Took all the kids out for the day while my sister was in the hospital

My sister had been in the hospital so to make her children feel a little better on Monday I wanted to take them out with my kids for a day of fun together.

I got them ready and after we left I realized I only had snacks for my own two kids packed. We arrived about a half hour early to the movie theater so I drove across the street to Price Chopper and let all 5 kids pick out their own bag of chips. We sat in the parking lot at the Cinema Saver snacking until it was time to go to the movie.

At 2:30 pm we watched Angry Birds. It was pretty cute all the kids enjoyed it.

Our second stop was to Smarty's for ice cream. This is the 6th ice cream shop my children and I have visited this summer. We got one baby size and 4 smalls and it came to a little over $13. The ice cream was delicious and the man running the counter was nice and friendly. 

Our last stop before heading home was to a new thrift store called Love's Thrift. Everything in the store is only $1 and books are FREE! I found this awesome mug that I am going to use to transplant a succulent into that needs a larger pot. 

Rita's and Food Science event

Yesterday we got a late start to our day out. The first thing we did was stop at the Nancy Kay Holmes library to pick up a prize my daughter won in a raffle she entered for borrowing books... and of course my children borrowed some more books.

Taco Bell was giving out Free Doritos Locos Tacos. I was going to stop and get my son one but he was worried he wouldn't like it so we decided to go to Rita's instead to get some Italian Ice. We had free coupons for a kids Italian Ice from last years summer reading program prizes. Both of my kids got a cotton candy Italian Ice. It smelled amazing and they loved it and ate it all.

I have a little obsession with taking pictures of signs and posting them on Instagram. This is the one at Rita's.

The main reason we went out was to go to the Library Express for one of the teen summer reading events. It sounded really neat so I couldn't wait to see it. It was called Food Science. There was a chemist there named Rosemary Gownley whose job is a Food Scientist.

I got to see an hour of this before my son wanted to leave and go eat dinner. I only missed about 20 minutes of it. I feel very lucky that even though it was a teen event they let my son and I sit in the back and watch as well as participate. This was such a fun educational event!

One of the products that they create is Luigi's Real Italian Ice. At the end of the program the teens got to try a flavor of the Italian Ice and got to take home a coupon for a free box of it at any store that carries that brand!

My review of Rachael Ray Nurtish Zero Grain cat food from Influenster

Rachael Ray Nutrish Zero Grain cat food (Chicken & Potato Recipe)

What cracks me up about this is that when I saw I was picked for this VoxBox I could only see a thumbnail size photo on my ipod. I assumed it was some kind of yummy crackers I was getting. When it arrived I realized it was cat food.


When I received the box I assumed it would be little sample packs of the cat food for my cat to try and to pass along to friends. It was a pleasant surprise when I opened the package to see a 3 lb bag of cat food. I have been feeding this to my old cat every day and she loves it.

I usually feed my cat any brand that is the lowest cost when I am out shopping for cat food. She never seems to thrilled about her food but she eats it. As you can see in this unboxing / sampling video my cat dove into her food with gusto!

I love that the ingredients in this cat food are natural and so healthy for my cat. Some of the ingredients I can recognize easily in the ingredient list are Chicken, Dried Ground Peas, Whole Dried Potato, Tapioca, Cranberries, Whole Flaxseed, Dried Plain Beet Pulp etc. Not many cat foods I have tried have quality ingredients like that listed.

It states clearly on the front of the package :

• U.S. farm-raised chicken is the #1 ingredient
• Zero grains, glutens or fillers
• Zero poultry by-product meal
• Zero artificial preservatives, colors or artificial flavors

As a member on Influenster I  received this product complimentary for testing purposes. 

Family Fun Day at McDade Park and geocaching (spoilers!!)

Saturday June 18, 2016 I took my kids to McDade Park for a family fun day event. I thought this would be a lot different then it was. We got there and the only thing there was to do for the event was listen to the radio playing on speakers and eat hotdogs and drink lemonade or fruit punch. That is not my idea of a family fun day.

The playground is huge and my children enjoyed playing on it for a few minutes but it was a very hot day. We walked around the grounds but it was a bit buggy so kids didn't really want to do any exploring.



When we arrived I checked to see if there was a geocache at this park and there was a few. I decided to do a quick easy cache called Mein Verbergen that was located near the entrance to the park.

I parked at the playground parking area and walked a nice little trail through the woods.

 I was in a hurry to find this cache so I used the hint to find it. The hint said "On right going up steps".

 With this hint I found it easily. I signed the log and replaced it where I found it and we left the park to go get groceries.

 My total of geocaches found to date is now 72.

A geocache, B-Fest and Bubble Tea (with spoilers)

Barnes & Noble had advertised for awhile about an event they were having called B-Fest Teen Book Festival. It sounded fun so I decided to take my kids and my niece yesterday.

We left early in case of traffic jams. Since we arrived with time to spare we went looking for a geocache called Towne Square Trickery. We had looked for it about a year ago when we were newbies to geocaching and could not find it.

As soon as we got near it I realized it was probably a light pole cache. I lifted up the bottom of the light pole cover and there in a little ziplock baggie was the log to sign. I laughed at how easy it was to find and how long we looked last time and couldn't find it.

 We have found a total of 71 geocaches now.

At 2 pm the B-Fest started. There was 11 teens participating (all girls). The first thing they did was play story ball. They wrote one sentence on the board and as the ball was passed from one person to the next they had to add on to the sentence to create a story.

The second thing they did was do a spelling showdown where they divided everyone into two teams. They used words and names from The Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who, and Harry Potter. Team 2 were the winners which really wasn't fair as instead of being all teens on the team one of the girls fathers (an author) was on that team. I could have helped out teen 1 if that was going to be how it was. No adults were supposed to be able to play. It is a TEEN fest! The winners got to pick from some awesome prizes and the losing team got a canvas reusable tote bag so they didn't walk away empty handed.

The final game they played was dictionary.

What I didn't realize was that at the very bottom of the flyer about the B-fest event is says "Must be 13 years of age or older to participate in B-Fest Sweepstakes. My son did not play as he was obviously too little. My niece is only 11 and my daughter is 12 (5th and 6th grade). I think they did really well seeing as they were playing with and against 9th graders and above.

On a table set up was lots of free swag to choose from that anyone could take.

After the B-Fest we made a quick stop at Walmart and Lowe's. 

The main thing I looked forward to doing was trying out Bubble Tea. I had heard about it from a girl on facebook. We found K&K's Old Teahouse and I was a little overwhelmed with all the options since I literally knew nothing about Bubble Tea. I asked him the most popular flavor and he said Taro which is like a cookies and cream flavor. I let the kids all choose whatever they wanted. I had not expected the tea to be so costly. For 4 of them it cost me just under $20. 

My son chose a Chocolate Blizzard. He hated it but I thought it was delicious and tasted just like a chocolate milk shake. 

I chose a Kiwi Black with Passion Fruit jelly. It was really good but I think I would have liked it better if it had only half the amount of jelly chunks in the bottom. 

My niece got a Blueberry with Rainbow Jelly.

My daughter got a Peach Ice Crush with Grape Jelly. I think my daughters was the best! It was so delicious. 

Jessee's Place Ice Cream and Denny's along with the rest of our day

Today is day 8 of summer vacation for my children. Since school got out my daughter has been asking to go to the libraries that we visit only in the summer time. The first thing I wanted to do today was treat them to ice cream so I looked on facebook to find an ice cream shop in that area. The only one I could find was Jessee's Place Ice Cream.

I turned the gps on and we hit the road. About 45 minutes later we arrived.

My 8 year old son is a very nervous child. He looked over the menu and quietly told the woman working "I want chocolate peanut butter ice cream" She looked at him and said "Is that how you ask? You say May I..." I was pretty irked but said nothing. She brought the two ice creams out (It was $5 for two small hard ice creams in a cup) and said she tries to teach children manners unless they are autistic or something for me to let her know. 

I was pretty mad by this point and disgusted that she thinks its okay to make a child embarrassed when he ordered correctly and told her what he wanted...unless they are autistic.. what???  I do not go to a restaurant and say "May I please have a veggie patty". I say "I will have a veggie patty" or "I would like a veggie patty". I do not see anything wrong with my son telling her what he wanted. Manners are good to have but it isn't a food server's place to teach a child manners that should be left up to the parent. 

I told her that my son never talks to strangers so I was just glad to see him speaking to her at all to say his order. She said that "Now I will know for next time he comes back." I guarantee you I will never go back to that ice cream shop ever again. 

Our next stops were to the Nancy Kay Holmes Library and the Library Express to sign up for the summer reading programs. My daughter is old enough now that she will get to do the youth reading groups / teen summer reading groups. She has been really looking forward to it. 

While we were at the Steamtown Mall (where Library Express is located) I stopped at the dollar store and found two awesome pairs of sunglasses for $1.99 each. As I was in line to pay I noticed some new energy drinks. I like to try every brand I see so I grabbed the flavor that looked the best to me. I love the design on this one with the black widow spider!

Our last stop was Denny's for dinner. Tuesdays and Thursdays they have kids eat free night. My son is still eligible for a free meal. My daughter ordered a build your own appetizer sampler that was two orders of mozzarella sticks and a cheese quesadilla. She didn't like any of it. I'm not surprised as she is so picky! I finished it up for her. My son got spaghetti and a side of apple slices. 

I got a veggie patty with a side of fries. I have never had a veggie patty anywhere but Burger King or Subway. When I was young I ordered one at Friendly's and was given a meat burger instead. It kind of traumatized me so this was the first time I actually ate one. It looked better then it tasted to be honest I would have been happier with just a grilled cheese and it would have cost a lot less as well. 

30 days of AMZ Review Trader ( Amzreviewtrader )

In April I signed up for a website called AMZ Review Trader. What I was not told before signing up for a free account was that in order to receive products to try out and review I had to have Amazon Prime. I signed up for a 30 day free trial. The best way to find products to try for free is to click on the shopping tab and sort by lowest first.

In my first package I received these 3 free items:

Pure Body Naturals 100% Natural Nail Polish Remover
Kleen Organics Jeunesse Professional Age-Defying Vitamin C Serum
First Botany Cosemeceuticals Arabica Coffee Scrub

I loved all of them and was so excited about this site.

Most of the things that I got throughout the month were free. The only ones that I paid money for was a Harry Potter ring that was not worth the month as it was so cheaply made, a bicycle bracelet, and shoe insoles. I received these items at a large discount.

Due to the fact that I started out with only 15  reviews on Amazon I think that was a huge part of why I was denied for so many products. The sellers like to see people with a lot of quality reviews so they chose the people with the highest ratings first. I was denied for 49 things that I applied for. It was pretty disappointing but understandable.

After my 30 day free trial of  Amazon Prime I decided to cancel it. I want to work on writing more reviews before I bother to pay for an account. I do not want to pay only to get denied all the time. I got a lot of cool stuff during the month I was testing this site out but a lot of the stuff seems the same but with different brand names. It seems like the most things offered there are cell phone cases.

Today was the last day of school. Summer break is here!

Today my children went to school for 2 hours. They got home just after 10 am. I was so excited it was hard to wait for them to arrive home. My son completed second grade and my daughter completed sixth grade with honor roll.

On memorial day I saw an ad on television for pizza at Little Caesar's. So I decided for lunch to take my kids to try it. We hit a traffic jam that was expected to set us back 18 minutes. We got half way through and I finally was able to get off an exit and go around. It took a lot of extra time. We didn't arrive at Little Caesar's until about 1:30 and we were famished.

I ordered Cheese Bread and the Stuffed Crust Deep! Deep! Dish Pizza for $10. That pizza is only available for a limited time. Since my daughter does not like sauce I asked them to put very little on it and no pepperoni. The cheese bread was okay. My daughter didn't think it had much flavor (nor did I) but she ate it. She HATED the pizza though. I thought it was pretty good but would have been a lot better with more sauce. I wish I had gotten the regular amount of sauce on it since she only ate a few bites after trying it.

We did some shopping at Walmart. I bought my daughter a new RCA tablet to replace another tablet that gotten broken a few months ago. I also bought myself a gas powered push lawn mower. It is the first one I have ever owned.

My daughter had some money saved up and gift cards so we shopped at Five Below. My son had some money saved up as well so he bought two use games at Gamestop. He is one happy kid right now! My daughter is having a sleep over at her cousins house (my sister's) tonight. We had some trouble getting her tablet set up so she will be happy once she comes home tomorrow to see I got it ready for her.

On our way home we stopped at Sweet Frog for ice cream. They have a deal on Wednesdays that you get a free kids ice cream with the purchase of an adult. So my daughter picked out her ice cream and my son got the free kids one which was a little smaller then the adult size. The total was $5.75 for my daughters. Last summer we went to as many different ice cream places as we could find when we were out for the day. We made it to 14 different ones last summer. This is the first one we have visited this summer.