Monday, March 25, 2013

Something a Little Different for the Holiday

So Easter is this weekend and we've already done one egg hunt and two more coming up this weekend...not only does it mean a lot of fun for the kids...but also lots and lots of candy...bleh.....sugar crashes are the worst!  So in an effort not to contribute any more to the chocolate comas the kids will be in we're going to fill their baskets with local coffee shop gift cards-yeah they love their "coffees" with mom and dad(aka soy milk), hopefully some homemade playdoh since all of ours is brown now(no matter what we do they all magically mix together), and perhaps some socks or underwear since they're both big hits in our fam.
Don't get me wrong we still have our fill of easter chocolate...I jsut made this yesterday and have already eaten WAY too much....might tweak the recipe next time to have more graham crackers and less butter.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Going Low Tech and No Tech

A few months ago I made the decision to downgrade my phone-no internet, no browsing and only text messages no media. In an age where everyone else is upgrading I chose the opposite-I'm not going to lie it was HARD for me. I missed being able to constantly check my various accts to see what's new...guess what after a few days-I didn't care so much. The reason I chose to take this step was that my husband was complaining that I was always checking my phone and no matter how defensive I got...he was right I was always checking my phone.

It's been a few months now and I've realized a few things...my biz did NOT suffer-I still respond to people within a few hours, our cell phone bill is much less-making finances a bit better, and I'm not constantly missing out on little but important moments in my family due to being on my phone.

I bring this up because yesterday I came home and was just frustrated...our house was a disaster and our kids were constantly whining about watching tv and we were just fighting all the time. So I did something drastic....I took the tv away. I unplugged it and hid it in my office. When my son came home home school(he's 4) he noticed after about a half hour and immediately threw a big trantrum(I now knew I was right about removing it), my daughter(she's 2) asked me what was missing aka why was there a big dusty empty cabinet in our living room....and my husband noticed immediately and threw an even bigger tantrum than my son. So you think the rest of the night was a nightmare right....NO we went on a drive, did some errands and then came home and instead of watching cartoons to wind down like normal we played a game-as a FAMILY-it was great and a lot of fun.

My husband made me bring the tv back last night-but he vowed to oly watch an hour and then this morning when he got up with them-they only watched 30 min of tv and then PLAYED. They have now been playing together for hours-they lived with the dinosaurs, got married, played a  board game, built a giant tower and are still going-

Don't get me wrong I am grateful for modern technology but I think sometimes we tend to rely on it too heavily and don't really realize it until we're at a breaking point. Well I "broke" yesterday and now we're working on rebuilding. 

Happy Friday!