Yesterday we took a quick run over to Six Flags Great Adventure and rode through the safari before hitting the park for a few hours. The babies in the safari are growing up fast, and every year there is a new batch of black bear cubs that swim in a watering hole with their moms

I like to go earlier in the morning than we did because the animals are all out first thing in the morning looking for Big Macs from the Cadillac Escalades with New York plates (you think I joke, those animals can tell). Still, during the weekday it’s usually pretty empty, so we can take our time. It’s also a good break for the baby to take a nap in the car before we head into the park

Technorati Tags: six flags, great adventure, black bear cub

Having my mom stay with us four nights a week is doing wonders for my domestic skills. Wait… before you feel sorry for my husband for having his mother-in-law stay with him, don’t. The kitchen and floors and bathrooms have never been cleaned and tidied up this many consecutive days since we moved in almost 10 years ago. The coffee pot is washed every night (along with ALL the dishes) and ready with a 20 oz. mug full of goodness the next morning. Family dinners have been made. The downstairs floors are swept every single day, producing an entire other dog due to the amount of shedding our pugs do. Any idle moment I have I find myself wiping down the counters. Toys get picked up and put away. I am buying health(ier) food and stocking the fridge.

My daughter and I are making great progress after only one day in cleaning up her ‘playroom’ to use as a temporary home for my mom when she stays here. One (hugmungous) bag of trash and three (hugmungous) bags for Goodwill. And that took about an hour or so, even with the baby requiring attention every 9 minutes. What did that get us? A path to swing the door open all the way and half of the closet empty. THAT’S IT. Being that my daughter is a total Oprah , Niecy Nash , Clean Sweep , and Extreme Home Makeover fan, I decided to use this to my advantage. After watching a few videos on the Oprah website on hoarders and home makeovers, and discussing how collecting this much stuff in your home can be a “sickness in someone’s brain” and can keep people from having family and friends over really struck a chord within her. Not only did she display empathy for these folks, but realized that her very own playroom was in just as bad shape as those on TV. I explained to her that it wasn’t very comfortable for Grandma to stay in the guest room as my craft supplies aren’t even fully organized in there yet. There isn’t even a place for clothes to hang since I gutted the closet and took the doors off to make a craft hutch.

Ok, I thought, let’s see if she can actually practice what she preaches. Upstairs we march to tackle the playroom. My goal was 80% trash/Goodwill, 20% keep. She had other plans. Still, the keep pile was tiny, but contained happy meal toys and random naked dolls. I can deal. She knows that after the trash is out and all the bags are taken to Goodwill, we will be purging her keep pile once again. Each time we take a look at an item to be put in the Goodwill bag, I take the time to discuss with her where the item is going (her dress up clothes that are too small for example) and we talk about how happy that may make some little girl who doesn’t have dress up clothes. Shoving junk in a garbage bag is an abstract idea for a kid and talking it through really makes her understand that the stuff just doesn’t disappear, but may make the life of another kid more fun. I have not even begun to dive into the explanation of what happens to the stuff in the trash bag (can you say 1000 year decomposition lifecycle?)

Her reward? (No, don’t bitch that I’m bribing my kid to clean up her own stuff. She’s *6* and I’m essentially trashing 90% of her personal belongings even though she doesn’t treat them with respect or even play with most of them.) We are converting our ‘formal’ living room into a gaming & media center / kids hangout and her reward will be a new chair just for her and a new (big) toy. Fair enough, I think.

End result: we’ve started a mini video diary of our efforts, just like on TV. She’s really excited about having our own ‘home makeover’ show. No word yet if I’m brave enough to post the video to the ‘net. We’ve got to get cracking, since my mom isn’t here over the weekends (Hello? What the hell happened to my free childcare and date night with my husband?) and I really want to surprise my mom with a new room when she comes back on Sunday night. Wish us luck. Or a magic cleaning fairy.

Technorati Tags: cleaning, goodwill, home makeover, playroom

I knew that school was ending and summer vacation was approaching. Well, that time is now. Yesterday was the last day of school, and Kidlette is now home with me for 10 weeks. Last summer I kept her in the 9am - 2:45pm summer program five days a week at her Montessori school after kindergarten. I was pregnant, and tried to work and just get a few hours a day in of work and some ‘me’ time (not that it actually happened) before my life was to change and my family doubled in size. This summer will be the polar opposite. Granted, I’m not pregnant and carrying around extra weight in the summer and sporting oh-so-sexy maternity clothes, but I’m quickly realizing that keeping an almost-7 year old girl and a 7 month old boy happy at the same time will prove difficult.

This summer vacation, which officially starts today, I have big plans. Bigger plans than I originally thought. Plus my time frame has been drastically cut short. My mom is going to be staying with us a few days a week for the summer while she looks for a new apartment somewhere in our area (gas is so expensive that it’s just easier to stay here). We have a guest room, which I’ve been trying for some time to convert into a craft room, but it really only works if we have an overnight guest. Having someone live part time for the summer won’t work. That brings me back to my sped-up organization plan for the summer. Multiple rooms in my house have to be purged, cleaned, painted, re-furnished, and re-purposed. The kicker is that it must all be done in a certain order, or complete chaos will ensue. And now that she’s with us, the time to clean is NOW.

The only rooms that won’t be changes are the bathrooms, dining room and kitchen (which all need a good cleaning and update). In addition to all the cleaning, I need some cable TV jacks installed/moved, (more) network jacks installed, and ceiling fan purchased and installed just adds to the mess. The room my mom will stay in is earmarked to be my daughter’s new room (that is currently *completely* covered in toys). I feel like I’m staging dominos.

Now, how do I convince my daughter that all of this staying home, cleaning, and organizing is fun? Besides, I’m getting rid of 95% of her toys and not allowing her to sit around and play XBOX all day while I clean. We have activities planned for the summer, but she already knows we won’t be out doing ‘fun’ things every single day (I just can’t afford the gas).

Well, rather than hanging out in front of my laptop right now, I think I’m going to kickstart the summer by getting a snow cone machine (the baby LOVES the ice) and pack up the car with more donations to Goodwill. It’s a start…

Like I don’t maintain enough blogs (or attempt to anyhow … poor SCRAPcast). Reviews From The Radio is a spin-off of my main blog, Lynette {Radio} : Broadcasting My Brain - as it became apparent that my views on products, services, companies, or websites that I find interesting may not be of interest to my general readers. There is also an audience for reviews and opinions, and those readers are not necessarily interested in the rest of my life. What will be interesting to see is if my sense of humor, desire keep our planet from turning into a trash heap, and spendthrift ways will cause my head to explode, or at least cause me to spend hours in front of my laptop drooling at the iTunes visualizer.

Most reviews you will find on this site are unpaid, unsolicited opinions. I am a very vocal person and the Internet gives me a bullhorn to voice my opinion. On my wish list of items to review are maid service for a year, the perfect pair of jeans, a vacuum cleaner that can pull pug hair out of my carpet, a video recorder I can keep in a diaper bag, spa services that offer childcare, and a Walt Disney World vacation.

If you are interested in that sort of thing, by all means subscribe. If not, don’t do it to just be nice! Just as in this blog, Reviews From The Radio will (hopefully) be an engaging site that starts conversations about the people, places and things in our everyday lives. The readers - and commentors - are what drives the conversation.

I have no time to write a longer post but to say that IT’S TOO FREAKING HOT OUTSIDE. I am trying to stay indoors with air conditioning for as long as possible, but I really need to go clothes shopping and get some shorts. When I go to pick up Kidlette from the bus stop seven houses away I’ll just keep on driving and go to Old Navy or someplace quick and cheap to get some summer clothes. I sorted through Kidlette’s clothes yesterday and got rid of all the outgrown items and reorganized her closet for summer. Come to think of it I should really get a few pairs of shorts for the baby. While I’m sure he’d be quite happy all summer wearing a white onesie, he’d look pretty ghetto.

I hate clothes shopping. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more when I’m back into single-digit clothing sizes again. But baby weight is a bitch and I hate shopping.