Monday, August 25, 2008

Paid Per Post income at home

I've found a neat website for those of you that have blogs or have been thinking about getting one. I love having this blog but it is even better to get paid to have it. A company I just heard about, Pay Per Post (PPP) offers the opportunity for people with blogs to write about specific things (you choose what you want to write about by checking ones that are available). The company that you are writing about pays you, with Paypal. They start at $5 and some are $75 (maybe higher but this is the highest I saw).

My user names is: Debbzs if you join. Not sure if I get referral points but it doesn't hurt to ask! I'm sure there is more then I know so I'll repost as I navigate the website and learn more!

The link to PPP is www.payperpost.com

:-)

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Butterfly at home??













































































Later in the week we were walking down the street and I noticed a Caterpillar on a Dusty Miller bush. On the walk home it was still there so we took it home as well as a few branches. It ate like crazy and two days later we went and got more of the same branches. Now it has made a cocoon and has been in one, in a vase (I couldn't find anything else to put it in). It is a little hard to see because the vase has stickers on it but the cocoon is see-thru and the body can be seen. Not sure if it is going to finish its process to become a butterfly or moth since now it has been over 2 weeks and nothing has happened. But, it is still neat. I don't think I've ever caught a Caterpillar that did anything but die before or we had it for a day or so and then let it go.

Butterflies at the Simi Valley Library





















































We went to the Simi Valley library about two weeks ago and they had a spectacular exhibit. Someone loaned the library some art from Africa.

It is hard to see but if you look close you can see the whole picture is a mosaic made out of butterfly wings. Not sure if I'd want to kill a few hundred butterflies to make one but it sure is exquisite. I've never seen art with butterfly wings every before. Baby K was bored by it but Little D loved it and was asking a million questions and asking me to read the markers.

Pictures from Vacation Bible School


1- Their group, all in green.





2- Queen Bee aka K2K (Kid to Kid).











A couple of cute pictures from Vacation Bible School (VBS). It was Monday-Friday from 8:30am to 12 noon. The kids had a blast. The theme this year was science lab which is just up their alley. They did lots of cool experiments. Learned new songs. Both made new friends. Baby K was hesitant every morning about being dropped off but she really liked the teen-helper, Rachel, and so I just had to make sure she was with Rachel and I had to walk them in and she was okay. I had them put her in the same group with Little D and that made it easier too.

Magic Mountain for $40 for 5 people


1-My nephew. Yes, my sister put blue spray in his hair!










2- Baby K with Bugs Bunny. We headed here straight from VBS so Baby K and Little D are both wearing their VBS t-shirts.











The three of us with a California bear.

:-)
















YES!!! We went to Magic Mountain and did not spend an arm and a leg! For our tickets, parking, food bought there..everything except the gas. We spent less then $40.00.

I went with my two kids and my sister and her son.

First, the three kids got in free. We had tickets from the school reading program. They were handed out to us at the end-of-the-year potluck. I thought we'd probably go with someone else so I asked for two extra tickets. But, they work for children only.

Second, my sister got an adult ticket for free. Magic Mountain sends coupon packages to places of employment all the time and with all the coupons is one free adult admission.

Third, I got my ticket on eBay for $23.00. I could have gotten a discount admission off of the children tickets for $29 but the woman lived in the valley and met me at my dad's work to bring me the ticket.

Fourth, we ate before we went and gave the kids snacks in the car. Walking in the signs said, 'No outside food or drinks' but they let us bring in water, gatoraid and soda. My sister also had bags with chips, grapes, nuts and other snacks. They confesgated the chips saying we were not allowed to bring those in. Not sure why that specific item but I guess because they could try to make us buy it there! ???

So, what DID we spend money on? $7.00 on two diet Pepsi sodas. Parking was $7.00. My sister paid for the kids to play the game where they shoot water into the clown's mouth. As a side note. Little D won. He got a Tweety Bird stuffed animal and every so sweetly he gave it to Baby K and said it was for her. We got to the park around 11am and left around 7pm. We planned to get fast food for the car ride home in case the kids fell asleep in the car. So, that was about $11.00 for the five of us.

There it is! We had a wonderful day. Lots of fun. Went on quiet a few rides. Even got wet on some. AAAAND we didn't go broke doing it!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Green Drinks Green People meetings

Okay, this sounds funny but is cool. There is a new group out called Green Drinks. The Ventura County chapter has meetings the second Wednesday of every month in different places.

No, you do not have to order a green drink (wheat grass?) nor do you have to wear green but it is for people that like to think green!

Meeting is for people to mix with other like-minded people, share info, make friends, develop new ideas, etc.

(818) 932-0037.

Maybe I can go and find some cute guys? Oh, I mean like-minded individuals!

;-)

Home Depot and Lowe's free crafts for kids

Both Home Depot and Lowe's have a free craft day on Saturdays all year round. I checked their websites and both stores do it nation-wide.

Home Depot does it from 9-12 noon on the first Saturday of every month. On August 23rd the craft is to build a wooden football goal to play paper table football with.

Lowe's has theirs a few Saturdays a month. at 10am.

Most crafts are seasonal. For Father's Day they had a little jewelry box that was lined with fake velvet.

These are for all ages. Both stores offer LOTS of assistance and the employees are great. A three year old can do it with help and a 10 yr old can do it by themselves or even get more creative with it.

We haven't gone in a long time and a friend mentioned it recently so I thought I'd share it too!

And, it is all free!

Portable EKG is okay

Dr. Leong called me last night. He said the results from the portable EKG were fine.

Without her complaining of her chest hurting, everything else on the EKG looked normal. Her heartbeat when she was sleeping was fine too.

So, the next step is a event recorder. On Monday morning we need to go to his office and they will show us how to set it up but basically any time she complains of her chest hurting her or that she faints we put it on her really quickly and it wirelessly sends a signal to the doctor with the results. If it is really high he will call me right back. If it is okay he will just call when he can. We are suppose to keep this for a month to see if we can 'catch' on the event recorder one of these, well, events!

He said camping is fine. The event recorder will work there just fine so we don't have to worry about that. And he said once it is on we don't have to restrict her activities in any way.

I'm praying we get some answers soon!

Portable EKG for Baby K

New update. The pediatric cardiogist, Dr. Leong, said the EKG in his office looked fine as well as the EKG that was done at the ER. So, he gave us a portable EKG to take home and she had to wear it for 24 hours. No symptoms ever happened in that time period.

When it all began, two years ago, I had noticed it used to seem to do with dehydration too, like from the time she woke up until the time she ate breakfast being too long. But at that time it happened about once every 6 months or once a year. But now it is random and is happening a few times a week.

I still have no answers. The EKG says she DOES have a heart murmur and she DOES have an irregular heartbeat. Both of which did not show up 2 yrs ago when we had Kaiser and saw a different pediatric cardiologist. BUT, the new pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Frederic Leong, said that neither of those should cause her to faint. He did an ultrasound of her heart and said it looked fine too.

So, I dropped off the portable EKG machine today. The doctor is supposed to review it and call me tomorrow or on Monday to tell me what it says and what we are doing next.

I’ve been checking her pulse all the time too. Tonight, at the dinner table, she was sitting down and said her chest hurt but only a little bit. I checked her pulse and it was faster then this am when I checked it after she had been doing jumping jacks. So, it might be that for some reason her heart starts to beat too fast and that is what is causing the fainting but then we have to figure out what is causing it to beat really fast at random times. This one, tonight, just lasted a few seconds of it hurting only and went away. No fainting or anything like that.

I’m hoping to have answers from the doctor soon. A dear friend is an occupational therapist and suggested calling the insurance or pediatrician and asking for a referral to a neurologist. She said I should do it now and not wait until it takes two more weeks to rule out the heart or not. So, I need to do that tomorrow (I should have today).

We are invited to go camping next week Tues-Thurs in Santa Barbara with my brother and sister-in-law so if we don’t have answers we might be mapping out where the closest ER is just in case! Since the doctor has not put limitations on things and wants her to do normal things I don’t want to just sit home and wait either but if we are going out of town it will be good to know where a hospital is at too.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

half.com eBay changes in media mail and paypal shipping

It used to be that when I sold a book on http://www.half.com/ I would have to put stamps on it to ship it. THEN the USPS changed things and things over 1 pound can not be left in the mailbox unless a shipping label was printed. So, I had to take every text book that sold to the post office.

With the USPS website, http://www.usps.com/ I can print shipping labels but ONLY if they are Priority or Express mail.

With Paypal I can print USPS shipping labels that are Priority, Express, Parcel post, First Class or Media Mail... YEAH. But, for International I can only print Express or Priority. If I want to ship something international and I want ti Parcel Post I have to bring it into the post office.

Well, I just sold a book on half.com. I haven't sold on on there for a few months. My inventory was all messed up so I deleted all of them from online and I just now got to relisting the ones I kept after going through all of them. I am now down to about 30 and I used to have over 300.

So, I noticed something new. An icon to 'print shipping label' instead of it saying, 'mark as shipped'. So, I clicked. And it directed me to Paypal and, YEAH, I was able to print the shipping label and print it as Media Mail!!

This makes it soooooo much easier to ship from home!

:-)

Baby K keeps fainting

Okay, for a serious post. My daughter keeps fainting or almost fainting. She will come up to me and tell me her heart hurts her and twice now she has almost fainted and twice she totally fainted.

This has been going on for two years but only about once a year. Last year we did a EKG, chest x-ray, lab work, etc. an d all was normal.

We went to the ER on Monday, she felt woozy but didn't faint but had been complaining a lot on Sunday evening. Well, at the ER they said she had an irregular heartbeat (this did not show up last time) and everything else was fine. So, we got a referral to see a pediatric cardiologist.

That apt was suppose to be on Monday, the 18Th. They said they could not do it sooner since they usually schedule appointments a month out.

But, she fainted again, today. She didn't even put her arms out. Just turned, tripped on her dress and fell face first on a friend's concrete driveway. So, front tooth is loose. Nose, hands and knees scrapped up (but not bad) and we STILL have no clue why this is happening. The ER doctor mentioned that it MIGHT be gas and try to give her gas medicine and I got pissed at him for that. I asked him if he seriously thought that if her eyes were rolling back into her head, her head was lulling and she has totally fainted that I should give her gas medicine and actually think that gas would cause this. He gave me some stupid answer.

So, anyways, I called the office for the pediatric cardiologist today and said she fainted again and I didn't want to wait six more days for an appointment and they said to bring her in 'now' and they could see her before leaving for the day.

We went down there (in Thousand Oaks) and it took for EVER. We were there for over 2 hours but it was still great they squeezed is in.

The doctor looked at the hospital EKG. Did one again. Looked at her heart with a Doppler (like an ultrasound machine) . The doctor said it is very unusual that she is telling me her chest hurts before she faints.

Right now she has a thing on her that has stickers with wires all over them on her chest and all of them are attached to a little purse box thing that is over her shoulder.

She has to wear the holder for 24 hours (so 3pm tomorrow) and then we have to bring it back and give it to them. The nurse said it takes over an hour to read the results so we are just dropping it off and the doctor is suppose to call us when he knows something.

I also have to get a watch with a second hand tomorrow (if anyone reading this is close by, let me know if you have one so that I don't have to spend the money). I have to take her pulse 10 times a day and keep a log of it. When she is asleep. Resting. Running around. Fighting with Little D. and when she feels like her chest is hurting her. So, hopefully we can figure it all out soon!

Prayers are needed! When Baby K realized that all this might be related to her heart and that when someones heart starts beating they can die (I told her that that is not likely) she was totally unfazed.

She told me that if she died she'd be in heaven and that she'd wait for me in heaven for when it was my time too so it would all be okay because we'd be together again!

WOW, huh? Such wisdom from an almost 6 yr old!

I'll update on this when I know any more!

:-)

easy free breakfast recipe French Breakfast Muffins

I have been trying to get out of the rut of having the kids eat cereal and milk or hot oatmeal for breakfast and I came across this Delicious recipe from Family Fun.

French Breakfast Muffins.

They are great just out of the oven but can also be frozen so that you can grab them and just pop them in the microwave for a quick, easy breakfast when you are in a hurry.

Little D and two and Baby K love them too. Of course, saying they were FRENCH muffins some how made them more exotic and enjoyable! LOL!

Their main website, http://familyfun.go.com/ has lots of fun art projects, crafts and boredom breakers for kids of all ages. Some have video learn-how-to-do-it too.

We have made the French Breakfast Muffins three times now and it is an easy recipe that the kids can help with.
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/recipefinder/display?id=50342

Besides viewing the recipe you can also watch a video!

:-)

amazon.com support la leche league LLL support breastfeeding

I read this in a La Leche League Newsletter, League Spirit. Vol 105-No.3. July-Sept. 2008.

Do you shop www.amazon.com to buy new/used books or other items? well, if you do, here's a way that a percentage of your purchases can help LLLI (La Leche League International). Tell your family and friends that they can do it too.
1. Log on to: http:/lli.org/
2. Click "Store" which is one of the top tabs at the top of the screen on the right side. This will take you to http://store.llli.org/public
3. Look under Helpful Resources on teh left sidebar.
4. Under that list, click Creative Was to Shop and you will be at http:store.llli.org/main/creative
5. The screen will show this message: "Support La Leche League INternational while doing all yoru holiday shoping on Amazon.com. Begin yoru Amazon shopping session by using the link or search form below and Amazon will donate a portion of the proceeds from all of your purchases to LLLI."

The Forty-Acre Swindle Black history George Carver

I just finished reading a great children's book. I wanted to read it to preview it to figure out the general age level for reading it to see if it is okay for Little D. The book is called The Forty-Acre Swindle. It is by Dave & Neta Jackson. It is fictional but has factual information about George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington and mentions W.E.B. Dubois too. On the back it is recommended for children ages 8-12 (which I agree with but someone as old as 12 can handle more truth then just prejudices mentioned vs racism and slavery).

A great quote that is in the book from George Washington Carver...

'Don't tell me it's about right," he'd say to a student who had just given him an inexact answer. 'About right might as well be wrong." And then he'd say, "If you come to a stream that's five feet wide, and you jump four and a half feet, well, that's about right. But you might as well just topple in at the near band and save yourself the effort."

homeschool free website thinkfinity.org lesson plans

I received a booklet from someone recently that looks neat. Fun, educational games and learning for kids. Materilas are targeted from early childhood, k-12, family, adult and English language learners. Reading, writing, science, math, etc.

www.thinkfinity.org

Lot of free lesson plans that can be printed. The meet standards too! Great for adults doing lesson planning or some games to let your child play online!

:-)

check it out and tell me what you think. You can post your favorite websites for kids, for you, for lesson plans, etc. too!

Sea Life Aquarium Legoland San Diego California

This is soooo cool! I wish it was closer. Just the gas would be a killer right now. There is a brand new aquarium that just opened. Legoland owns it. Not sure if it is at the exact same location or just right by it but Legoland is in San Diego County.

The grand opening was today.

I looked at the website and it is neat, fun and educational. I played 3 of the 6 games on the 'fun and games section'. Wasn't too thrilled to be a bird pooping on politicians but I'm sure the kids would love it. Collecting plastic grocery bags and other trash on the ocean floor while avoiding sharks was fun too. Website mentions endangered animals, WWF and seems very well rounded.

I emailed them asking if they plan to have a homeschooling day like the Aquarium of the Pacific does or if not what the rate would be for a large group.

http://www.sealifeus.com/

Sunday, August 10, 2008

I will Survive- Homeschooling song

I found this on another homeschool blog and just love it. I can't get the (original) song out of my head! LOL! Guess it is better then other songs, like Strawberry Shortcake into song, that I've had in my head before!

Debbie

I Will Survive (the first year of homeschooling)

Originally written and produced by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris
Originally performed by Gloria Gaynor
Mercilessly altered with apologies by Natalie Criss

First I was afraid
I was petrified.
Kept thinking I could never teach
’Cause I’m not certified.
But we spent so many nights
Reteaching homework that was wrong.
I grew strong,
so now I teach my kids at home!
We study math
and outer space.
I just kept on despite the fear
with a big smile across my face.
I bought a set of Base Ten blocks.
I bought books with answer keys.
My parents think we’re nuts,
but they don’t even bother me

Come on, let’s go walk out the door.
We’re on the road now,
'cause we’re not home much anymore
My friends would laugh and say we’d be unsocialized.
I heard one mumble
that I’d give up by July.
Oh no, not I!
I will survive!
As long as I know how to read
I know we’ll be alright.
I've got all my life to learn.
I've got energy to burn.
and I'll survive.
I will survive.

It took all the strength I had
not to fall apart.
Decided to attend
a play date at the local park,
and I met oh so many moms
who offered eagerly to help.
They used to cry.
Now they hold their heads up high,
and so do we!
My kids are cool!
They’re not those chained up little people
stuck inside at school.
So if you feel like dropping by
and just expect us to be free
you’d better call ahead first
’cause we’re probably busy!