Apparently having a kid sick at home is good for my blogging game. I mean, look at me, two posts in one week! Who am I? In all seriousness though, I'd OBVIOUSLY prefer him to be well, but when given lemons, make lemonade, right? That and really how many times can you actually WATCH Cars, Cars 2, Cars 3, Planes, and Planes: Fire & Rescue before it becomes "watching". You know what I'm talking about.
Since I happened to have some free time on my hands, I thought I'd share some things that we've purchased or been gifted recently that I'm in love with. There are no affiliate links here, just links to the things I love! ;)
I had been eyeing this baby at Target every time I went there (so, often!) for weeks. I loved it but was worried Seth would hate it. So one day when we were there together, I showed it to him and to my surprise, he loved it too! We picked it up and recently hung it above our fire place and I'm in love! It's so different than any other piece of decor I've ever purchased, but I love it.
I had my outfit all picked out for Seth's Grandma's funeral a couple weeks ago and then I second guessed myself. It wasn't fancy enough and what I wanted to wear for her. So, I hit Target (in true last minute fashion) and found this gorgeous black dress. It was perfect. It also came in this black and white pattern, but they didn't have it in my size in store, so I came home and ordered it online. I'm not quite sure where I'll wear it, but I mean, for $8, how could I not buy it? I'm sure I'll find an occasion eventually!
I'll be honest, going to the bathroom for *someone* is always a struggle here. I think he hates leaving whatever he's doing for fear that he'll miss out on something, so when he fell in love with this toilet light at a party we went to in December, I had to snatch one up. Well, technically the one for his bathroom was gifted to us from Seth's mom (who also got one for her house) and then I bought one for our bathroom at the request of said five year old the other day.
I think it works because it makes it fun. We can race to the bathroom to see what color it is. He can pee when the light changes to a certain color. Whatever it is about this thing, he loves it and it has made going to the bathroom SO much easier for all involved.
OBSESSED is an understatement. When Vanessa from Sunflower Steals first mentioned this rug, I was in love. We hadn't moved yet and I knew ordering before I really knew what size I wanted would be a mistake. So I waited... not so patiently. So, shortly after we moved, I measured, we decided on 8x10, I waited for a sale, and my lovely UPS man delivered this baby to my door. It is seriously SO gorgeous in person and SO SOFT. I highly, HIGHLY recommend it.
I bought this game for my oldest niece for Christmas and it was a hit! It says it's for kids 10+ but really Mason and my younger niece (who is 7) were playing along just fine. We had to skip a few topics, but other than that, adults and kids alike were having a blast. The cards have different topics and you have to satisfy the topic in 5 seconds. For example, one card will say "name 3 presidents" or "name 3 flavors of ice cream" or "name 3 ways to stay warm in the winter". Totally random topics that get you thinking, but easy enough for most people to think of. Beware, it does get harder the more drinks you have ;)
I'd never heard of this gorgeous tiles before until Seth's mom gifted us one many Christmases ago and now I'm hooked. They are quite pricey and ship from Canada, but they are gorgeous, handmade tiles that are perfect decor pieces. I recently picked this one and this one as a belated Christmas present for myself, but you really can't go wrong with any of them!
Confession: I think I love my washer and dryer a little too much. Like I literally love doing laundry now. Not saying that I actually like taking the laundry out of the dryer to fold it, but I'm getting better. If you're in the market for a new washer and dryer, I would definitely recommend this one. We got ours on a Black Friday sale, so I'd definitely check for a sale before purchasing.
I recently started following Details2Enjoy on Instagram after Becky Higgins shared about her on her Instagram stories. You guys, her stuff is GORGEOUS and all custom, handmade. I waited and waited for this sign to come back in stock so I could order it for our kitchen. But I'm seriously eyeing this laundry room sign also. I could decorate my whole house with her stuff!
Anything you've bought and been loving lately? Or have anything that I shared and love it as much as I do? Tell me in the comments!
I feel like life is passing me by at a million miles a minute lately and I've had no time to even sit down to think let alone blog. I really would like to get back in to sharing things (just doing this post made me realize just how much has happened since the last time I really blogged!). I happened to have a couple minutes of free time yesterday because Mason had a little dental procedure (see below), so I thought I'd do a little life catch up post.
Celebrating: Valentine's Day soon! But most recently, Hanukkah and Christmas!
Drinking: Follow the Sun from Karl Strauss. I met some of my Instagram turned real life friends at Disneyland back in December and we hit up the beer cart. I'm not usually a beer drinker (when given the option), but since everyone else was (peer pressure at it's finest lol), I decided to also. And what do you know? I found a new favorite beer! I don't like many, but this one was good. Unfortunately for me though, they ONLY sell it AT Disneyland and AT the Karl Strauss restaurants. So, when I happened to have a work lunch at Karl Strauss a couple weeks ago, I said good bye to my co-workers and picked up a growler of it for Seth and I!
Feeling: like an adult because I'm in love with our new washing machine and drier. Ha! Oh the joys of homeownership. But seriously, they are full size (non-stackable!) and work like a dream! I think my favorite function might be "wrinkle-release". Not that I use it often or anything...
Losing: two teeth! A few days in to Thanksgiving break, I noticed that Mason had 2 adult teeth growing behind his bottom front 2 baby teeth. Cue the freaking out and adding up orthodontist cost in my mind for the future. Luckily for me (and my wallet), the first baby tooth became loose shortly thereafter and fell out the following week. The second tooth became loose slightly before Christmas and fell out on Christmas Eve! I sure hope the Tooth Fairy and Santa didn't have a run in on Christmas Eve. But just to be safe, we left out some extra cookies. 😉
Tooth #1
Tooth #2
Meeting: our neighbors! We met our upstairs neighbors and our across the way neighbors on almost the first day we moved in. One set was helping the other set unload a new couch that they bought and we happened to be coming home at the same time, so Seth offered to help unload. They were super nice and we were super grateful to have such wonderful neighbors. Then a few days later, my nieces were over riding bikes with Mason and we met a sweet family that lives around the corner. This sweet couple has 2 kids, slightly younger than Mason, a boy and a girl, and Mason and the boy hit it off immediately. They played rockets together, rode bikes together, and then the little boy insisted that we go to the park with them (we did!). I can't wait to see the boys' interactions as time goes on!
To say that we love our new house and neighborhood would be an understatement!
Mourning: the loss of Seth's Grandma. We lost our sweet Bubbe on New Year's Eve 2017. She was 98 years young. Even though I only knew her for a short period of time, I feel honored to have known her for the past 9 years. She got to see her grandson get married. She got to see her great grandson's birth. And she got to celebrate countless holidays and birthdays and other special occasions with us. She will be greatly missed.
Obsessed with: wearing sunglasses! I mean, I can't say that I hate it. Look how cute he is!
Recovering from: said dental procedure mentioned above. How is it that kids bounce back SO FAST? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm SUPER grateful, but man. If I had had the same thing that Mason had done, I'd probably still be down for the count today (and not back to normal a mere 3 hours after the procedure was done). So, what did he actually have done? Well call us bad parents, but Mason had 3 cavities (upped to 5 (eek!) on the day of the filling) that he needed filled and needed to be sedated for (he HATES the dentist with a passion and there's NO WAY he would have sat still to let them fill them without sedation). I mostly blame myself for not forcing him to brush better and not forcing him to use fluoride toothpaste sooner (he liked eating it (gross) so I was worried about him eating the fluoride, so we used the non-fluoride version for a little too long). When we went to the dentist for his regular cleaning back in June 2017, we discovered the first 3 cavities, but at that time, we didn't have dental insurance for him. The cost... you don't even want to know. So I put it off as long as possible, and we had it scheduled for January 8th, but then he got a cold, so we just had it done yesterday. THANK GOODNESS we had insurance for this because after all was said and done, all we needed to pay was $50 out of pocket to the dentist and the sedation fee (it's a lot). Let's just say, we will be brushing teeth A LOT better now and in to the future. There is no way I am paying that kind of money again for cavities to be filled in BABY TEETH.
Riding: Mason's new bike and scooter. Mason got a new (big boy!) bike for Hanukkah and a new scooter for Christmas and now that we finally have an amazing outdoor area to ride them, he's been all about it! He asks to go outside to ride one or the other at least once a day and we try to get him outside as often as possible.
Thinking of: funny letter board quotes. Don't think I forgot about #letterfolkliz in all the chaos! 😉
Traveling to: Aulani and Kauai. Yep. Back in October/November. But really other than that, we haven't been going anywhere. I'd LOVE to recap our trip, but it would seriously be picture overload. If anyone's interested, let me know in the comments below. If not, I might just recap anyway if I have some free time. Aulani was AMAZING!
Trying: to get out of my meal rut. I swear with the crazy busy weeks and weekends we've been having, I just throw together a meal plan with whatever I can think of that is easy. Which, sadly, has been involving more pasta and frozen meals than I care to admit. I need to get back on the healthy meal planning train and get us back on track.
Unpacking: boxes! Still. We moved 4 days before Christmas and then it was one thing after another, weekend after weekend, and we FINALLY had a free-ish weekend this past weekend, so we're down to about 5 total boxes. Most of them are pictures that I'm still trying to figure out where I want hung, so these boxes might stick around for a while.
Disclaimer: this post was sponsored by Osmo, but all opinions are 100% my own. Mason received the Coding Awbie game as a gift for Christmas and Osmo was kind enough to send us the Coding Jam and Coding Duo games to review and complete our Coding Family.
When Seth's mom's best friend asked me what I wanted for Mason for Christmas, I had no hesitation in saying that we wanted the Coding Awbie game. It was the beginner level coding game in the Osmo series of coding games and I thought he would love getting to experience this type of thing. Although Mason does fall in to the age range specified for these games, I originally thought he would be too young/not advanced enough for the coding games, but he surprised me! With some explanation and help from me, these games quickly became his favorites and the most asked for over the course of the week after Christmas.
You might remember me singing Osmo's praises before, most recently in this post where we reviewed the Pizza Co. game. Today I want to share with you a completely different game, but equally awesome, the Coding Family of games. The Coding Family of games comes in different levels: Beginner (Coding Awbie), Intermediate (Coding Jam), and Advanced (Coding Duo).
Coding Awbie is the beginner level and perfect for a child who has never had experience with coding before (which, I would assume, most kids haven't). We actually started playing with Coding Jam before Coding Awbie and while Mason was able to figure it out, I would recommend starting with Awbie first. In Coding Awbie, you take Awbie (a fun little monster) on an adventure to find strawberries (his favorite). You have to direct him on the proper path, jumping over rivers and trees, turning corners, and making sure he has a clear path to get where he needs to go. Your child puts the proper tiles together, in the proper direction, and Awbie goes on his way.
For example, here Mason is telling Awbie to jump down one (over the river) and then walk right five steps. The green tile is the "play" button where Awbie executes the directions you gave him. I probably should have been paying more attention instead of just taking pictures because clearly he'd want to walk DOWN five steps and not to the RIGHT five steps, but hey, that's all part of the learning process right? Awbie does exactly what you tell him, even if it included walking in to a tree or jumping in to the river. Mason did this MULTIPLE times, but that's how he learned. He saw what he told Awbie to do was wrong and he corrected it and Awbie was on his way. I feel like that's exactly what computer coders do too. Try this, did it work? If yes, great! If no, tweak it and see if it works now.
This game is perfect to start with as your child can get used to coding and telling Awbie what to do. They learn that there are different tiles for different tasks and you can tell him to do it a certain amount of times.
The next step up is the Coding Jam game. This game is fun because you get to make music!
This game was especially exciting for us to play because you get to make music. Each coding tile has a specific sound to it and you can tell the characters how many times to do each part of the song.
The orange tiles correspond to the inner most sounds, the blue ones to the middle ones, and the red ones to the outer most ones. They each have their own melody and pitch and type of instrument and together you can build your own song. You can tell the character how many times to play a certain one and then the game automatically puts them together. Once you find a series of sounds that you like, you can also save your song for the future to listen to over again.
Another fun aspect of the Jam game is that you can create a band! You assign a specific tune to each member of the band and then they play them all together and your band plays a song. My favorite part about this game is that its always changing and always new. There are so many different combinations of tunes, how many times you play each tune, and the order that they are played in that there really are endless combinations. They even have some examples of songs other people made on the website that you can copy for yourself.
I look forward to exploring this game more with Mason!
(not the right way to do it, though it did work, but let's just say he reallllly liked connecting the blocks)
One other thing you might notice about the Jam coding tiles are that they look almost identical to the Awbie tiles and that's because... they are! The Awbie and Jam games each came with their own specific tiles, but they are totally interchangeable, so if you don't have enough orange tiles (for example) in one to do what you want to do, just share! I love that everything works together within the Osmo games.
While we did also try out the advanced level (Coding Duo), I can't say that Mason understood enough for me to really explain it to you. It definitely takes the coding up a notch and I'd make sure that your child understands what's going on in Awbie and Jam before starting to play Duo. Duo introduces Awbie (from the beginner level) and Mo (from the monster game (that we don't have)) and allows you to code with them. There are a few different ways to interact with them, but basically you take their character block and connect the coding blocks on the bottom to tell them what to do. I really want to re-read the instructions and try this on my own!
Want to learn more about the Coding Family?
Check out these short clips on YouTube.
Coding Awbie (Beginner)
Coding Jam (Intermediate)
Coding Duo (Advanced)
These games really cultivate children's creative thinking skills. The play really does extend beyond the screen. They need to think through what they want the character to do and then figure out the sequence and order of the tiles that they need to use to get the character to do a specific set of moves.
And now what I know you are really here for... a giveaway! I've partnered with Osmo to host a giveaway on Instagram for one of you to win a set of Coding Jam and Coding Duo! Pop on over to my Instagram, @lizbir, to enter to win! I hope you love Osmo products as much as Mason and I do! Good luck!
Happy New Year, friends! I can't believe it is already 2018. The days are just flying by.
One of my favorite ways to keep track of our daily activities (big or small) is to use the Collect App on my iPhone. I downloaded it a couple years ago and I love being able to upload a photo a day to have an overview of the year easily accessible. My favorite part of the app is that you don't have to upload the photo on the actual day, so in case you forget (like I do OFTEN), you can upload a few days at a time. The app automatically accesses your photos and knows what photo was taken on what day and allows you to choose which one you want to represent that day on your calendar. If you haven't used it before, you should check it out. When I downloaded it, it was free (hopefully it still is), it's super easy to use, very user friendly, and I love it!
I totally slacked on blogging last year, so here's a glimpse into 2017...
We celebrated Valentine's Day, enjoyed many rainy days, and bought and ate too many Girl Scout cookies. I recapped a fun weekend that we had with friends - wall crawling, going to the aquarium, and celebrating the Super Bowl.
We went strawberry picking for the first time and celebrated Easter early at California Adventure hunting for eggs. I shared what a typical week in the life is like for us, I talked about our autism journey so far, and I gave some advice for families with children newly diagnosed with autism.
We took trips to Disneyland, Angels stadium, and Northern California. I back tracked and shared about Easter, my niece's birthday, us moving, and Mason ending speech class. I recapped Mother's Day. We celebrated Father's Day.
We celebrated 4th of July and Mason's 5th birthday as well as my sister in law, niece, and father in law's birthdays. I met some blog friends in real life. We went to the OC Fair.
Mason started swim lessons again and had his last day of preschool. We went to the Museum of Ice Cream and an Angels game. Mason started kindergarten! We had a crazy busy month and I only blogged once.
We celebrated Bubbe's 98th birthday, took a trip to the pumpkin patch, and went to Aulani and Kauai.
We took family photos, we celebrated our 7th anniversary, Mason ended his first soccer season, we started Elf on the Shelf, and Mason lost his first tooth!
I met up with some Instagram friends at Disneyland, we visited our first Christmas tree farm, the elf pulled many shenanigans around our house, we bought our first house!!!, and we celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas.
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2017 was quite an eventful year! Just looking back on the pictures is crazy for me to see us starting the year in our rented townhouse, then moving to our apartment mid year, and then ending the year in our brand new, purchase home.
