Enter ActivityTree.com! This is a really neat resource. ActivityTree.com is a website loaded with information on kid’s lessons, classes and camps. You can search your area using the handy search engine feature, to look for thousands of activities in your location. I was surprised to see so many activities in my area– I had no idea! The results show all sorts of goodies: activity group information and descriptions, contact information, website links where available, maps and directions and more.

ActivityTree.com also helps parents locate information on kids scholarships for various activities and summer camps. And if you run an organization, you can register your group with ActivityTree.com to get your event or activity listed.

The whole thing is great. It’s free to use, and you just may make some new friends, too. Check out the Get Kids Active! Facebook Campaign on Facebook, too.

Activities For Kids

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Here’s the “snowpow” coming through… ha!

The boys like to play King of the Hill, where the opposing forces duke it out on top of the mountain, to see which one is worthy of the honor of securing his address plaque to the mount….

We made some videos, too, but I’m too busy to edit them today. These kids are just hilarious! They must have inherited their wacky sense of humor from their father! I don’t dare publish my address sign on my blog– my neighbors might read this blog, and they think we are weird enough already! LOL

Sorry I haven’t posted here very much this week. I’ve been horrendously busy, doing a billion and one things for work like writing articles about everything under the sun, like honey locust trees, gas dryers, address plaques and etc, doing school with the kids, taking care of the husband who has been under the weather, and etc. But then again, YOU guys seem busy, too, with Christmas preparations and etc. I like the Christmas season, but I don’t like the busyness of it. It messes with the normal routine. I miss everyone’s regular blog posts and comments– it seems that everyone is away during this time.

Well, at least it gives me time to fool around with the kids in the snow, eh? Livvy took a jaunt out there, too. Hang in there, I’ll have photos!

My Kids Sure Can Have Fun…

Original eloquence at New York Renovator.com. This content is copyrighted, so no stealing! Don't make me angry, you don't want to see me when I'm angry!

My kids had something like these kids kitchens as kids. Actually, we had two of them. They didn’t have the Kid Kraft brand, but they had those cheesier plastic models. Kids kitchen are usually very durable. I always wanted one as a kid. I never did get one, but one year–I was about 7 years old– I got an electric Easy Bake oven for Christmas, from my beloved uncle. (He became my favorite uncle after that, lol). I was SO SO happy with it! But I didn’t have it more than one week when my brother put his plastic Pokey toy (from Gumby and Pokey series) into the oven. I didn’t know it was in there. I turned the oven on and Pokey melted all over the stove. It stunk like crazy– the memory of the horrid smell is burned in my brain– and my parents had to throw the Easy Bake oven away. I cried for a long time.

Oh well, I have my OWN real oven now. And my brother is NOT allowed to go anywhere near it!

A Play Kitchen is actually a great way to get the kids interested in kitchen work. Parents, it will serve you well when you need helpers to make your coffee and put dishes away, heh heh! My one daughter absolutely loved her little kitchen, and she is the main kitchen helper in the house. The play kitchen has served us well.

A Cute Addition to Any Kitchen

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She worked all day, painting the trim in the dining room, so that I could work on my writing assignments (and boy, did I have a ton of them). The other daughter cooked and cleaned… and the boys helped with laundry and cleaning.

Gosh, my kids are amazing.

THANKS, GUYS!!!!! I love you!

Patiently Working…

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I’ve been preoccupied with other things this week, however, to have had much progress the last two weeks. I took a business trip to New York this week; I’ve had multitudes of assignments and deadlines for articles, and etc. So as you can expect, we are extremely eager to get this project FINISHED. I only have six more weeks scheduled for it.

Yes, believe it or not, I DO know where every single one of these wires belongs...

It’s been very difficult on the kids and husband. And I am surprised how difficult it has been on me, too. I am the one who started all this… I fully expected it to disrupt our lives… but the kids are finding it hard. Oh it was OK the first few weeks.. but we’ve been without a working kitchen/laundry room/dining room for almost two months now, with one more to go… it’s tough. We had to pack up a lot of their stuff (movies, DVD player, Playstation console, books, and most of the toys and things from their bedrooms) so that we could protect it all from the demolition dust and so that we could have space to wire their rooms with electricity, finally. It was like getting furniture moving equipment and packing everything away for a move: everything is in boxes EVERYWHERE. Inaccessible. It’s stressful when we need to dig something out (like my income paperwork because the IRS chose NOW to audit my income two years ago!). I really, really thought we were prepared for this renovation… but honestly, it’s SO big and SO disruptive that all my preparations are futile. Face it. We must endure these 3-4 months and live in chaos for a while. It WILL be worth it, it will! But it’s really, really tough for them right now, which makes it tough for me. Most teens are too busy worrying about their acne and hair and pronexin… my kids are struggling with no electricity, and having plaster dust in their pores! I feel so bad. I want things to go smoothly, but it so out of my control. *sigh*

So as much as I am loving this time because my dream is FINALLY coming true after 12 years… it’s not a pipe dream. But I will be so happy to have the entire house electrified, to have clean central heating, to have the downstairs insulated… there’s still so much to do for the next few years (you should see the upstairs and the 100-year old windows, OY VEY!) but that will come. For now, we must grit our teeth and GET THROUGH this kitchen renovation!

Living in Chaos

Original eloquence at New York Renovator.com. This content is copyrighted, so no stealing! Don't make me angry, you don't want to see me when I'm angry!