The Where’s Waldo books have been a favorite between Drew and me for as long as I can remember.  In the earliest days we snuggled up looked for the red and white striped illusive one before bed each night.  Later, when we had weekly doctor appointments we were thrilled to find a huge Where’s Waldo book in the waiting room.  Week after week the book calmed his nerves as we looked for Waldo and waited for our appointment. 

I was recently reminded of Waldo when I heard Drew yelling “Where’s Andrew?!” from his bedrom.  When I went to his room to see what was going on I was greeted by what you see in this picture.  He was immediately sorry for his genius when I ordered him to stay put while I found my camera.  Apparently his position was not very comfy.

I know everyone knows the Where’s Waldo series but  have you actuallly spent any time looking at any of the books.  They provide endless quiet time and wind down time for kids at the end of the day.  Kids love them alone or in your company.  You will get addicted too because unless you are familiar with them, you don’t realize how hard it is to find Waldo!

Well as luck would have it Waldo is easy to find today.  The newest book came out last week.  Here’s a link to it and some of the previous issues too. Good luck!

How do you draw the line when it comes to scaring your kids?  And just how damaging is it if you cross that line?

I grew up next door to a crazy Aunt who was constantly pulling pranks and lurking in her lilac bushes to jump out and scare me as I walked across the path from my house to hers.  Both she and my Mom enjoyed scary movies so I started watching those pretty early.  

The first book I ever checked out from the public library was Stephen King’s THE STAND.  I have to think I developed my love for the creepy from the early exposure from Mom and Aunt V.

As much as I  loved the scary stories I also became a total scaredy cat!  When I lived alone in my tiny apartment I had to fall asleep before midnight or I’d be up all night afraid.  By the time I was married with a husband working third shift I was sleeping with a butcher’s knife and a gun on my night stand.  The knife was dull and the gun was not loaded but they were to me as that dust cloud blanket was to PigPen… comforting.

Mom’s favorite holiday was Halloween.  I  never liked it because I didn’t get to go trick or treating much because Mom was a worrier.  AND she enjoyed dressing up so much to pass out candy that THAT became our tradition.  Now that she is gone I have taken her place.  I LOVE Halloween now.  Before I had kids I dressed up and scared the glow sticks off our trick or treaters.  MuAH Ha HA!

Recently, with the change in the weather and thinking of fall, I was trying to come up with article ideas about Halloween and I remembered about the time a family friend showed up frantic at our door with a small box in her hand pleading for help.  I was just a little girl but I was worried about her.  When she opened the box there was a bloody finger in it.  I screamed and ran.  Mom and Friend (Aunt D were you there too?) thought it was so funny.  How cruel. 

So I decided to try it out on my 8 year old the other day.  Hee hee.  Well if I was going to write an EHOW how-to article about it I had to make sure it worked, didn’t I?  Poor Sari.  She positively flipped her lid and ran her little body faster across the house than I have ever seen her move.  I wasn’t AS successful with my 12 year old Son… he didn’t quite buy into the prank but he wouldn’t come close to me either. 

It became a gag around our house for a couple of days and everyone seems to have recovered.  If you would like to know how to orchestrate the bloody finger in a box prank click  here to go to my instructions at EHow. 

With Halloween just around the corner I would LOVE to hear some of your best spooky family pranks.  I need some fresh ideas!

Happy Friday!

Remember I gave thanks in my journal a few weeks ago for how much I enjoyed sitting on the back deck watching the kids giggling and jumping on the trampoline while sipping mojito with the fresh mint sprigs grown on my back deck.  That was a lovely night.  Something else I did that evening was plan out a schedule for Her Family Blog and came up with special features for it.  One day soon I hope to be thankful for IMPLEMENTING those plans!    One feature I had decided on was movie review Friday.  I am so glad today is Thursday so that I can write about the incredible movie we saw last night.  Wall-E.

Disney Pixar has hit another home run with this fresh and original story.  Before seeing the movie the title character reminded me of the heart warming character of my generation, E.T.  Although the characters are similar in that way, that is where the movie similarity ends. 

Wall-E is not an extra-terrestrial.  He is a robot, part of fleet of robots called ”Wall-E”s that were designed to compact trash and clean up planet earth while earth’s inhabitants enjoy a five year, all inclusive, tour of space.  

Seven hundred years passes and generations of people are born and pass on the space ship, each generation becoming more fat and complacent.  Something went wrong on earth preventing their return.  Eventually, this is the only life the people know.  There is no interest in returning to earth.

The man in charge of the earth’s clean up did a super job of inventing robots to squash the trash, but he neglected to put anything in charge of “looking after” the planet.  Eventually there is not a single piece of vegetation and no living creatures except one little bug whose best (only)friend is Wall-E, the last functioning trash compactor robot.  After 700 years Wall-E has developed quite a personality. 

Wall-E dreams of a place more than this desolate land covered in cubes of trash.  And through his collection of treasures he has saved over the years, he has evidence it exists.

Follow Wall-E along on his journey as he meets a girl, and goes on adventure through space with her to get the humans back on track to their lives of action and emotion, and their home that needs them.

How you learn so much about what the characters are thinking and feeling is testament to the wonderful minds at Disney Pixar once you realize the first two thirds of the movie has almost no words. 

Sari had been talking about seeing Wall-E for several months prior to its release and I am kind of sorry we waited so long to see it. Whether you have or have not yet seen Wall-E click on the widget up top for some Wall-E fun where you can do things like meet the characters, explore the space ship and even build your own bot! The kids will love it!

Have you seen Wall-E?  What do you think about a future spent on hover chairs, interacting only with monitors and sipping big gulp dinners?

I am a little distracted.  I wrote a post which I realized too late that it cannot be posted until Thursday because the other post it references doesn’t come out until Wednesday.  Now I need something new but I am tired and my mind is elsewhere.  I was going to try and find a cute video or something.  OOOH!  In fact I will. “Charlie Bit My Finger.” It will cheer me up to watch it again.  But I also decided just to share Mama’s worries today.

My Fam is still at my Parent’s cabin up north.  They left Thursday night.  I have completed some good projects around the house and gotten some writing done so the time has been productive.  They were supposed to come home tonight but they decided to do some fishing expedition in the morning.  I am really excited for my Son to have this cool experience with Dad and Grandpa.  And did I mention they’re not coming home tonight?  Woohoo Yippeeeee! 

Listen, I work from home.  Hubby is off work.  Kids are off school.  We are all home all day every day in this little house that I think shrunk since June.  So don’t judge me until you’re squeezed in a cracker box with three other people while walking in my shoes.

Here’s why I’m worried.  There is something wrong with Cheese, my hamster!  I am extra protective of him because when I went away last November, I found his twin brother Ham floating in the sump pump crock upon my return.  Go ahead and say it, “it’s just a hamster” but he trusted me and suffering is suffering.  SO anyway, I guess I overcompensate with Cheese.  Or Ham, whoever is left.  Did I mention they were twins?

I guess I didn’t set him up properly before we went to to Orlando. 

• I ran out of the fluffy bedding so just before I left I used cedar chips to line his cage.  We had them on hand which saved me a trip to the pet shop and I thought that since we were going to be away and unable to clean out his messes, the cedar would provide a more pleasant aroma til we got back. 
• We turned off the central air.  And by “we” I do not mean “I”.  “I” was unaware.  That’s all I’m saying.
• I left the hammies home alone.  (we have a russian dwarf hamster named Mac, as well.  He is just a baby and they live separately)  Cheese is squirrely and get’s very nervous around people so I figured it would be less stressful on him if he could stay at his own house.  Plus, honestly, after the Ham tragedy, I didn’t trust anyone to lock the gate securely.  My Dad checked on them one day to make sure food and water were fresh and abundant.

A few days ago I noticed Cheese had some sores on his belly.  The next day I realized his belly was bare of fur.  I also figured out that he wasn’t super skinny because he’d lost weight, he had actually lost a lot of fur so he wasn’t puffy and fluffy!

I have some hamster antiseptic on hand from when Ham and Cheese used to fight and tear each other up.  But it’s not getting better.  I fact, there is one scab so big, soft, and thick looking that it looks like it is just going to pop off his tummy like a small child’s puzzle piece. 

TMI?

He keeps licking his wounds is part of the problem so it never dries up.  He has also developed 2 black knobs on his back.  Although, they could have been there all along but hidden by the fur. 

Guess what I found out.

• Hamsters cannot tolerate sudden changes in temperature.  (he was hot and laying in his ceramic  dish to cool off when we got home.)
• When hammies are hot they lose their fur.
• Cedar chips have been known to kill small animals. 

Apparently the sharp cedar chips irritated his skin at a magnified degree due to the fact that his fur was thinning and he was hot.  He developed a rash and just itched his whole belly raw. I put some neosporin on today.  I want him to get better for sure but I do not want to be around when that scab falls off. 

If anybody reading has a hamster, learn from my mistake… no wood chips and leave the air conditioning on!

 With that, I leave you Charlie!

Scratch that.  Charlie’s video can’t be embedded so I’ll give you Kassie the monster fighter instead!  Enjoy!