The Scrabulous website is no more. About a week ago, I heard something about the creators being sued. But last night, I saw it on Nightline. I actually didn’t know that it started on Facebook. I always played at the actual site. So Hasbro sued them, and they were forced to remove the game from Facebook, and now the site is down as well. Hasbro also launched their own Scrabble site. So I went there today, looking for an online game, when you click on the play online button, it takes you to another page, and on the side you click to play online at a whole different site. So you cannot actually play Scrabble on the “official Scrabble site.” You can get all kinds of info about all their other games, and play some other games on the site, but no Scrabble. After I finally found the online version at the other site, I was highly disappointed, there was a picture of the board, and it was no where near as nice as the Scrabulous game, so I didn’t go any further. I have read that the creators of Scrabulous have launched a new game called Wordscraper, which is already available on Facebook, the actual site is coming soon. The rules have changed, and the board has round tiles instead of square, and the point system is different. I don’t know how well this new version will go over; I’ll check it out. I really enjoyed the different types of games they had on Scrabulous, and will miss it dearly. So it is with great sadness, that I have removed the link to Scrabulous from my Favorite Links. (sniff, sniff).
Scrabble in the Dark
Last night the twins and I decided to play a game of Scrabble. Just when the game was getting good, the lights went out. We had some pretty bad thunderstorms in our area, a lot of wind, rain and lightening. This was the first time in a long time that the storm sirens were going off in downtown Chicago. The Cubs game had to be evacuated. In the suburbs, we were just left in the dark. The little guys were a little scared at first, but once I lit all the candles and found the flashlights, we all sat in the hallway, and made animal shadows on the wall. The little guy was pretending to be a monster, and had so much fun seeing his shadow on the wall. The storms lasted for a good while, I was glad when the power went back on around 9:30. That’s when we finished the Scrabble game. It’s quite challenging playing with the twins, it’s hard playing when your opponent puts down 2 or 3-letter words, but they are getting better. My daughter actually had the highest scored word at 39 points. The word was ZIG. It’s amazing how those little words can add up on those triple word squares. In the end, my son won the game. Like I said, they’re getting better. I think we will play PayDay another day, so that my other little guy can play. He wanted to play Scrabble, thinking because he knows how to spell a couple of words he can play, but he is only seven. Even though it was storming, it was a fun night. It’s nice to slow down, turn off the TV and enjoy some board games.
On another note, I am very happy with the progress of my blog, and appreciate everyone who has checked it out. Keep checking back, I’m going to be updating more frequently. Any suggestions or comments are welcomed.
Thought for the Day
For the last couple of days, when I sign in on the Internet I see that the Yahoo page comes up with school supplies all around its logo. I usually enjoy their little graphics for the different seasons and holidays, but I must say I’m not quite ready for school supplies. As I write this I am sitting in my backyard enjoying the nice weather, there’s a slight breeze that is making it very pleasant. Recently the days have been so hot we spend our time out in the early evening. The little guys play in the sandbox while my husband and the twins shoot some hoop, or we’ll take a ride on our bikes. The long days are nice, but as I look at the calendar, I know the beginning of school is fast approaching, so I must begin preparing.
The first thing I do is make my list of what books I need to purchase. We always start our school year the day after Labor Day, and those four days are spent on reviewing things from last year, and just getting back into the routine. So I can usually wait to purchase my books at the end of August. I also make a list of school supplies they’ll need and start picking them up here and there as they go on sale. One thing nice about homeschooling is that we don’t have those extensive school supply list I hear so many parents complaining about. Every year at Wal-Mart, I see a couple of parents with their lists in hand and a frustrated look on their face discussing products on the list compared to what is on the shelf. I secretly envy them, a school supply scavenger hunt sounds like the most fun. But then again, I’ve never had to do it.
The next thing I do is create my calendar for the year. For our State in Illinois, the required days of instruction are 176 days. This is not mandatory for private or home schools, but I use this as my guide in planning my days off and breaks. I pretty much follow the traditional school calendar, having Christmas and spring breaks. I decide which federal or state holidays we observe, sometimes on that day. “It’s Casimir Pulaski Day, hey we’re Polish, let’s take the day off!!” Having a guide for the year like this helps me alter it easily. We can take an unscheduled day off if we want to visit with relatives from out of town, or if my husband has a day off during the week and we want to do something. Then what we can do is have school on one of the planned Federal Holidays like Columbus Day or President’s Day. The kids will get a copy of the calendar on the first day of school. The first thing they do is count how many days until their first day off.
I have read articles from other homeschool Mom’s who will go away for a weekend by themselves before the school year starts. I have done this once before, and I used some of the time to go over lesson plans, and review curriculum. I usually take a semester break in January or February and just stay at a hotel and do nothing but enjoy the time by myself. I do have an opportunity to get away for a weekend in a couple of weeks, which I am taking full advantage of. I haven’t always taken these breaks, I used to think wanting to get away was selfish, and a sign that I was a bad mother and wife. I would feel guilty wanting to leave the kids with my husband for a whole weekend. But I have felt the benefits of time away to re-charge my batteries. It doesn’t have to be fancy or far away, unless your budget allows it and you want to go to Hawaii. I just know how good it feels to get away and I highly recommend it.
Being that August just started, I do have some time left to enjoy the summer and that’s what I plan to do.
I know that different areas of the country may start their school year at different times. If you could have it your way, would you have school start before or after Labor Day? You can add your opinion below.
Lower Your Grocery Bill
I’m not a coupon person, but I love to save a buck. Maybe people already know about this, but recently I came across a website where you can choose what coupons you receive. I don’t know how many times I have been in line at the store, and the person in front of me has a stack of coupons. I think to myself, where do they get all those coupons? Whenever I look in the paper for coupons, I rarely find what I’m looking for. Usually I find coupons for items I don’t buy or for items I can buy cheaper by getting the store brand. Because of the rising cost of groceries, I am making it my little project to really try and lower my grocery bill by using coupons and finding the best bargains.
The website is the Coupon Master (see link in Helpful Links to the right). This is their disclaimer: “Be advised that this site does not sell or buy coupons. A fee is charged for our services in acquiring, cutting, sorting and mailing of coupons, the coupons themselves are free. We are not associated with any manufacturer of said coupons.” This is how it works. You can go through the list of coupons available and request how many you want of each coupon. There is a minimum of 3 per coupon. Like they state in their disclaimer there is a minimal processing fee for them to clip, sort and mail them to you. Also there is a minimum required purchase of $3.00. You will also be charged shipping and an administrative fee of $.50. I received 36 coupons for a total of $4.04 including shipping and administrative fee. If I use them all, I will save $33.70. I ordered my coupons this past Sunday, and received them by regular mail on Friday. You can pay more for shipping to get them quicker, but I don’t know how much you would actually save in the long run. For my first order, I just purchased the minimum to see how well it worked. I was very excited about this new find and I plan to use it again.
Another site I found was http://thegrocerygame.com. This one takes a little more research in order to use it effectively. This site compiles a list of lowest-priced items at your grocery store, and matches them with the manufacturers’ coupons and weekly specials. The lists are colored coded with green items being free after sale and coupon; you just pay sales tax. Blue items are best deals for stockpiling, and black items are only if you need them. For me, I won’t be using this site as often, because it doesn’t include the stores that I normally shop. It did list the two pharmacies that I shop at, so I will check with it periodically for specials from those stores. New members can join for $1 for 4 weeks as a trial. After that, it is $10 for eight weeks for 1 store and $5 for 8 weeks for each additional store, if there is more than one store on the list for your area.
Most of us love a good bargain, so I plan to share with you the ones that I find. If you discover bargains you would like to share feel free to post them in the comments.
My Quest for a New Fridge
All the places I have lived in so far have had a fridge in them, so I haven’t really given much thought about having to actually buy one, until now. It’s not that the one I have is running badly or is in bad shape. It’s just that it was here when we moved in 3 years ago, and it has the worst design and functionality. OK, some of you may be saying, “It’s a fridge! It keeps things cold what else do you need?” Well let me explain my dilemma. First of all, we are a family of six. Every week when I go shopping I buy 4 gallons of milk, 3 gallons of Hawaiian Punch and two half gallons of Lactose Free Milk. So when I come home from shopping, I have 8 gallons to contend with. OK, I only need to refrigerate two Hawaiian Punch gallons at a time (two different flavors). But I also have to keep in mind that I already have a 2½ gallon jug for water and another gallon of green tea that I make myself and keep filled. So we are talking about 10 gallons of beverages!! Yes, I know, my family has a drinking problem. What can I say, my husband has to have a cold one after a long day at work. I personally don’t like the taste of Berry Blue Typhoon Hawaiian Punch, but it hits the spot for him. I myself am a green tea kinda gal. I pour myself a tall glass before dinner and I am set. Sadly, the problem has even started with the kids. I would need to keep chocolate milk on tap just to keep up. Anniehow…back to the real problem. So being that the drinks are the biggest problem, I had to configure the shelves of the fridge to accommodate all these containers on the bottom shelf. It doesn’t leave much room for anything else. The shelves of the fridge are glass and they have brackets on the back that hook into the back of the fridge. This is the design flaw. You cannot keep much weight on them. So my top shelves are as close to the top of the fridge as possible. I can only store margarine and cartons of eggs up there, maybe some sour cream. But if I have more than two dozen eggs up there, the shelf falls off its bracket, at which time I go into my ranting of, “This stupid, stupid fridge!!” At that point one or both of my little guys remind me that we don’t say stupid. This fridge does have a handy snack drawer. This is where I stash my chocolate. But it is a clear plastic drawer and right at eye level to my little guy. So he knows exactly what I have in it, and knows exactly what he wants. OK, so I have learned to live with the shelving problem. Now to address the door. This has some nifty compartments as well. The ever-popular butter dish, which I keep margarine sticks in, no problem. But the compartments are actually plastic trays. They “hook-on” to the little tabs that are on the actual door. They are large enough to hold a gallon of milk, but no where near sturdy enough. They do hold condiments, but not many. A couple of jars of relish and olives or some containers of BBQ sauce and that’s about it. You add some ketchup or mayo, and the tray cracks and falls out as you close the door. I have come to the conclusion that the fridge designers design them to look sleek, and hold a bottle of wine, take-out leftovers and some tofu like you see in the movies. They are not designed for a growing family. I thought to myself, well maybe it’s just this model. The quest begins!!
The other day, we all went to Best Buy, just to look around. My husband and the older kids were looking at the flat screen TVs. So my little guy, not wanting to stand around, starts pulling on my hand. So I look around and spot the appliance section. So I say, “OK, let’s go over here.” Not exactly what he had in mind, but once I started opening the refrigerator doors, he thought it was a pretty cool game. After awhile my daughter joined us, thinking her dad and brothers heard her say she was going over by me. Well, the three of us got all caught up looking at these shiny new refrigerators. I’m not too crazy about the stainless steel ones. But these things had all kinds of buttons and temperature controls on them, I wouldn’t even know how to operate them. I do like the water and ice dispensers on the front. But then you have to deal with the double door issue. You can get the double doors with the freezer on one side, but I had one of those before and the freezer is just too narrow. You have to put the frozen pizzas on their sides and then when you open the package all the pepperoni is at the bottom. I think I would rather have to deal with that than a double door fridge with the freezer as a drawer at the bottom. There doesn’t seem to be enough room in a freezer drawer. So we looked at all the different models. My little guy was having so much fun as my daughter and I discussed the different features. At one point he opened a fridge and it had a crisper drawer in it like ours at home, he opens the drawer and says, “Mom, look! You put the food in here, take it out, and make it for dinner!” (They really do watch our every move). With all the fun we had and all the choices out there, I was disappointed that I did not find my perfect fridge. Some were actually built worst than the one I have. Many of them had the plastic trays hooked onto the door, and the plastic was actually thinner. I did find one that looked pretty sturdy, it had shelves built into the door and wire racks as shelves on the inside that looked connected well, and it was only $500. But it didn’t have the ice and water dispenser on the front. It was then that I realized that this was going to take more research. So we were heading out of the department when my daughter spotted one more. We stood in front of it, as we opened the doors we were hit by a cool breeze and a bright light. Did I actually hear angels singing? Was this the one? Was it a sign? No…this one was just plugged in and running. Needless to say we were unable to actually look at all the features on this one, my daughter was being paged. While we were caught up in stainless steel, water dispensers and temperature controls, my husband and two sons were frantically looking for my daughter. They didn’t hear her when she told them she was going by me. Once “our party” was all back together and safe, we left. My daughter was reminded that she needed to tell someone where she was going. They actually left the store to check the van to see if we were out there. That’s when they came back in to page her. Usually I’m the one in the store with the kids looking for my husband as he wanders off, but he is a grown man. It’s quite frightening when you don’t know where your kid has gone off to, even for a split second. Thank God we were all accounted for.
So the quest continues. I’m going to do a little research online, and see if I can find out what all those buttons actually do. Find the lowest price and then check it out at the store. It’s a good thing I’m in no hurry, this might take some time. But I know one thing for sure. The next time we split up in a store, we will all know where everyone is going.
Carrie Ann Alexis 