We sent our oldest off to camp last weekend, and the whole time she was gone (to the mountains of north Georgia) I was worried we’d be getting a call that she was injured, or worse. It all started when the camp sent us a waiver to sign, in the event of an emergency. Not only would she be going hiking and tubing, but also to a water park and white water rafting. We had to sign the waiver agreeing not to sue if was was injured. It was only AFTER she left that I realized we hadn’t sent her off with a copy of our health insurance card - we had only written the company name, policy number, and a contact phone number on her application form. So yes, I was a nervous wreck last week, waiting for her to check in each night, or every other night, and then I could breathe easier, knowing another day had passed without the need to file an insurance claim and watch our health insurance rates rise. I can just picture the insurance company now…cackling over our accident prone children being sent to camp and falling off horses and such, and needing to get new health insurance quotes because of the klutz gene running rampant through the family.

She arrived home safe and sound, with only a scratch on her foot last night.

If you live in Florida, you know a little something about skin health. Go to any beach, at any time, and you’ll see people slathering their skin with sunscreen - even on cloudy days! We all know that UV rays can damage skin even when the sun isn’t shining, and we do our best to protect ourselves at all times. I even wear a foundation that contains an SPF of 15 in it, so I’m protected even when I’m not thinking about applying traditional sunscreen.

One of the newest skin health trends is about taking care of your skin where the “sun don’t shine” - the inside! In addition to applying sunscreen, moisturizer, and taking care of the skin everyone can see, you can add a new supplement into your diet to provide your skin with nourishment. R.G. Skin Revitalizer is derived from a tropical fruit called Gâc, which is full of antioxidants.

The cantaloupe sized fruit has been used for years in Vietnam and other Asian countries for it’s medicinal properties. It contains plenty of beta carotene, which can help to boost your immune system. Beta carotene also assists with building new skin cells. Americans have typically turned to carrots or sweet potatoes to get a weekly dose of beta carotene, but Gâc contains up to ten times MORE beta carotene!

When Jim got up for work this morning, it was a whopping 35 degrees out. There was frost on the roof of our house, and on the top of his car. By the time I left to drive the kids to school, an hour later, the frost was gone, and it had warmed up to a whole 45 degrees. It’s mornings like that when I’m so happy to have a garage to park in. My truck was relatively toasty when we got in it this morning, and I didn’t even need to turn the heat on. When we lived at our other house, we had a one car garage that never held a car. Mornings like this required running out to turn the car on, and then letting it warm up in the driveway for a few minutes before leaving.

Hala Harper of Bradenton, FL is attempting to bring a little big of green to the desert of Iraq. She’s collecting money (and has so far raised $21,000) to send more than 400 Christmas trees overseas. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total Christmas hating bitch, so I’ll just say it. Wouldn’t that money be put to better use on something that’s not going to turn brown and die within weeks? What about making care packages of things the troops can use? What about buying body armor, since our military apparently doesn’t have the money to supply every soldier with it?

It just seems a little frivolous & wasteful to me that $21,000 is being spent on trees that will be dead in a matter of weeks.

What do you think? Am I a cold, unfeeling monster? Or just practical?

I thought we had it rough in Florida, but I was proven wrong this weekend.

I’ve been lamenting about the time change, and bitching about how the sun is already setting at 5:30, and it’s completely dark by 6pm. Little did I know how good we have it during the winter! Here on the gulf coast, we’re at the far western side of the eastern time zone. We get maximum daylight during the winter months.

While in Las Vegas this weekend, I couldn’t help but notice how dark it got in the afternoon. By 4:30, it was effectively night time. That may work great in a city like Vegas, which looks better in the dark, but I don’t know how I’d deal with it if I lived there!

I came across this great photo of two manatees kissing today. Well, the caption says that they’re kissing, but I don’t even know that manatees have lips. The photo was taken at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park, which is just north of Tampa Bay, in Citrus County. We’ve not been there since July of last year, when it was hotter than blazes outside. Now that the weather is cooling down, it’s a great time to go to the park. It’s an even better time to get into the water and swim with the manatees, if you can stand the cold water of the springs! (I think I’d need a wet suit!) You can rent pontoon boats all around the area, and gently navigate your boat toward the springs. The manatees are slow moving and extremely gentle, so if you see any, be respectful and kind. It’s a once in a lifetime experience!

I’m married, so I haven’t had to think about dating for a long, long time, but I’m always being asked by one of my husband’s single friends if I “know a honey” I can hook him up with. Of course, being that I’m married, and so are most of my friends, I don’t know many single girls to set this guy up with. He lives not to far from us though, here in Florida, so maybe the next time he asks me about it, I’ll just send him to this Florida dating site. You can narrow down your search to find only singles in Florida and view profiles and pictures for free!

We have friends who moved to Tennessee over a year ago, and put their home here on the market. They purchased their dream home in Tennessee, and expected that they would be there for years to come. Sadly, they just put that dream home up on the market, and they’ll be downsizing, because the home they own in Tampa still hasn’t sold. I believe they did a refinance on their Tampa home to buy the Tennessee home, and they’re out of options now.

If one good thing has come out of the real estate mess in Florida, it’s that mortgage loans are tougher to get than ever. Lenders don’t want to make the same mistake twice…especially after they’ve seen all of the foreclosures in the past year. It pains me to see people defaulting on their loans and other bills and being forced into debt consolidation because a lender sold them on buying too much house. We got approved for MUCH more house than we ended up with, and after we ran the numbers, we knew it wasn’t possible to buy a more expensive home. Unless we wanted to give up food!

I hope that other homeowners don’t have to make the tough choice our friends did.

Not a week goes by that I don’t read about more foreclosures happening here in Florida. There’s a foreclosure sale in my neighborhood next month, in fact. All of the homes being sold at a loss sure do make for a cheap mortgage! It makes me want to pay my loans & bills on time and avoid being in debt even more than normal. I used to be absolutely horrible about remembering when bills were due. A few years back, a friend shared her method for keeping bills straight with me, and it’s worked ever since. I just put the due date of bills on my Outlook calendar, about a week to 10 days before the bill is actually due. When it pops up, I pay it. Because it’s on a calendar, I can easily see what’s coming due, and what I already paid for the month. I may have a lot of bills, and I may not have the cheapest and best car insurance (thanks to my husband and his speeding tickets) but at least my house is safe from being taken away. I wish I could say the same for some of my neighbors.

When we travel out of state, we usually make it a point to visit state parks. Smoky Mountain National Park, located between Cherokee, NC, and Gatlinburg, TN, is a favorite of ours. I’d also like to someday visit the Grand Canyon (possibly in November, when we go to Las Vegas!) and Yellowstone.

Somehow, I tend to forget about all of the great state parks located right here in Florida. The Florida Online Park Guide is a great website that can provide you with information on every state park in Florida, from the Alafia River State Park (located in Lithia, Florida) to the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park (located in Crystal River, Florida.) You’ll find information on what there is to see and do at each park, as well as directions and any operating hours that apply.

We’ve actually been to the Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins Historic State Park. We had passed by the location previously while driving to dinner in Homosassa, and decided to stop there last year on my birthday. The park is extremely small, no more than a few ruins, but it’s amazing to see. Here’s a picture of my kids standing in front of the mill ruins:

When I was younger and took road trips with my parents, I sometimes pitched in as the navigator. My father usually drove, my mother couldn’t read a map, so I was often handed a map and asked to determine how much farther until our next exit, or the best way to get from point A to point B on the interstate. Now, with my own family, I’m still the navigator. I prefer to leave the driving to my husband and deal with finding the best way around, regardless of whether we’re driving through Florida on our way to North Carolina, or walking around in Toronto, Canada.

Does it make me a complete geek if I admit I like maps? That I enjoy looking at them, just for the heck of it? You can learn a lot from reading a map, and this map of Florida is no exception. The map of Florida highways is huge with tons of detail, and easier to fold than a regular map - LOL! I traced the route we used to take each year from our home in Tarpon Springs up to the panhandle, to the home my grandparents owned in Pensacola. It might be time to plan a road trip and visit some of my old haunts…

Each year, when school starts, we’re given stacks of paperwork to fill out. One of the forms is about the languages we speak at home. We don’t speak any other than English, so it’s an easy form to fill out. My son had a homework assignment about culture and his ancestors last night that asked the same question, and I learned that 1 in 5 students in his classroom speaks a language other than English at home. That was common when I was a student as well, because I lived in a town with a huge Greek population. It wasn’t uncommon to run into little old Greek grandmothers who had lived here for 50 years and still didn’t speak English. The signs in our post office were in English and Greek.

I learned today that 35% of Broward County residents don’t speak English at home, either. I always knew Miami was full of other cultures - I guess I didn’t realize how full. 35% is a lot of bilingual residents!

I think every student in Florida is back to school by now. My own kids have been in school for 2 weeks now, and we’re back into the groove of things. It sounds so strange to me when I heard about schools up north starting so late! The concept of returning to school after Labor Day has never been a Florida thing. Even when I was in school, we always went back in the later half of August, and we usually got out the 1st week of June. Any other schedule just sounds odd to me!

Florida is known for it’s fresh seafood, and in my area, shrimp is the seafood of choice. I’ve known several people over the years who have made a living plucking shrimp out of the gulf, and my stomach thanks them! I love shrimp, and so do my kids. A great dinner for us is a ton of shrimp boiled in spices and seasoning, or we like it cold, too! There’s nothing like a fresh shrimp ring from the grocery store with plenty of cold cocktail sauce. Grilled, chilled, or fried - we never turn down shrimp in THIS house. In fact, one of my favorite treats when I was a little girl was to get a shrimp cocktail at my parent’s favorite restaurant. Do YOU like shrimp? Find new ways to spice up an old favorite with the recipes at EatShrimp.com!

And did you know that there’s a shrimp dance? Wanna learn it?

Space shuttle Endeavour made its return back to Kennedy Space Center yesterday. I’m sure that the return of the space shuttle down a runway, looking like an airplane, isn’t nearly as exciting as seeing the shuttle launch off, but I’m still happy to see the Endeavour crew safely back on terra firma. Considering we’ve had a hurricane swirling around in the Caribbean, and the shuttle had damage, it’s great to see everyone back home without incident.

Speaking of the shuttle launch, I’ve seen one clearly in my lifetime, and that was the Challenger shuttle, which was you know, ended in disaster. I haven’t had the chance to see the shuttle take off since!

Got trouble? There’s a new directory at GotTrouble.com giving free advice on how to solve your problems. Say you’ve been pulled over one too many times by Florida’s uniformed finest. You can find out how to beat your ticket or how to sign up for traffic school at Got Trouble! To build buzz about this new site, offering free advice on everything from dealing with the IRS to workers comp issues, you can sing away your troubles in GotTrouble.com’s Video Promotion. Just record a music video about life’s troubles. (So…country music? HA!) Upload your video you YouTube, and then enter the contest - whining about your problems in song can give you a big fat $5000 payday. Wouldn’t THAT solve some of your troubles?

My song would go a little something like this:

Beating a dead horse
Until I am hoarse!
Arguing with you
Is like eating pooh!

I’ve got a chance, right?

With the summer almost over, and school just about to go back into session, most of us are trying to desperately cram as much fun as possible into the last few weeks of summer. We’re heading off to Disney for a few days at the end of the month. I’ve got reservations at one of the Disney properties, and we’re having dinner at Ohana - hopefully no secured loans will be needed to have a good time

In all seriousness, I’m wondering if this is a good time to get a deal on a pool, or other home improvements? Is there such a thing as a season for contractors? Cheap loans are in abundance, according to my home mailbox, and if the contractors are having a slow season, I can think of a few things around the house that loans would be useful for….perhaps installing that hardwood we want in the upstairs hallway, or doing a bit of professional landscaping and tree installation in our back yard…

I know not to text and drive, but now I can’t talk and drive?

Lots of Florida drivers are getting emails about new traffic fines, and they’re not happy. Turns out, it’s all a big scam / email hoax. Phew! But in the meantime, hundreds of angry drivers have called the Department of Motor Vehicles to complain. The email warns of a $285 fine for using a non hands free cell phone while driving, or over $1000 for using a car pool lane without a car pool. (Do we even have car pool lanes in Florida? There aren’t any here in Tampa, that I’m aware of.)

If you get such an email, just delete it!

Isn’t it great when bloggers dig deep to help one another? All of the bloggers below donated to my 3-Day campaign, to fight breast cancer! Together, we can find a cure, and provide early detection to people who couldn’t otherwise afford a mammogram.

Alli
Carolyn
Mike from Sinus Infection
Robyn
Matthew from Blog About Your Blog
Funny Junk
Cybercelt from the Texas RV Travel blog
Karen from My Road
and Sian Lun Lau

My sister is only $250 away from her 3-Day goal now! We received another $200 in donations from the people listed below, and you can help too. Just read how to donate here, and you’ll be getting the link love too!

Thanks to:
Kitty
Kelly at That’s What She Said.
Vedis
Barnett Associates (Marysville WA real estate)