KnowMore.com is a fabulous site by an online friend of mine, that is chock full of information for us parents to help our children learn and play and explore in their world - more. I was so excited when I saw that she had put together this awesome site! I meant to tell you all about it quite a while ago, actually, but, you know how life can get in the way of your life sometimes.

You will find everything here from lesson plans to art and crafts projects to articles and other resources to help us teach, inspire, and entertain our children. There’s also a bookstore - and you have to know I love that! Kim loved My Very Own Mail the minute I first told her about it when we first met at The Warrior Forum a couple years ago. She has the same passion for early childhood education that I do, and she has been very supportive of me and My Very Own Mail. And I would like to extend to her the same encouragement with her wonderful education-focused site.

Know More is a work in progress, with more helpful information, guidance, instruction, and articles being added to it all the time. It is fun watching it grow!

International calling can sure get expensive and it can also be complicated - having to remember long access numbers or PIN codes. Well, now you can get Mobile Talk from Packet8 and save up to 90% on the cost of international calls. All you have to do is sign up for an account and download the MobileTalk application to your phone, and then all of your international calls will be routed through the Packet8 Network and it’s that easy!

Learning about other countries and connecting with people in other countries is a wonderful and important thing. We really are living in a global world, and anything that can help facilitate that is a good thing! It’s so important for kids to see, though, that the world is really more than just your backyard, or even your town! It’s important for all of us, really! I know that I can often get into that mindset - only seeing what I see in front of me. When I branch out and force myself to see more is when I get a much clearer view of life. And if I can connect with that larger view of life for a low monthly fee - that just rocks!

Check out my video about the mobile voip MobileTalk plan!

My video is going to be entered into a contest and I would love to have your votes! You can go here: Bix: Faceoff: Packet8 “MobileTalk MacContest” to vote for me! You know you want to! Go! Go there now!

My darling son, Shawn, brought me an early Christmas present the other day. How cool is that? My husband had taken the kids up to the school for the Santa Shop. If you are not familiar with this concept, a fund raiser retailer comes in to the school and sets up a shop full of inexpensive and varied items, so that the kids can easily shop for their loved ones. The shopping gets done all in one place, and the gifts are easy for a child’s budget to accommodate. It’s a really neat program.

Another thing happened to be going on that night at school, as well. The library was giving away books. Did someone say giving away books? I am so there! Well, I wasn’t - but, my boy was looking out for me! He brought me home a great book to read, and a very important one, at that! He brought me “The Long Black Schooner” by Emma Gelders Sterne. It is the story that prompted the movie, “Amistad”. I haven’t seen the movie, but, I am so excited to read the book. I think it will be a much more enriching experience to read the story first. That is how it usually is for me. The subtitle is “The Voyage of the Amistad” and the book was also later renamed to “The Slave Ship”. So the book kind of has three titles. Isn’t that weird?

Here’s a picture of my copy:

The round thing coming off the top of it is my booklight. I love that thing! My dad bought it for me last summer and it is the nicest one I’ve ever had - it rocks!

There is one about Shawn bringing me a book that is heartwrenching - if you’re a bookworm, that is. Do you know why the library was giving away their books? They were giving them away because they are…..eeks…..”discards“. Yes, discards. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard anyone say in reference to books? It’s even stamped inside the front of the book:

Ugh. So sad. Shawn said they were going to throw away whatever books they had left over. I’m hoping and praying his information is wrong - surely it must be, right? We have a brand new thrift store in town that would probably love them! I’ll have to ask the librarians about that, I’m sure the child was wrong.

I’m also sure, however, that the child was sweet - to think of me. And to bring me such a historically important book. When your child loves books enough to give you back books in return, then you know your book circle has come full circle. And that life is good.

Yes, I’m silly and sappy when I talk about books.

Recently at school, Sammie and her classmates celebrated Read Around the Clock. Have you ever heard of this before? I think it’s so cute! We didn’t do this in Texas, although we did do something similar. Anyway, for Read Around the Clock day, the kids brought books, blankets, pillows, and their favorite stuffed animals to school.

Oh, and check out this cute graphic I found on the web for it:

Isn’t he cute? Ok, so back to Sammie’s day - they were allowed to bring all their favorite cozy stuff, and they spent the majority of the day all comfy and reading! Doesn’t that sound heavenly?

I think she said they went to PE, lunch, and music, and other than that - it was all reading! I just think it’s too bad they didn’t invite the parents! I would love a day for nothing but reading! I might have to just put one on my schedule over the Christmas holidays!

I still need to get something for my husband, a.k.a. Daddy Bookworm! I never know what to get for him, because, on the one hand, he buys himself so much stuff, and on the other hand, everything he wants is wicked expensive! So it is always a struggle to come up with something for him! Yes, I do buy him books sometimes - some of them he reads, some of them gather dust. It’s a hard call, with him, to find a book that he’ll really devour. I could buy him a tonneau cover, except that he doesn’t have his truck anymore. There are so many different kinds, though - that’s pretty cool. But no, Daddy Bookworm is stuck in the minivan for now, so that won’t do. I will keep looking and thinking and hopefully I’ll come up with something!

I haven’t ever been to Vegas, and I never really was terribly interested to go there. That changed when I started hearing about the family-friendly aspects of it. Just seeing all of the amazing architecture would make it worth the trip, for sure! There’s a great book to guide you if you’re thinking of going on a trip to Vegas with the family. It’s called, “Everything Family Travel Guide to Las Vegas”.

That would be a really helpful guide, I would think, so you don’t wander in some place non-family friendly with a gaggle of kids! It also has advice on Las Vegas hotels, too, though. I definitely want to see Vegas at least once, and I think a book like that could be very helpful in guiding me!

Donkey Ollie is a new video series that is aimed at helping kids be the best people that they can be. One of its major goals is to tune out all of the negative forces our kids are faced with every single day. It is a really cute series about a Donkey who is traveling through Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. The DVD’s are given out completely free, and this is done by generous donations of cars and money and I think even boats! What a cool program! Donkey Ollie is geared towards little kids, although the whole family may enjoy watching, but, CarDonation.com also makes positive and uplifting videos for teens. They have given away over 2.4 million of all their videos! That is so cool! If you’ve got an old junker in your back yard, you can make a car donation and help raise the spirits of some of our nation’s youngsters! I think this is a really cool idea. We had some organization in Dallas that took car donations and I think it was for a troubled children’s home. That’s all good stuff - people coming together to positively influence the life of a child! Here is one of their cute Donkey Ollie videos for you to enjoy!

Mark and his watches! Sheesh! He bought himself a new watch recently - he is obsessed with watches, among other things. He is always on the computer looking at new watches, and talking about watches, and he used to watch infomercials for hours on end about watches. He covets watches like IWC watches! He knows so much about watches, he should be a watchmaker!

He’s been wearing this new watch every day, including to work. And that has kind of bugged me, as it is a very nice watch. And the funny thing is, it did get broken - but, not at work. So I couldn’t even yell at him! He came home and the dog had gotten himself tangled with his cable on one of our outdoor tables. Mark was trying to free him, and Lucky took off running, swiping the cable down his ‘watch arm’ - tearing the watch off his wrist! The watch landed on the concrete driveway! Yikes! It is not completely broken, it is definitely salvageable, but, it is not exactly pretty anymore.

When Lucky gets tangled up, he gets nervous, so when you finally come to free him, he freaks out a little bit. The ‘proper’ method of dealing with this situation is to first unhook the dog, and then untangle the cable. Hopefully everyone wearing nice watches now knows this.

I’m always comparing him to Alex P. Keaton, because, he is so obsessed with money. I’ve told him, though, that Alex wore suits all the time. He said, “Oh sure, Mom, I can do that.” Yeah, right! Anyone who knows him knows better than that - he hates dressing up! Haha! I do stress to him about studying and working hard, that’s for sure! Even if they don’t have college degrees, millionaires have a very strong work ethic. That is one thing he’ll have to learn if he wants to be financially successful. Maybe he could go into real estate - there’s good potential in that field. Although I kind of see it as being similar to making it in Hollywood - there are a million fish out there trying it, so you better work your tail off! He could play games like Donald Trump’s Real Estate, just to get a bit of an understanding of what the field is about, while he is so young.

…at least for a little while, that is. I owe money to my book of the month club. Darn it! It seems like I can never make all my bills at this time of the year. And so many pop up out of nowhere. You remember, though, that book club that I just couldn’t resist joining? Well, so many expenses surprise us at this time of year, that I didn’t have enough to pay that bill. Thank goodness it’s not a wine of the month club - then I might really not be able to pay it! I’m sure I’ll catch up after the holiday craziness! I have to have my book club access!! There is nothing sweeter than the mailman bringing me a new book - with it’s crisp, white pages, and un-cracked spine - I get all trembly just thinking about it! Haha!