The Green Giant Veggie Snack Chips. #AGiantSurprise

So we are a potato chip household.  Really a chip household in general.  Some families crave sweets and have them on hand... we crave salt.  It's kindof ridiculous.  My husband's favorite snack is a new bag of chips and a bowl of cottage cheese to dip them in (I don't even know.)  The obvious problem with this situation being that chips are not the healthiest of options.  And with two kids we really try to set good examples, give them good choices, keep the junk food to a minimum.  So I usually employ a "every other shopping trip" rule with the chips and we don't always eat them in front of the kids.  That is until now.

Pictured.  A still life with vegetables and fruit.  Seriously.

The Green Giant has introduced a new line of Veggie Snack Chips.  And they are delicious.  But more than that they are a much healthier option for my chip-obsessed family. They are made out of vegetables and whole grains and contain a lot less fat than a regular old potato chip.  An option I can feel decent about letting my kids eat.  Or should I say devour:

Seriously they loved them:

The girl was curious... the dude was all MORE CHIPS BOWL.

The chips on his little toddler belly!

They especially liked the Multigrain Sweet Potato Chips.

The dog approves.

If you are interested in trying these new snacks out for yourself visit the Green Giant Facebook Page for a coupon!  Also to celebrate this hidden veggie talent Green Giant fans are uploading videos of their own hidden talents here.  (My hidden talent is that I can drive while eating a burrito.  Something the world does not need a video of.)  You can also find even more of the Giant's favorite surprise talents at the Green Giant YouTube channel.

Yay for healthier snack options!

Thank you to The Green Giant™ for being a sponsor. Show the Giant your surprise talent at www.facebook.com/greengiant

Goldfish Swim School and a Giveaway!

So recently I was asked to write about the brand new to Cleveland Goldfish Swim School.  I was super excited about this opportunity.  I think that the ability to swim is something that we should teach our kids just from a safety standpoint.  However finding time and availability of actual swim lessons is a different story.  I had my daughter in lessons when she was very young but it just hasn't happened since then.  Until now:

I have to say I was thrilled with the Goldfish Swim experience.  First of all the facility is great.  The water is 90 degrees.  So my freeze baby girl didn't spend the entire time shivering with blue lips.  Also the way the changing areas are laid out makes SO much sense for families!  There are no locker rooms - just a big bank of large changing stations, separate single bathrooms, and a large hair drying station:

Which works perfectly b/c you never have to be in that awkward shared changing space situation.  I would even feel comfortable taking both kids by myself with this setup - something not really possible with a huge locker room situation.

They even have turtles!

The way our lessons were scheduled our son's lesson was first and our daughter had to wait.  There was enough to do in the facility - books! turtles! fish! - that this was never a big deal.

But I think the big difference between Goldfish Swim and other situations is the lessons themselves.  The classes are kept to a 4 to 1 ratio.  So the kids really get individual attention.  Also they teach actual survival skills - like how to move along the wall and then climb out of a pool - which is exactly the reason I think swim lessons are so important in the first place:

Learning how to climb out of the pool.

The coolest thing of all, though, was seeing how my kids progressed and learned from week to week.  The first week my poor dude was pretty freaked out.  He clung to daddy and then just wanted me:

Trying to get out of the pool to get to MOMMY.

By the 4th week he was not clingy at all:

Instead of climbing out to get to me he kept looking up and smiling all proud.  KICK! POOL!

He was so, so excited about his lessons:

POOL!  POOL POOL POOL POOOL!!!

He even was fine with being dunked completely.

Daddy was a lot more aggressive with the dunking than I was.  Which is why he got to take him into the lessons and I sat on the sidelines being the nervous mom.

And he started to do things like pay attention to the teacher and follow along with the rest of the class.  Skills that will serve him well in the future!

My girl was totally nervous the first week, too.  I told her I would come into the lesson with her if she wanted.  But once it was time she said "I think maybe you can stay over there."

The next week she was scared of putting her face in the water.  Which is something she's never really been a fan of.  So I told her she could do that in her own time and there was no pressure.  She thought about it and when it came time not only put her face in but dunked her whole head under the water!  SHE WAS SO PROUD!  Confidence building situations like that are so important for kids.

So yeah.  I would highly recommend the Goldfish Swim school.  We intend on continuing with lessons for both of our kids.  I should also mention that it was NOT far away at all.  Living on the west side there is that whole the east side is the other side of the world mentality.  It's just not the case.  Even on the snowiest of days it took us less than 30 min to get there.  Totally a doable drive!

Eating a snack after his lesson.  Swimming makes them HUNGRY and TIRED!

Oh and did I mention they do family swims?  And birthday parties? So many fun possibilities with this place!  And what's super fun is that I get to offer you guys a giveaway!  I am thrilled to offer one lucky reader a Goldfish Swim Party!  A $450 value!  It's perfect for a kid's birthday party.  I honestly wish I could win it myself. To enter just use the Rafflecopter Giveaway Below (if you already follow me in various places you're basically already entered.  Just need to click on the form.)  I will leave the giveaway open for 1 week and pick a winner next Wed, 3/20/13.

Edited to add:  A winner has been picked and emailed.  Thank you to everyone who entered! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway Disclosure:  My kids received 1 month of free swim lessons as compensation for this post and hosting this giveaway.  As always I only blog about products that I believe in and all opinions, photographs, and crazy children are my own.

During.

So!  I've pretty much been MIA these days.  Which, if you follow me on twitter you know, is because we are in the middle of ripping out a good portion of our house.  Namely THE ENTIRE BASEMENT OMFG:

This was taken before we started demo but after we moved all of the furniture out.  Everything you see in this picture except for the stairs is gone.

And we're subcontracting all of it ourselves.  Which means lots of people to coordinate, lots of materials to acquire, lots of drawings and details to work out, lots of decisions to make, and so many people in out of our house it's ridiculous.  All with 2 small kids underfoot.

STOP CLIMBING ON TEH SAMPLES.

So... yeah.  It's been nuts.  It hasn't all been bad.. Some of it has actually been fun.  Like the trip my husband and I took to Ikea a couple of weekends ago:

Mmmmm meatballs.

We went to the one in Detroit b/c it's almost the same distance as the Pittsburgh one but with 1% less sales tax.  Which, when buying all of the furniture, lighting, fixtures, etc. for an ENTIRE BASEMENT OMFG, is worth an extra 15 min in the car.

This is about half of the stuff we got.  There's another whole flatbed cart not pictured plus the sink, vanity, etc that we had to pick up from their service department.

It all fit!

Yeah we filled my dad's truck.  It took us 7 hours.


The same bridge in Toledo on the way there and then again on the way home.  I thought we'd be home in time to pick up the kids before bedtime.  HAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAHA SOB.

The part that has been especially hard is that when you do a big renovation like this is the rest of the house becomes a dumping ground for all of the crap that is being staged.  For example that truck of Ikea?  Now lives in my dining room:

It took the kids less than an hour to turn it into their own personal jungle gym.

We have an extra mattress and a pack 'n play in our bedroom, the kitchen is encased in plastic in the hopes to keep the dust out of the rest of our house, and I don't even want to talk about what's become of our garage.  Oh and with our house in this state of hoarder like dissarray?  I"m planning a birthday party AT OUR HOUSE for my kid:

Kids don't care about clutter, and boxes, and random misplaced furniture right?  RIGHT????

FACEDESK.

The other portion of our lives that is solidly in the During column.... I am now 26 weeks pregnant.

Insert picture here.  I don't have one because there is nowhere in my house to take a picture that wouldn't have boxes or a sink or who the fuck even knows anymore in the background.

I .... well.  I'm exhausted.  Ridiculously tired.  Beyond tired.  So when I'm not dealing with contractors I'm sleeping.  Or trying not to sleep and falling asleep anyways.

So yeah.  Pretty soon there will be awesome Before and After comparison pictures and shortly after that there's going to be a new baby (!).  But right now, the during of getting it all done, is pretty sucky.

Sigh.

A Tuesday in Cleveland.

So!  I had this post written literally about a month ago.  I just had to go back and add in the pictures... and then a whole lot of Life happened.  I figured better late than never, right?

So.  Anytime I hear the whole kids of stay at home mom's aren't well socialized and aren't exposed to the world or germs or any of it schtick I roll my eyes.  Because that description bears absolutely no resemblance to my life.  I'm sure some people live that way but we?  Are out and about all the time.  We only stay home when the realities of laundry or weather force us to.  And I'm not just talking about errand running. I really make a point to get my kids out there to experience this amazing city we live in.

To put it another way - I didn't stay home with my kids to stay home with my kids.

But for whatever reason Tuesdays have become the REALLY fun day lately.  The day when it works out that we're doing something especially awesome.  Such as:

That would be my kids playing with friends in the ball pit at the Great Lakes Science Center.  The whole Polymer Funhouse is pretty amazing but well...

The ball pit is my jam.

So much fun.

Then we checked out the Bubble Show.  Which is always a good time:

After that we had a little bit of time to kill before lunch and the weather was somewhat decent.  So we stopped off at Edgewater Park to check out frozen Lake Erie:

 I also wanted to get a picture of them with the city to send to my dad for his birthday.

It would have been such a good picture without my daughter's "bitch, please" look.

  Plus the lake is so, so cool half frozen:

The kids discovered that there's this awesome steps up / ramp down situation going on with the fishing pier.  So they did that over, and over, and over again....


While I tried to get a picture of my Frozen Great Lake hat with the actual Frozen Great Lake:

But more on that later.

By this point the kids were frozen, exhausted, hungry, and done so we headed for home.  Yay for random Tuesdays in Cleveland!

Preschool Valentines in a Post Pintrest World.

So.  Valentines Day is tomorrow!  And it's our first one with a school aged kid.  Super fun.  Except that we live in a post-pintrest world now.  The simple box 'o cards from my childhood aren't going to cut it anymore.  At least if the things being sent home on each kid's birthday are any indication.  Super cute treat bags galore!  So I knew we needed to do something...

But!  I also am not going to do it for her.  I'm sorry but no.  The whole culture of parents doing amazing, crafty things for their kids is just not one I want to participate in.  It sortof feels like I would be doing my kid's homework for her.  However I am all about doing amazing, crafty things with my kid.  So I wanted to come up with something that she could do / help with that would also not be crappy compared with what the rest of the group was doing.

Also it needed to be cheap.  Because seriously, -yo.

I decided on chocolate covered pretzels. Cheap, easy, adorable, and possible for a 3 year old to master pretty quickly:

She helped me both dip the pretzels and cover them with sprinkles.

This one was less helpful and more DIP PLEASE DIP PLEASE YUM MMMMMM

 Yeah they aren't perfect.  But participation trumps perfection so we're going with it.



Then she put them all in bags:

 And I tied ribbons on with basic supermarket Valentines:

Yes.  The ribbons on Valentines are blue.  I suggested red or pink but my child was not having any of that nonsense.  Her artistic vision was BLUE!

She wrote her name on some of them. But then got bored / frustrated and needed to be done with the project so I finished them up:

She's super proud of them and can't wait to give them to her class tomorrow! 

In other news we're ripping out our entire basement starting this week.  I... yeah.... it's... I don't even know.  It is nice to know that my AutoCAD skills aren't completely defunct:

But I kindof forgot how much work organizing a project like this is.  We're doing it the same way we did our kitchen - hired someone to do most of the work while coordinating and General Contracting it ourselves, acquiring all of the materials ourselves, and even doing some of the work ourselves.  So... Yeah.  Next time we rip out walls I need to not be pregnant. I"m pretty sure I said that the last time....