I have blogged about Skyler & Spencer’s new fish and my Mother’s Day fish. I’ve told you about our our Mollie fish and our Convict fish having babies [but not together]. And you heard all about our new big aquarium and the fish castle we got Lee for his birthday. Heck, I even told you about my husband, the fish hunter. I think it’s safe to say that we are a little loony about fish, so this little exchange between Lee and I shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Two of our Parrot fish got together to procreate. This came as a big surprise to me since I thought they were both female. One of the fish is pink [the female] and the other is purple [the male]. Who knew Parrot fish were so secure with their manhood that they would swim around in a rather feminine shade of fish skin.

The first day we noticed the babies there was a whole swarm of them. But by day two many of the babies were gone. We have two Angelfish in that tank plus numerous Convicts, some more Parrots and some other fish. Obviously the babies weren’t safe, so Lee decided to move them [and their parents] to their own tank.

Before we went to bed Lee was looking at the purple daddy fish, who was still in the big tank. He goes, “You’re a punk.”

I sad, “Um…what?”

Lee proceeded to tell me that the dad Parrot was a punk because he ran and hid in the cave when Lee tried to get all the babies and the parents in to their own tank. He said, “He ran and hid and just left the kids behind. The mom stayed out to protect them.”

I said, “So what you’re saying is he’s a deadbeat dad?”

Lee said, “Pretty much. He won’t stand up for his kids.”

Last Friday was a clerical day at the kids’ school. That means the teachers had to go, but the kids got to stay home. Then we had that big ice storm which knocked power out all over the state. Their school still doesn’t have power. Lots of power lines are still down and quite a few light poles cracked in half right near the school. So they haven’t been to school since Thursday. And they’ve been loving it. Even Skyler, who normally hates it when school’s canceled, has been loving laying around in her PJs making crafts and coloring.

School is tentatively planned for tomorrow. As I was helping Spencer turn the water on in the shower, I said, “You have school tomorrow. Isn’t that cool?” He replied, “No. I want to be homeschooled.”

I was a little shocked. (1) I didn’t know he knew the word homeschool. And (2) I had no idea he was making plans to be schooled at home.

I asked him if he knew what that meant, to be homeschooled. He said, “Yeah, it means I do school at home.”

I said, “But you wouldn’t get to see you’re friends.” He said, “I could call them.”

I said, “But you wouldn’t get to play at recess.” He said, “I’d still have recess.”

I said, “But you wouldn’t get to play with your friends at recess. He said, “I’d get to play with Skyler at recess.”

Well he had me there. I was running out of reasons why he would want to have school at school and not at home. My seven-year-old just beat me in an argument. There goes my hopes for being a contestant on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?.

After a minute Spencer said, “So can I be homeschooled?”

“No.”

I’m the mom and my rule still reigns supreme.

About three weeks ago, Brighter Minds Media approached me and asked if I’d like to review some of their products. They told me they offer a fun, innovative line of products including software, books, workbooks, flashcards, interactive DVD games and online games. That sounded like just the type of thing I like to buy for my family so I was game.

A few days later, our mailman brought us a big box full of fun new games and books. It was like Christmas in February at my house. As I pulled items out of the box the kids began to get more and more excited.

The first item I pulled out was a Cartoon Network Allstars computer game. We have a lot of computer games in our house. Keaton and Justis are big gamers. But most of their games aren’t appropriate for a seven- or a four-year-old. So finding a game that interests Skyler, Spencer and Caleb is hard to find. It needs to have characters they can relate to and it needs to have more action and less reading. This game is perfect.

Cartoon Network Allstars has four games with characters from some of the kids’ favorite Cartoon Network shows; Fairly Odd Parents, Codename: Kids Next Door, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog and more. The night we got the game Spencer quickly installed it on his computer. Skyler, Spencer and Caleb all gathered together on a chair and played together. The game is simple enough that they can play on their own, but challenging enough that it keeps them entertained. They’ve continued to play the game many times in the last three weeks. In fact Skyler was playing again earlier today. It’s definitely a winner in our book.

That wasn’t the only computer game we got. We also got Diner Dash. In Diner Dash you play as Flo, a woman “who has ditched her boring desk job and is now rolling up her sleeves and setting out to build her own empire of high-class restaurants.” You need to quickly seat customer, take their order, give them their food and then their check and finally clear their table. And you need to do it fast or your customer will become angry and leave, which can be quite costly. It starts out fairly easy while you get to know the game, but each level gets more and more difficult. Skyler played for quite a while, but then it got to hard for her and she asked me to help her. And that’s when I got addicted. Not only have the kids been playing it, but I’ve been playing it quite a bit. Now I’m going to have to buy Diner Dash 2.

Along with software we got some great books, including the Extreme Monsters series. Spencer lovesHe’s been carrying them around in his backpack and he and his friends read them on the school bus.

The Extreme Monsters Joke Book cracks him up with funny jokes like, “Why don’t skeletons play church music? Because they don’t have any organs!”

The other three books in the series, Extreme Monsters: The Blue Moon Effect, Extreme Monsters: What’s with Wulf? and Extreme Monsters: Meet Mr. Hydeous follow the monsters as they get in to some exciting adventures, mysterious they need to solve and bad guys they need to defeat.

These are early chapter books, so they are a little above Skyler & Spencer’s reading level. But Skyler & Spencer welcome the challenge. They feature what young readers [especially boys] love [monsters] without being scary. And they tell a great story that keeps the kids entertained.

My favorite book is Feeling Happy. It’s a cute story about feelings. Each page has a new character that is feeling a different emotion. There is a spinning wheel that allows your child to participate by picking the emotion the character on the page is feeling. The illustrations arw very colorful and playful and the text is simple and keeps the child’s attention. During Skyler’s hour of dance class Caleb asked me to read this book over and over again. He loved picking the feeling from the spinning wheel and telling me what they were feeling.

Caleb’s favorite book is the Marvel Mix & Match Storybook. The Brighter Minds Media website says you can create over 40,000 adventures with this book. Each page is broken in to five panels that can be changed to make a new story every time you read the book. One panel includes a hero, another a villian, a location, a disaster and finally, a panel for the hero saving the day. You can mix each of the panels up to create your own story. Caleb never wants to create his own story though. He just likes me to read each page as it is and he flips each panel as I read them.

The illustrations are very good, much like a comic book. And the book is very sturdy. Each page is printed on hard cardboard rather than paper and it’s bound with a spiral so the panels are easy to turn. Good construction is important with kids this age [or is that just with my kids at that age. ]

Another product that’s probably more Caleb’s speed, but Skyler & Spencer also enjoy, is the Alphabet Train puzzle. This is a great way to help your child learn the alphabet. It includes big flash cards that are printed on cardboard so they are sturdy. Kids can put the train together in alphabetical order. Also on the flash cards are smaller round “puzzle” pieces with a letter. Kids can match these up with the correct animal, such as ‘A’ for Alligator. There is also a cute story to read to the your kids as well. Caleb struggled a little bit matching the puzzle pieces, but with Skyler & Spencer’s help they were able to figure it out. And Caleb really seemed to love learning the letters and matching them to the correct animals.

Our final product was the Brain Quest DVD game for ages 6-8. We have quite a few DVD games so we are pretty familar with how these games work. Skyler & Spencer were very excited to play. Even Caleb wanted to get in on the action. So we sat down one night to give it a try. We didn’t have teams. We just let Skyler & Spencer blurt out the answers when they new them. There are some multiple choice questions like, “Who was the first president of the United States.” There are also some True/False questions like, “The sun circles around the Earth.” But Skyler & Spencer’s favorite questions are the word questions. They give you a partial word like ‘ROW’ and ask you to pick a letter from the bottom of the screen that makes the word that describes a black bird. And then after the kids picked ‘C’ for crow it asks them to remove a letter to make the word of an animal on a farm [which would be 'R' to make cow].

There are also a few questions for parents. Sometime there is a longer explanation of the answer. We encountered this when we had a question about colors. The game explained what primary colors are and how they can be mixed to make secondary colors. Then there was a question for parents about tertiary colors. So it gets both kids and parents involved.

We did run in to some glitches with this game though. Some of the screens took a while to transition. And we couldn’t play a few of the games because our DVD player wouldn’t work. [We really should invest in a better one.] The game says you need to use the arrow buttons and then hit enter, but hitting enter didn’t work for us. Instead we had to hit play. And only the up and left arrow keys worked. We couldn’t get the down or right arrow keys to function. Some of the games that required us to match up multiple things on the screen didn’t work. Like there is a game where you match the french words with the english words. We had to skip over that one. And there are some games where you locate things in the dark attic or pick the planet that a space guy landed on. We had to skip those as well. But the kids were ok with it because there was still plenty of other questions and games to play.

The game also comes with a small deck of cards which includes even more questions. So you don’t have to use the DVD game. You could use the travel game instead. Skyler & Spencer really liked this game. They loved getting the questions right and when they got one wrong they said, “well at least we’re learning.” It was really cute.

I’m really impressed with the products. They are all very entertaining [or even addicting, like Diner Dash] and educational. The kids give them all a big thumbs up and I have to agree. So check out Brighter Minds Media’s website for some good, fun family entertainment.

I did receive these products free of charge, but I did not get paid for my review. These are my opinions of the products and are not swayed by Brighter Minds Media in any way.

Last night, because of this fun ice storm, we lost electricity for almost 12 hours. Late in the afternoon the lights started flickering. At first we joked about it. “Oh all we need is for the power to go out too.” Then we started to get a little concerned and lit candles all over the house. Within about an hour, just as I had put a new load in the washing machine and was thinking about what to make for supper, the lights went out. Great.

But what ticked me off more than the fact that we lost electricity, was that our neighbors across the street didn’t. All night long I could see them over there with their lights on watching TV. One of our neighbors has a light on their garage that is on almost all the time. And last night was no exception. Every time I went by the window I saw that bright light staring back at me. It was saying, “Ha ha. We have power and you don’t. You’re going to starve and freeze to death and we’ll be over here watching Letterman.” It really sucked.

We didn’t really have anything to make for supper. At least nothing that didn’t require a stove [next house we're getting a gas stove] or a microwave. So Lee decided he’d brave the weather and head out to get some fast food. He let the car run for well over a half hour before he took off. And as he was pulling away the wheels jerked off the cement. They were frozen to the ground. There’s probably still some rubber stuck out there.

Lee drove around and all the stores and restaurants were closed. He finally found a Hy-Vee that was open a few miles away. As he was leaving they said the electric company had called to tell them to put everything from the coolers in to the freezer because they were probably going to lose power too. So Lee made it just in time.

The three younger kids dined on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Keaton and Justis had turkey and cheese sandwiches. And Lee and I had salads. <sarcasm>Yum</sarcasm>.

All night long I heard a lot of “I’m bored” and “This is the most boring day ever in my entire life.” But we did have some board games to play. The kids played Scrabble.

We also had the Gameboys all charged up. And Lee popped a movie in to his laptop. So even without electricity the kids still got their fix of electronics.

I spent most of the night reading. It’s sad that it takes the electric company to make me actually sit down and read. Hopefully I’ll keep it up and finish that book.

We were all in bed by 11pm. I believe that’s the earliest this house has been sawing logs on a Saturday night in a long time.

We got power back around 4am. I tried to make sure everybody’s lights were off when then went to bed. But I guess Justis’ was still on. It woke him up. And the TVs were still on, so they started playing too. Around quarter to five I could hear the downstairs TV on so I came down to check it out. Lee was down there watching it. I said, “what are you doing?” He said, “I’m getting in my daily fix of TV time.”

I guess we all rely a little too much on our electricity. And I think we’re all glad to have it back.