Helpful Mom

You can share the fun of your Strongs Museum membership with your friends.  As a year end thank you for your membership support, you are invited to bring up to TWO guests FREE of charge each time you visit the museum from Dec 1-24.  Escape the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and share the Strong experience with friends and family!

*Members must present membership card and photo ID, and accompany guests during each visit.  Free Admission does not apply to Dancing Wings.

It’s that time of year…time to pick out the family Christmas tree.  Our family has gone to a tree farm for years and cut down our own tree.  When we moved from Penfield to Henrietta we had to find a new place to pick a tree since the place in Webster we had gone to for years was now 45 minutes away, a long way to drive with a tree tied to the top of our little Geo.  So we had to search and we finally settled on one that is not very far from our home at all.  It’s Remelt’s Tree Farm on East River Rd in Rush.  They offer precut or cut your own trees in a variety of types of trees.  What’s nice is they charge a flat fee depending on the type not on size.  Since we have vaulted ceilings in our living room we usually were getting a 10 ft. tree for $25-30!  They have hayrides out to the fields and saws to cut your tree, they’ll come pick you and your tree up and bring it out front where they will bale it for free and help you get it on your car if necessary.  On certain weekends there are also free Trolley rides, operated by the New York Museum of Transportation.

This year we’re considering trying out Stokoe Farms, where we go for their pumpkin patch.  They are opening this weekend on Friday from 9am-5pm.  They too have hayrides and free baling, but in addition they are offering a straw fort, live Nativity scene, bonfire, and their Country Christmas Shop and Reindeer Reststop Restaurant.  Open fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 9am-5pm, Nov 28th-Dec 21.

On opening day Santa Skydives in to check on his reindeer!  It’s Friday Nov 28th at 1pm(raindate Nov 29th).  Santa will also be there Dec 6th and 13th.  Located at South Rd in Scottsville.

I love to take our girls to the library.  Obviously if you know anything about me you know that I love to read.  I’m usually in the middle of 3 or 4 books at once, and working my way through various magazines.  Pastor Mike says a reader is a leader, anything you want to do you can if you are a reader.  If you can read you can always read up on whatever it is that you want to do.  Thus my voracious reading of parenting books, I want to be the best mom I can be.

Anyways today I took them to the Brighton library, which is my favorite to take them to.  They have

Brighton Library Discovery Room

a whole wing dedicated to children, that’s off by itself so you don’t feel like you have to whisper the whole time.  The librarian is friendly and knowledgeable, and willing to find your request for you while you play with your kids.  They have a Thomas the Tank Engine set and rocking chairs for the watching parents.  There are bean bags and child sized table sets for kids to read at.  And our favorite thing about the Brighton library is the Discovery room.  If you go through the kids room all the way to the back you find a whole room designed for toddlers through 3rd graders.

It’s decorated like a garden, murals on the wall, fencing all around the room, there’s even a tree in the room with birds.  It is chock full of toys and activities that can keep your kids entertained for a very long time.  There is a stage with dress up clothes, and puppets to put on a show.  Magnetic board for letters, and flannel board, trucks and car garage.  Bins full of dinosaurs, and farms with animals.  In addition there are two computers with age appropriate learning games, and a desk supplied with paper, crayons, markers, colored pencils, stencils, and ink pads and stamps.

And of course one of the main reasons to go to a library is the ability to borrow books for free.  I can remember as a kid, my mom found there was no limit to how many you could borrow so each child would get a box to fill.  Well we haven’t gotten there yet but the kids do love being able to pick any books they like to take home with them.  And for a long time Katrina thought we were buying them because my library card looked like a credit card to her.  But not only do they have books, but also VHS and DVDs, books on tape or CD, homeschooling resources.  The Penfield library even has leapfrog books and cartridges that you can borrow, and Hooked on Phonics resources!

So when it’s cold and snowing, the library is a great place to visit and you get to bring the fun home with you.

You can download Adventures in Odyssey from Focus on the Family’s website for Free!  You can even sign up for a free subscription so all the newest stories will be automatically sent to your account so you can download them when you want more stories.  You can then either upload them to your MP3 player or burn them onto a CD.  The stories are fun and creative, I even enjoy listening to them in the car.

And another idea for an older child that Joel’s parents used in developing the habit of daily Bible reading.  They would have their daily chore list that each child had to do each day and on it would be read a chapter of the Bible.  If they did all their chores each day they would get a quarter at the end of the week, but if they had also read their Bible every day then it would be doubled and they would get 50 cents.

Our family was sick this last week so over the weekend we didn’t do much of anything.  But in an effort to find a few fun things to do that didn’t involve pulling out new toys I was searching through my books for inspiration.  Katrina found one herself on the cover!  I took large boxes and cut one of the sides off so I could then tape the other three sides together into a triangle shape making them each their own “tent”.  They could then draw and color their own tents inside and out.  They spent at least an hour playing with their tents, bringing blankets and pillows from their rooms so they could camp out.  They dragged them around the house.  And somehow Katrina got the idea of turning it on it’s end and called it a garbage can.  They spent another hour running around the house picking up everything in sight to throw in the “garbage”.  It was very funny to watch.

Than later that night I tried out another idea from my book.  I took oatmeal containers and cut out the bottom circle, leaving the top intact so I could still use the removeable lid.  I then traced a circle on construction paper and cut it out, I used scrapbooking punches to make shaped holes.  Then I taped it to the bottom of the oatmeal container.  Then you can put a flashlight inside the container and project those shapes on the walls or ceiling.  In Katrina’s case it was Tinkerbell shaped, she was so excited.  They spent the rest of the night playing in the dark with their special flashlights.  It was simple and easy, taking less than 5 minutes to make, although locating the flashlights was a bit harder, go figure.  You could use shoeboxes instead of oatmeal containers.

Haircuts for Peanuts Waiting Room

I never thought my toddlers or even preschoolers would enjoy getting their haircut so much.  But then I found Haircuts for Peanuts and Ms. April(as we call her).  It’s over in Fairport, which is fortunately around the corner from my mom’s.  They cater to children of all ages.  It starts as soon as you walk into their waiting room which is beautifully painted with large murals of circus scenes and is filled with toys for the kids to play with while they wait their turn.  There is a slide, play kitchen, and even an air hockey table.  And of course nice chairs and magazines for the parents.

Then when it’s your turn you go into one of two rooms to have your haircut by either April, Judy, or Crystal.

Hair Cuts for Peanuts

The rooms are colorfully painted and decorated in themes geared towards the kids.  I always ask for April because she is so good with our girls.  Her room is green with large butterflies and frogs on the walls, which the girls just love pointing out to me every time we go.  There are tvs and dvd players in each of the rooms and a huge variety of movies they can pick from so they are distracted from what April is doing.  They have cartooned aprons for the kids and animal water bottles for wetting their hair.  April is very patient and a pro at getting them to follow her instructions.  The cuts take about 10-15 minutes so it’s quick, letting the kids go before they start to squirm.

I find it so funny when I tell the girls that we are going to go get their haircut, they jump up and down with

Haircuts for Peanuts

excitement!  They can’t wait to go to Ms. April’s.  I will make it into an event since they always want to stay and play with the toys after getting their haircut.  So Katrina goes first, then Mikayla, and then me.  Yep I get my haircut there too now.  It’s just so much easier than making a separate appointment somewhere else and either drag the kids along or waste precious kidfree moments getting my haircut.  The girls play in the waiting room or just hang out and watch mom get her haircut.  If one of the girls has to use the bathroom Ms. April understands and lets me run off with them before resuming my haircut.  When we are all done I will read my book and let the girls play til they are done before we head on to whatever we have to do next.

I just love what April has done in creating this business and I think it’s a great idea for other moms to make as their own business.  In addition to haircuts they also host BeDazzling birthday parties on weekends.  You can check out their website for more info Haircuts for Peanuts

We regularly hard boil eggs for salad toppings, or making egg salad sandwichs.  And I say why should egg coloring be only enjoyed once a year at Easter?  So we can tell the difference between the hard boiled and raw eggs, we’ll color the hard boiled ones.  Now I keep it real simple, using only one color on all of them.  The kids can choose the color and we’ll just use different ones each time.  I will also pick up Easter kits long after Easter on clearance for pennies so we can do fun things to the eggs like wrap them in those shrink wrap things, or add stickers or color them with white crayon(the color doesn’t stick where the crayon is leaving white lines).  This all only takes a few minutes but the joy it creates is well worth the effort.

Last week we had the privilege of having Pastor Mike, our senior Pastor, come do a question answer session with our mom’s group.  It was a great time and brought up a great question of how do we teach our children about the Bible.

Now I’m no expert and I’ve never been good at rote memorization, but there are some fun ways to sneak in a bit of learning while you go about your day to day life that we do that you may enjoy too.

One of the easiest ways is through song.  There are all kinds of cds, videos, and dvds that you can pick up that will teach scripture through music.  We got Katrina a CD player for her room after she turned 4 so she could listen to Adventures in Odyssey tapes after we tucked her in for the night, that way we could put both girls to bed at the same time, but she got the privilege of staying up a bit later.  But for the last two months she has been listening to a Cedarwood Kids cd every day, morning, noon, and night, over and over and over.  And now she has memorized them and will spontaneously break out in “Oh God you are my God!” or other songs on the cd.

In the car we have these books called “My Travel Time Bible Stories”, there is a whole series of them.  The book is the size of a CD case so you can store it in with your other CDs.  There are 20 short stories in each book.  They come with a CD that will read each story, followed by a song that goes with each story.  One day Katrina was listening to it and all of a sudden goes, “the Bible tells us to obey our parents, just like you always say mom!”  So those we listen to in the car and they love to follow along in the books.

Since my girls love music so much I have also picked up Steve Green’s Hide’em in your Heart VHS tapes.  These are songs made straight from scriptures so they can learn to hide God’s Word in their hearts.  They love to sing and dance along, and it gives me a few free minutes of peace, literally.

And Steve Elkins writes all kinds of books such as 52 Bible verses that kids should learn, which is bright and colorful, and comes with a CD that has bible verses set to music.

All of these are suggestions of course, and I always buy them used and search them out at garage sales and thrift stores.  But since to me this is the most important thing I can teach my children I will pay more for them than other things like Dora, or Princesses ;P

A few other ones I like is the Princess Bible by Sheila Walsh.  It’s all stories about Princesses from the Bible such as Esther.  There are stories to act out and everyday stories applying these Bible stories to kids everyday life.   She has also made a Warriors Bible for boys, with stories such as King David.  This we read before bed each night and the girls love acting the stories out.  I figured since the girls are so into Princesses I’d better take advantage while I have the chance.  Katrina loved it right off because it has a tiara on the cover which actually has “jewels” embedded in the cover.