We’re huge Science Fanatics around these parts, so when I found out about these cool experiments, I had to share them with you!
**The links in this post are affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on my link.
30 Days of Science continues on the Little Passports blog with show-stopping experiments! Grab your kids and start exploring science!
Get messy
Get your hands messy and make an eggshell disappear! This fun and easy kitchen experiment answers the question, “Can you peel a raw egg?”
Get powerful
Let the power of polymers wow your kids! Try this simple experiment to make a leak-proof bag. Believe it or not, all you need is a zipper-lock bag and some pencils.
Get tasting
Have you ever had a cold and noticed that you weren’t able to detect a flavor in all of the foods you ate? Assemble your young scientists around a few of their favorite foods and ask, does smell affect taste? This delicious experiment will reveal the answer!
I am so excited to share this great event with you all!
Fire danger is real here in San Diego, and as a result, San Diegans have a special affinity for Firefighters and other emergency workers. To help these firefighters train and continue to hone their skills, The San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation is proud to sponsor the San Diego 5K & Kids Run.
The event is on October 8, 2016- It’s also a great way to kick off Fire Prevention Week!
The San Diego Fire Rescue 5K & Kids Run is for everyone and offers several divisions including:
5K Run/Walk,
5K Run/Walk Stroller Division,
5K Public Safety Division,
1-mile Kids Run and a 100 meter Sparky Sprint
Firefighters will run along with participants and meet them at the finish line to hand out finisher’s medals.
Families, the community and race participants can also enjoy the interactive Fire Safety Expo. The Expo features firefighter demonstrations, SDFD specialty divisions including Bomb Squad, Hazmat and Heavy Rescue. Also present will be Sparky the Fire Dog, San Diego Project Heart Beat, CERT San Diego, San Diego Lifeguards, SDG&E Fire Safety House and more.
Race Details:
When: Saturday, October 8, 2016 First Race Start: 8:30 am
Where: Embarcadero Marina Park South 200 Marina Park Way San Diego, CA 92101
Admission: Entrants may sign up online here. I have a special for my readers, Save $5 off your entry fee with coupon code: SDFIRE5K
$40 – July 1 through September 11
$45 – September 12 through October 1
$50 – October 2 through October 7
$25 – 1 Mile (Kids ages 6 – 12)
$10 – Sparky Sprint (Kids ages 3 – 5)
Entry fee includes: race shirt, drawstring goodie bag, custom finisher’s medal, access to the safety expo and beer garden (21+). Individuals, families, and kids are welcomed participants. Awards will be presented for first place male and female in each division!
As the course is very flat and stroller friendly, we’ll be walking as a family, and I’d love to see readers out there as well! If you participate, please let me know!
I don’t know about you, but when I’ve got both kids home all the time, it’s a lot harder to keep on my frugal goals.
I’m all about taking advantage of local free and cheap fun (like events at our local library or community center, local parks and splash pads), but for some reason summer vacation always distracts me from frugality. Maybe is the 100+ degree temps we’ve been having most of the summer.
Well, we are into our second week of school and I’ve re-committed to my frugal lifestyle for my family. Here are just a few things I’ve done over the past two weeks:
Meal Plan using what’s on hand in out cupboard before heading the the store. I’ve also planned out school lunches too!
Committed to taking drinks with us when we leave the house. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but when it’s over 100 degrees in the shade, we go through a lot of water on our daily adventures. Check out the cool growler I got on Amazon. It’s supposed to be for beer, but I fill it with ice cubes and water each day and it comes with me in the car- it’s an easy way to get your 8 glasses in! I also take iced coffee with me in the morning to school drop off.
Set a schedule for Bitty Bird and I. Again, a schedule doesn’t sound like a way to save money, but now I know what we are doing each day after Big Boy is at school. I have time each day while she is napping to write, research, and do Amazon Reviews.
Plan out shopping trips a little better. Now that I don’t have two extra sets of hands helping me shop (especially a 5 year old who is constantly near death starvation when in proximity to a grocery store), I can look at ads, check my smartphone apps for rebates and deals. I also have more time to print coupons! This really saves me money (and time).
Now that school has started, I’d love to hear how you’ve recommitted to your goals (whatever they might be).
LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Brick and Knob configuration, the Minifigure and LEGOLAND are trademarks of the LEGO Group. @2016 The LEGO Group. No purchase necessary to enter or win. A purchase will not increase your chance of winning. Void where prohibited. Open to legal residents of USA, age 21 and older at the time of entry. Approximate retail value of prize $3787. Sweepstakes will be open from 7/1/16 at 8:00am PT through July 31, 2016 at 11:59pm PT. For complete details, odds, and official rules, www.littlepassports.com/sweepstakes. Sponsors: Little Passports, LEGOLAND Florida and Southwest Vacations.
If you follow me on Instagram, you saw that Lil’ Man and I hit up the town on Thursday- The Legoland Mini-town that is.
On June 30th, Freedom Tower, the Miniland version of the One World Trade Center was revealed! It’s pretty amazing! It’s built with 250,000 Lego Bricks! It weighs over 1000 pounds, stands over 26 feet tall (that’s the tallest lego structure in the US!), and it took 8 Master Builders 1200 hours to complete. It’s breath taking!
In addition to the Freedom Tower, there are replicas of the 9/11 Memorial’s twin reflecting pools, the grove of memorial trees, and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
Here are some views from the Coast Cruise ride:
Little Man’s hand at the bottom- practicing his Vanna moves.Awesome panoramic photo of MiniLand!
If you don’t have plans for the 4th tomorrow, Check out the Legoland Red, White, and Boom!
Don’t miss Fireworks set to a patriotic musical tribute with great viewing in designated locations throughout the Park. Throughout the day, kids of all ages can enjoy performances, meet their favorite LEGO® Friends and Characters, and participate in all-American family picnic games, like water-balloon tosses, burlap sack races, the Family Build Challenge and LEGO Hamburger relay.
The celebration lasts from 1:00pm to 9:00pm with fireworks at 8:30pm. All Red, White and BOOM! activities are included in the cost of admission to LEGOLAND California.
Speaking of Admission, here is the deal I alluded to earlier… When you buy one Legoland Play pass at regular price, you can come back to play the rest of 2016 FREE! Enjoy unlimited admission now through December 25, 2016 to LEGOLAND California. For details and to purchase, click here.
Schoola is hooking us up! Starting today, Buy a Sundress and Get Half Off Your Next Order!
Purchase a sundress between 6/6 and 6/12 and receive a 50% off code via email on 6/13! Oh, and it gets better with FREE SHIPPING!*
To get started, click here. New to Schoola- that’s cool too. Sign up here and score $20 in new to you clothes for you, or your kiddos! Schoola helps schools fundraise by selling gently worn clothes. You can learn about their mission here.
One of the things I pride myself on is how we are able to quasi-control the toy mess in our home. It’s a lot of work, but we have a pretty good system, and it might work for you too.
Stage 1: Contain the mess! First of all, a few years ago, hubs bought a bunch of 20 quart Steralite containers with snap on lids at an auction for a song. So, we separated all of the toys by type and put them in boxes with a lid.
Obviously the Legos and Thomas the Tank Engine toys go into larger boxes because, well, we have tons more then will fit in the 20 quart containers. We also re-use random plastic containers, like these plastic jugs that hard pretzels come in, the large bottles that Nesquik powder comes in, and dishwasher tab boxes.
Stage 2: Label! We label everything. All of the original totes have Kidecals labels, but the newer /larger containers have different labels. I try to do labels that have drawings of the toys too, so it’s easier for non-readers to know what’s in the box without opening them.
I used the terminology that Lil’ Man uses for his toys. The box marked “Guy Men” has action figures and little toys (like his Sesame Street “guys”), and “Mean Animals” (Plastic/Vinyl animals of various sizes).
Some of the toys that don’t get a lot of play (or annoy me), are stored in the closet. I rotate the less frequently played toys through, so that all of the toys get loved.
Stage 3: Limit Access! Another thing that helps is that we have a three toys at a time rule. Lil’ Man can have three types of toys out at a time. Right now, it’s guy men, mean animals, and cars.
SQUEE! It’s back! 50% off at Schoola! Just use Coupon Code SPRINGBRK at checkout. And in addition, if you are new to Schoola, they are offering $20 free and free shipping when you sign up here.
In addition to offering awesome gently worn kids clothes, Schoola also gives a percentage (40%) of each sale to a school. So you can feel good twice: Once while your saving $$, and again because you are helping support a school in need.
To get started, click here. And I can’t wait to see what you have scored!
Henry loves to garden. He loves planting seeds, watering, talking to the plants , and harvesting the fruits and veggies (even if he isn’t too hip on eating them all-yet!)
I think that it’s because of our heritage. My Maternal Great-Grandfather was a farmer in Minnesota.
Since we live upstairs in a condo, we don’t have 40 acres to plow and sow. So, like many urban farmers, we turn to container gardening. I have a growing Pinterest Board dedicated to container gardening, and I encourage you to join it!
Here are a few ways that we were able to start our garden on a budget:
I kept my eyes peeled on Craigslist free section for pots, I also put feelers out on social media for anyone getting rid of pots. That’s how we scored an awesome clay pot for our wild flowers!
We purchased heavy duty plastic pots at 99 Cents Only. They have a great selection of basic gardening tools, pots, planters, and tomatoes cages- all for $1.49 or less!
I found a great deal on seeds at Dollar Tree. I was able to pick up this box of seeds for only $1.00! I only used part of the box, since we don’t have a lot of room for our flowers. In addition to American Seed brand, they also had some Burpee brand seeds!
Most gardening stores are having sales right now- check out your local shop and see what kind of plants are on sale! We picked up a huge bag of soil, organic tomatoes (complete and in a planter with a cage), Green Bell Pepper, a 6 pack of strawberries, and a lavender bush for less than $50. We opted to purchase some plants in addition to seeds, just so Henry doesn’t lose interest in our garden (waiting for a tomato seed to grow into a bush is mind-numbing).
We are saving money on water too! Whenever it rains, we get out our rain buckets and collect as much as we can. It usually is only a few gallons, but we are able to use that water and not turn on the tap.
If you are new to gardening and aren’t sure what to plant or where to plant, check out Sunset Magazine’s Climate Guide. It will give you the ins and outs of when and what to plant. Luckily here in San Diego, it’s pretty temperate all year, so we can plant a lot of different plants.
Some of you may be wondering why we are growing wild flowers and lavender, since neither will produce any food. Well, no food for us, but food for bees! Without bees to pollinate the flowers on our fruit and veggies plants, there would be no food for us to harvest and enjoy! I try to plant flowers each year to entice the bees to visit our garden!
Our Garden Stones!
Last year we hand garden stakes with the names of our crops written on them. The sun faded them in no time. This year, we opted to do garden stones. I found a great project on pinterest and changed it up based on our needs.
We were recently gifted with two HUGE boxes of craft supplies and they contained these really cool wooden Whirligig/spinners (kinda like these). All we had to do was paint them! We quickly painted them up and added them to our planters!
I think gardening is a wonderful project for any family. It can be as small as a tomato plant on your patio, or as big as renovating your backyard to have a mini-farm! Gardening teaches kids about the life cycle of plants, and how to care for something else. I think it’s important that everyone know where food comes from, and how hard it can be at times (especially when you are waiting for it to ripen), so that we don’t take for granted our food.
Talk Back: I’d love to see your gardens too! Please comment with a photo, or let me know what you are growing!
I’m looking stylish in my mask and hospital gown, right?
You may have been wondering where I’ve been. I haven’t been updating the blog a lot and I definitely haven’t been doing a lot of Facebook posts lately.
I’ve been sick. It all started back in the middle of December when I started not feeling well I had a cough and a slight fever and I was just feeling very run down. I just chalked it up to being the holidays and getting the same ick and everybody else had.
When I called the doctors office to talk to the nurse practitioner she said that it was probably either just the virus that was going around or had a cold and not to bother wasting my $40 co-pay to come in to be told I have a cold. I appreciated that and took the list of OTC meds she suggested I take to Target and shopped.
Fast forward to the end of February and I can’t go five or ten minutes without coughing or hacking. I continued the take the OTC meds the NP suggested and just resigned myself to the fact that it was going to take 12+ weeks to recover like she said. After getting little over 3 hours of sleep Saturday night, I called the 24 hour nurses line on Sunday. I had reached my breaking point. I needed help. I went over my symptoms and confessed to the nurse on duty that I thought I might have a slight case of pertussis since I do have children and we go to the park a lot where there are all kinds of germy kiddos!
I have had the pertussis vaccination as a child and all the boosters that are supposed to be administered while you’re pregnant also. She said that she didn’t think I had pertussis because I wasn’t having the “whoop” in my cough (hence the name whooping cough), but she would have someone from my PCPs office call me on Monday. I asked her if she thought I should go to urgent care and she said no because urgent care is only for people who are sick. This made me a little upset as you probably can guess. Because I haven’t had more than three hours (tops) of sleep since Christmas and my voice is so hoarse from coughing but I can’t talk above a whisper most of the time.
After talking it over with my husband I went to urgent care where after having a doctor poke and prod at my glands, look down my throat, listen to me breathe, cough, and have a set of chest x-rays he said I’m going to give you a pertussis swab (If you’ve never had one it’s where they take a swab flexible wire and stick it up your nose really far. It does not feel good).
So here I am two days later waiting for the results of my pertussis test. I should get a phone call one where the other tomorrow or perhaps Thursday. In the meantime I’ve been given a prescription for an inhaler, oral steroids, and lovely little tussin pearls. I feel 1000% better than I did before. It could be that I’ve actually slept and I can take a deep breath without coughing incessantly for five minutes.
And I did a lot of research myself before coming to the conclusion that I should probably be tested for pertussis or even say those words to the nurse at the after hours line or the doctor at the urgent care. I looked at the CDC website and some medical journals online, I talked to adults actually had pertussis. They too had received the initial vaccination and appropriate boosters as indicated by medical professionals.
So why am I telling you all of this? Because you are your only medical advocate. If you don’t feel good and the doctors, nurses, and medical practitioners that you were speaking to you don’t take your concerns seriously or they brush you off as a hypochondriac or just someone who has a school-age child and you’re going through the back to school yucky that everybody gets, keep talking to to medical professionals until you find someone that will listen to you.
If I have pressed forward and demanded for an appointment when I called the nurse the first time I told her of the symptoms I was having, I probably would’ve been seen. They would’ve tested me for everything I requested it, and I would’ve taken medication and been much better right now.
You are your child’s primary advocate also! If your kiddo ins’t feeling well and their ped gives you a brush off, get a second opinion! I feel fortunate that my children have a wonderful pediatrician who listens to my concerns and answers all of my seemingly odd questions. She spent more time with me yesterday than any doctor have the entire time I have been seeing a doctor. She answered all of my questions about my children’s health and my health too. She even checked my medical record to see if the test results back for my pertussis test, which they had not. She seemed genuinely concerned that the petitioner and my PCPs office did not want to see me when I voiced a concern but I might have bronchitis or whooping cough because I have an infant in the house.
So now that I’m feeling better, you’ll be seeing your posts for me. I have a lot of awesome stuff to share with you guys about programs coming up that I’m being a part of, hopefully I’ll have some to give away supposed to say, I’m back at it.
In fact the rough draft of this post was dictated to my iPhone warded six loads of laundry this afternoon. All the while wearing Margaret in the Tula. I have a lot of awesome stuff to share with you guys about programs coming up that I’m being a part of, hopefully I’ll have a giveaway coming uptoo!
I’m hopeful that I’ll continue to be on the mend and help more awesome content for you guys coming up for fun crafts you can do with the kids! Thank you for all the emails Private messages on Facebook. It means a lot to me that you guys reach out to me to find out how I’m doing. I really appreciate it.
Get messy
Get cool
I don’t know about you, but when I’ve got both kids home all the time, it’s a lot harder to keep on my frugal goals.
Obviously the Legos and Thomas the Tank Engine toys go into larger boxes because, well, we have tons more then will fit in the 20 quart containers. We also re-use random plastic containers, like these plastic jugs that 
Some of the toys that don’t get a lot of play (or annoy me), are stored in the closet. I rotate the less frequently played toys through, so that all of the toys get loved.
Stage 3: Limit Access! Another thing that helps is that we have a three toys at a time rule. Lil’ Man can have three types of toys out at a time. Right now, it’s guy men, mean animals, and cars.
We were recently gifted with two HUGE boxes of craft supplies and they contained these really cool wooden Whirligig/spinners (kinda like 
In fact the rough draft of this post was dictated to my iPhone warded six loads of laundry this afternoon. All the while wearing Margaret in the Tula. I have a lot of awesome stuff to share with you guys about programs coming up that I’m being a part of, hopefully I’ll have a giveaway coming uptoo!
Hewes Family Fun 