When my husband can't be home for dinner my boys and I miss him. Our family has a lost piece without him there. Some weeks we don't have dinner for several nights in a row due to various commitments, but at least I get to kiss him good night when he comes home late.
Military families go months without having their spouse sit around the dinner table with their family. They know what it feels like when all their pieces aren't there.
Technology has changed how these families can connect with each other when deployed overseas. Skype and Facebook give families the opportunity to communicate in ways that weren't available just a short time ago.
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My friend gave my third son a perfect gift when he was born: a three-layer, pink chocolate cake from a local bakery. He couldn't eat the cake and it was bigger than his little head, but this gift could not have been more wonderful.
This cake is a birthday tradition in our family and even though our newest member couldn't enjoy it, the meaning was tremendous.
Create birthday traditions for children as they grow
Every year we eat dessert at the same restaurant/bakery to celebrate our sons' birthdays. We take the same photo, at the same kind of table, and will do this as long as our boys will let us. We picked this well-established, famous restaurant in our town because we know it will be here for decades and generations.
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Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthump. THUMP!
It's Saturday morning and it sounds like my kids invited an elephant over for breakfast. The thumping upstairs - as well as the cheering - gives me the clue to their video game choice of the morning; they must be playing Tony Hawk SHRED, the latest game created by Activision.
Activision releases Tony Hawk Shred
Last year, Activision launched the revolutionary game Tony Hawk RIDE. Players “ride” a fabricated skateboard with sensors on all sides through a course that is displayed on your video screen. This game used technology and coding that pushed the limits of video game design with its level of interactivity and variation.
Now Activision has done it again. They created another video game using this same innovative technology: Tony Hawk SHRED. This time, not only can you skateboard in the game, players can ride a snowboard as well. How awesome and fun is that?
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Toyota’s health and wellness programs
A system that generates hundreds of thousands of cars each year needs each employee to work at the greatest capacity for maximum output and quality. Toyota realizes the way to achieve this level of productivity is to keep their employees healthy and well.
Their impressive wellness programs provide weight loss initiatives, support for quitting smoking, and health clinics for their employees. Each employee gets up to five weeks of conditioning training before being sent to work on the line.
The job is strenuous and demands repetitive physical exertion. This can easily cause injuries, but each worker conducts a “daily evaluation of wellness” to help prevent stress or strain on the plants most valuable resource: their employees. Obviously, Toyota knows a healthy workforce is a productive workforce.
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Online safety for kids
Of course, if your child is playing a game where they interact with strangers, even virtually, a parent will have concerns. I spoke with the game developers about the safety measures they have put in place to ensure our children are safe from virtual harm. If players want to "chat" they can only use approved words and word combinations. Inappropriate language simply is not allowed to be typed into the conversation and is monitored immediately in a pop-up chat window.
Dialogue is also analyzed based on the player's registered age in the game. If a player is logged into the game as a nine year old, but the dialogue seems inappropriate for that age, the user is flagged and monitored closely for further interaction. This helps ensure an adult isn't posing as a child while playing the game.
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The Calandro Clan passed a motherhood milestone recently: after almost eight years, I took out the five-point car seat from my minivan and installed a booster seat.
I tried to play off the excitement my youngest son felt and push away the sadness that crept over me. This meant the end of an era we approached slowly for years. First, the breast feeding stopped, then the crib moved to the attic, a diaper bag got passed on, and sippy cups ended their occupancy in our cupboards. Now I feel we are officially out of any baby-toddler phase and firmly planted in Little Boy Land.
And I feel a little sad.
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We put over 120,000 miles on my minivan since we bought it nine years ago. We drove it all over California and up to Washington State and back again. Once, when a friend was visiting from Australia, we traveled over 3,000 We road trip. It's what we do.
Sure, families travel all over. Big deal, right? Add this information to these miles: every one was logged without technology. No GPS, no hand-held-electronic game equipment for the kids, and no DVD or Blu-ray player in the car.
I know! Shocking!
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My desire to ascend to the top of the Empire State Building happened after watching movies like An Affair to Remember and Sleepless in Seattle dozens of times. My husband wanted to go thanks to watching King Kong. (Sigh.) No matter. We both wanted to go, even though our reasons for being there were polar opposites of each other.
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Seeing the the Statue of Liberty
Of course, we made the journey out to the Statue of Liberty during our stay in New York City. We ended up taking the tour later in the afternoon and was incorrectly told that we would be able to ride around on the boat around the statue, but not go on the island. This was incorrect.
The tours inside the statue were filled, but we could wander around her base and get spectacular photos. We were relieved we didn't listen to the bad advice and sought our information from another source.
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