She wanted one because everyone else has one but she has about 10 minutes of interest in it and then throws it down to run off and play. This makes me happy.
I should also mention that I tend to be pretty free range with my kid. She plays up and down our street with supervision. She walks to and from the bus stop by herself. She goes to the restroom by herself at restaurants. She is allowed out of our site in public. I usually have to dial back her freedom when we are with other kids because their moms are not as comfortable as I am with letting their kids roam.
All that being said … here is what happened on Sunday that sort of freaked me out…
When we were in Titusville in that big old crowd of folks (and at a time when she was thankfully off somewhere with her father) there came a woman walking by with a 7-ish little girl. The girl had a pink DS open and tapping. And I guess because my three year old was still with me and I was clearly a mommy-type and we were camped out under the main flag pole, the little girl stopped and asked me, “Have you seen a little girl with a pink DS sitting under a flag pole?”
She got my immediate attention because anytime I hear the words “Have you seen a little girl …” in a crowd I immediately go into “OMG there’s a lost child” mode. Then I processed the last half of the sentence. Then looked up immediately to my left and then back down at her because WE were under the flag pole, and she was a little girl with a pink DS. I was confused. I said “I see you”
Then her mother clarified.. “No, she’s looking for a different little girl who says she is under a flag pole and has a pink DS”
Me – What do you mean?
Her – They chatted and she wants to find her
Me – They can communicate on those things?
Her – Yeah, within a short range they can find people and IM with them
Me – WHAAAA?
They left me standing there all slack jawed and moved on in search of the little girl with the pink DS sitting under a flag pole.
And I was all OMG OMG OMG
When I say my daughter plays with her DS and gets quickly bored and moves on, I’m not joking. She is more of a can-I-go-outside-and-ride-my-bike kind of gal. As a result her skill level with the darn thing is minimal and her knowledge (and previously mine) of what it’s capable of is thankfully limited.
Seriously!
Am I the only one that sees a problem with some perv sitting in a crowd of people electronically trolling for little girls with pink DSes? Seriously!
Would you, Do you, let your kids pick up messages from strangers? In crowds?
I came home and googled it and evidently the feature is called Pictochat and YOU CAN’T TURN IT OFF!! I looked it up on several DS forums and it seems to be a big concern from parents, especially those in urban areas where they are always in crowds, that there are no parental controls built into the Pictochat feature.
It claims it only works within 20 feet but most users seem to say it’s more like 100 feet. We were no where near where that woman had been sitting and whoever was luring the child over said they were under the flag pole so who knows where they really were. And even then the fact that it requires proximity seems almost worse to me. The perv knows they’re close… Just meet me behind that bush over there. Yeah that one…
So how do you guys handle this? Is there a No Pictochatting in Public rule? How do you police who they are dealing with if they use it in public?
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