Random Funny

Sorry for the absence. Summer time has thrown me for a loop, trying to juggle everything and we have been either out of town visiting family or have had family visiting us for the last two weeks.

I'm in the office today trying to catch up and had to share with you this chuckle my husband and I have had from a comment that came in from an old blog post.

Last year, my husband and I were disagreeing on who a certain actor was in a KFC commercial, of all things. I posted about it in "Who's Right?" Well, today, we finally got our answer!
Here's what the original blog said.

Well, this is a bit random but I thought it might be fun to ask and you really would be helping settle a debate my husband and I are having.Cliff is completely convinced that the man in this KFC commercial who plays the dad is the same actor who played the dad in the Disney series, Phil of the Future. I am equally convinced that it's not. So who's right? We actually got online to look up the Phil of the Future actor's name, trying to see if it matched with the commercial but with no luck. That of course is because it's not the same guy!

Here's Craig Anton, the Phil of the Future guy.... and unfortunately, I cannot find a copy of the commercial in question anywhere on the web so you'll have to watch your television for it to show up. It's the KFC commercial where the family is sitting down to dinner and the dad reveals that he was once in a rock band and the kids are shocked. I'm positive the actor is not the same guy. Am I right?

So this was the comment we got this morning:

You're right. Not the same guy. John Colella is the actor in that commercial. 100% positive. I'm him and was just looking to see if I could find my commercial on line to upload to my website. No such luck, but found your blog. Disagreement settled!

Thank you to your husband and your family for the service and sacrifice you all make for our country.

LOL! Cliff and I had a good laugh, and I laughed the loudest, since I was right. :)

This, by the way, is John Colella. Cliff is defending himself by saying that they do kind of look like each other. (I still don't think so.)

Nice guy and apparently has appeared in some of my favorite shows like CSI: NY, and JAG among many others.

Thanks John for clearing everything up! :)

P.S. Posted a new piece on the Wives of Faith site for the 4th, "The price of freedom." Read it and tell me what you think!
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The Grocery Game

Most people would think (I think) that I am very outgoing, but the truth is I can be pretty introverted if I let myself be. Part of that comes from working at home by myself. The longer I do it, the more I realize I have to push myself to "get out there" and experience life with other humans. :) It's also probably why I love Twitter and Facebook and blogging - anytime I get a message or an email, I am reminded that there is life outside of the four walls of my office!

Lately though, with the summer weather now upon us, I've been enjoying getting to know our neighbors a whole lot better. We have a new family that's moved in next door to us that's great, and our son loves playing with their kids, and so the whole street of families seems to be connecting a lot with one another now. At least three of the families on our street (we live on a cul-de-sac) are dealing with tough economic and/or unemployment situations, and there has been a lot of tip sharing on great ways to save money, so I thought I'd pass some of the things I'm learning on to you!

The Grocery Game is a website that others have emailed me about before in the past but I had no idea what it really was and honestly never took the time to check it out until my new neighbor, Kelly, told me about it.

This is a site that tracks the product prices of what your local grocery store carries and lets you know every week what products are at their lowest markdowns. The founder of the site also tells you which coupons to use with what, and lets you know how much you're saving. The idea is to stockpile what you use at the lowest price before you need it, so when you do need it, you have it and you haven't spent a fortune to get it (nor are you forced to spend a fortune when you need it because you already have it.) Get it? :) They have a $1 trial for four weeks which we are trying out right now, and then it goes to $10 for 8 weeks at a time for the first store, and $5 for the second store. The savings you get back from doing this definitely pays for the subscription!

With Publix and Kroger both in our immediate area, it's also a nice thing to be able to compare lists and see who has the cheaper sale on a certain product each week.

Another site my neighbor Robin has talked about is southernsavers.com. This is a site that's FREE, and the woman who runs it gives all sorts of great info about current coupon savings. She also explains how the CVS and WalGreens savings work (I have met women obsessed with the CVS Extracare program but never understood it until I read this.)

I'm looking forward to getting into the grocery game of savings and discovering how much we can save. We've used coupons for quite a while and I'm hoping that having this new information at our fingertips will help us save even more.

What are some of the resources you use to save?
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Summer Smarts for Kids

It's summer time and we are having fun! Caleb learned how to ride his bike (finally!) last week and it has been non-stop ever since! It's been neat to see him waking up every morning and the first thing he asks if he can go outside and play (instead of asking if he can turn the tv on!).

But along with the physical activity, I also want him working on his mental muscles too, which is why I'm asking him to do a little work each day in reading, writing and math. Third grade starts next year and I know it's going to be a lot tougher so I want to make sure he's ready. Also, studies have shown that students often lose a lot of the knowledge they gained the year before over the summer, known as summer learning loss.

I've found a lot of helpful resources on the web and thought I'd share a few of those in case you'd like to help your student stay fresh this summer before heading back to school.

Reading Log

At the end of his first grade year, his teacher gave Caleb a reading log with a suggested reading list for the summer. She told him if he read books all summer and filled it out (there were 25 lines), he could bring his log back at the beginning of second grade and get a treat. This was great incentive for Caleb and he loved being able to take his log back to Mrs. Hoy for a reading certificate and a sucker at the beginning of second grade. His second grade teacher could tell it paid off too - where most of her students had dropped in their reading scores from the end of first to the beginning of second, Caleb had actually raised his!

His second grade teacher didn't send home a reading log this summer, so we have created our own and are using a monetary system this time. If he reads 25 books by the end of summer, he gets $10. 50 books will get him $25 and if he reads a whopping 100 books, he will get $50 (just enough for a new Wii game!). So far, he's read 9.

Computer Fun

A few weeks before school actually got out, I started looking around online for some good sites Caleb could play on but still be able to learn. FunBrain.com and LearningGamesForKids.com are both good sites that he's enjoyed so far.

Hands On Learning

Just google your child's grade and you will find a ton of resources right at your fingertips for helping him or her stay somewhat studious this summer.

Aplusmath.com is a great site for mathematics and has a neat feature where you can mark what type of math you want (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division), how many problems you want and in what format, and a worksheet will be generated that you can print out!

There are also flashcards you can print out (we're working on multiplication tables) and online worksheets that can be done on the computer if you'd like to save paper.

Another site I just found this morning that you may want to check out is education.com which offers activity ideas, worksheets you can print out in just about every subject, for every grade.

Letter Writing

One more thing I'm trying to do with Caleb this summer is get him to write a little more (he is not a fan and his handwriting grades from second grade definitely back him up!). So after a fun weekend of doing things like our Family Friday Fun day and swimming at the pool or playing with friends, I have him sit down and write a letter to our extended family. He has to write one page (four or five small paragraphs) which I then make copies of and we mail them to the grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.

I'm hoping that a few of our family members will write back which will excite Caleb and maybe get him to write them back as well. Letter writing may be a dying art, but I really hope writing by hand doesn't become so!

P.S. Just in case you were worried, Caleb is having a lot of fun this summer. We only do the reading/math/writing thing a couple of hours in the morning, and the rest of the day is his to enjoy, whether it's playing with his friends outside, or going for a walk with us, or guessing what the next adventure will be! Hope some of these ideas have gotten you thinking about what you can do with your own kids this summer!

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Getting Ready for Deployment: The Light Bulb List

Summer has begun and I have to say, in the last several days, it's been hard to get on the computer! I NEED to get on the computer but we've been having too much fun doing summer stuff.

Actually, I guess that depends on who you ask. Our son has loved playing outside with his friends and doing our Friday Fun days but he's not so crazy about the school stuff I'm having him do each day (an hour or so in the mornings - reading, math and writing worksheets). I keep telling myself I may be the bad guy today but he'll thank me when he graduates with honors his senior year! :)

Anyway, we found him a cheap little desk light for his desk which is in the corner of our home office that he really needed and as I went to get a light bulb out of our laundry room, I was reminded of our Light Bulb List.

The Light Bulb List was something my husband put together for me before he deployed in 2007. He was usually the one who changed out the light bulbs when it was needed, and as a favor to me, he made a list of EVERY light we had in our house and what type of lightbulb it used. THEN he went out and bought a few boxes of each light so I would never have to worry about it while he was gone! The list is taped inside one of the cabinet doors where the lightbulbs are stored, and it was extremely handy to me (and still is!).

This idea may sound a little silly to some of you but I bet there are other things in your homes and your yards you might benefit from having your spouse make a list for (and even thinking ahead, buying extra supplies of something) before he or she leaves on a deployment. Do you know how to run the lawnmower? Do you know how to fill it up with gas and oil and all that fun stuff? What about the car? If you're not going to have someone else take care of it while your husband's gone, then you might want a lawnmower list, or a garage list, or a car list.

If you're a male spouse and your wife is leaving and she's the one who normally pays the bills, you might want her to create a Bill List, with online account info, usernames, passwords and bill due dates for each month. Or a Phone List, with all of her contact numbers and emails for the kids schools, coaches, teachers, private lessons, etc.

As a military couple, each person plays an important role in the marriage and the family. It's important to think ahead so you can be as prepared as possible during the deployment. That way, the spouse at home doesn't feel as lost trying to do the other's "job" and the spouse who is away will still feel that he or she has helped and is contributing to keeping the family going during their time apart.

What kind of list will you make?
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Seeing God Through the Tough Times

One of the toughest times for a military wife is the season of deployment. I don't care how strong your faith is, how deep your relationship with God has become - you will have moments of despair, feelings of hopelessness and silent prayers that things were not the way they were.

We're talking about the hard parts of deployment this week in our Wives of Faith Facebook group and one of our bloggers over at the Wives of Faith blog, Stephanie, has written a beautiful post that I think is a good example of the emotional struggle many military wives deal with as they live through deployment. You may want to share her post with your family and members of your church. It's an insight many who want to support military families need to understand.
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NG/Reserve Unemployment Survey is Live

The survey I mentioned in an earlier post is now live. If you are a National Guard or Reservist who is currently experiencing or just recently experienced unemployment with your civilian job, or you are the spouse of a service member who has, please take this survey.

The responses I receive through the survey will be compiled and used in my research as I write an article on this topic for Military Spouse Magazine which is scheduled to publish in September, I believe.

Any help you can give in passing the link along and getting the word out is much appreciated!

Once again, here's the survey link if you'd like to copy and paste in your facebook, twitter or blog post -

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=1fVh7iL5qbaqjtHMxn3ImA_3d_3d

Thank you! The survey will stay live until June 10.
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Remembering

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Counting Down Deployment

It occurred to me that some of you reading my last post might be new readers and not know about our marble jars I mentioned we used during deployment.

This is the main way I used with our son to count down Cliff's first deployment and we will most likely use them again when the next one comes around. I had heard someone suggest letting the kids eat a piece of candy each day and that just seemed to scream "here come the cavities" to me, so I decided to use marbles.

Here's how to make your own marble jars:

Buy two glass jars with screw-on lids. The lids will come in handy if you have little ones who might be tempted to put a marble in their mouths.

Buy enough marbles for one per day you think your spouse will be gone and then throw in at least 30 to 60 more for good measure - nothing wrong with a few extra marbles left over, but it will be really terrible if all of the marbles are gone and Daddy or Mommy still isn't back!

Mark one jar with a frowny face and one jar with a smiley face or other symbols or words that will keep the two jars straight - one that has the marbles representing the days your service member will be gone, one represents the days until your service member comes home (this one will be empty when you start). You'll want to make sure you know which one is which so you don't get confused when the marbles become half and half (a very exciting moment! :) )

Put all your marbles in the first jar. As each day passes, add one marble from the full jar to the empty jar. This is a great visual way for kids (and adults) to see the deployment time pass. It's especially exciting once you realize that the second jar has more marbles than the first! A definite sign that the deployment is almost over!

You can take pics of your marble jars and email/mail them to your spouse so he/she can see the time pass as well. And even if you don't have kids, this is still a great way to count down other than just using a calendar.

If you liked this idea and use it for your own deployment, let me know! Anytime I can help another spouse not lose all her marbles, I feel good! LOL (sorry - couldn't resist throwing in a marbles joke!)
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