Category: Family

January 20, 2016

Family Day Excitement at Kidapalooza Markham

Family Day weekend is quickly approaching and I am sure many of you are like me – eagerly planning out the weekend adventures. Keeping the kids entertained throughout the long weekend can sometimes be a task in itself.

Instead of trying to think of activities, movies or even crafts at home, why not get ready to pack up the kids and head on over to the Markham Fair Grounds for Kidapalooza. Kidapalooza is all about having fun together as a family, while keeping your child’s minds and bodies active. Think: dance parties, crafts, yoga and more!

The indoor Family Festival is being held from February 13th to the 15th and features over 35,000 square feet of activity stations, play zones, inflatables, performance stage and thirty plus vendors. The abundance of activities will have your family creating, exploring, playing and bonding. Your family can participate in soccer, ride through a bike trail, visit a petting zoo, take photos with princesses, magic shows and stage shows. Kidapalooza is setting up to be the largest Family Day event! So if you are in the Toronto, Burlington, Hamilton, Niagara areas get ready for some awesome family fun.

Important Details:

Saturday, February 13 from 10am to 7pm
Sunday, February 14 from 10am to 7pm
Monday February 15 from 9am – 6pm

Adult 18+ Tickets – $8
Child 2+ All Access Pass – $25
Children 1 and under are FREE

Tickets can be purchased online or at the door. Door tickets are CASH only with ATM’s available on-site. Parking is free (awesome bonus here).

My Canadian residents can now enter to win a family pack of tickets (two adults and two children) to attend Kidapalooza to discover first hand all the fun that awaits you. Please keep in mind that transportation is not provided, so it is important to ensure that you can attend the event before entering. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Additional Way to Win with Kidapalooza!

Making a mess is what kids do best, show us your pics to win the contest! Upload a photo of your child’s best/worst mess to instagram, Facebook or twitter and make sure to hashtag #bestmesscontest #kidapaloozafamfest for your chance to win!

Also visit us online at kidapalooza.ca for an additional way to enter!

January 14, 2016

A New Year, Time to Focus on Me and New Goals#StreamTeam

The new year has begun and with it I am sure many of you had made New Years resolutions, or as I like to call them ‘new goals’. I find that whenever I label them as ‘resolutions’ I give up that much quicker on my goals! So this year, I am writing these goals down and sharing them with all of you. I hope you can keep me on track and in turn I can motivate you to keep up with your own goals.

Since writing a goal down helps you keep on track, here are my goals for the New Year:

Focus on a healthy lifestyle which includes loosing weight, dealing with stress in a better manner and be active every day for thirty minutes. This is an extremely important goal for me as they recently found my liver to be enlarged and I am currently in the process of having this worked up. Talk about a health scare to wake me up! I know that I need to get healthy for not only myself but my kids too. Stress always plays a huge role in this and has at times led to a worsening of my depression. CBT has helped a lot but I can always do better.

Family times matters. This year I want to focus that much more time on my family, maybe more movie nights (yay for Netflix!), more travel, more experiences and even more story times at night. I want my children to know just how important they are to me and feel my love every moment.

Become more environmentally friendly. I want my children to grow up and live in a world that has not been ruined by pollution. I want us to start using environmentally friendly options, grow more of our own vegetables and volunteer more of our time to clean up outdoor space.

Now that I have shared my goals with you, I want to hear about you! What are your goals this year? What would you like to accomplish?

Disclosure: I am a #StreamTeam member and receive perks associated with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.

December 29, 2015

The New Midnight on New Years Eve #StreamTeam

I don’t know about you but ever since I had children, I have not made one New Years Eve ball drop countdown! Our family usually falls asleep around nine and my husband tries to wake us up at the midnight mark. Sometimes he is successful and other times we just can’t get up out of bed. The problem? I am just too tired to stay up until midnight even though I would love to celebrate as a family together.

While I thought I may have been one of the few people who fall asleep early, studies have shown that I am not alone. While 97% of families celebrate together, here is how we stack up to other families globally:

Parents in the US, UK, Canada and Australia agree 9 p.m. is the new midnight. Nearly half of parents in these countries say they’d countdown those famous 10 seconds by 9 p.m. (49%).
Parents down under can’t wait for bedtime. One-third of Aussie parents (34%) admit they’d hit the sack themselves after kissing the kids goodnight — long before midnight.
Italian and French parents are getting cozy with their significant others after lights out. Parents in both countries most look forward to spending time with their other half after putting the kids to sleep (51% and 43%, respectively). Now I wouldn’t mind that!
Parents love a good party in Spain and Mexico. 50% of parents in both countries can’t wait to kick off the parents-only party after tucking in their little ones. I wish I could do this!!!

Netflix is helping parents with the midnight countdown by bumping up midnight to whenever you want to start the countdown. That way your child can experience all of the magic of the New Years countdown and as a family you can enjoy the time with them. Netflix has six on demand specials launching today, including your favourite characters such as:

Puffin Rock residents Oona and Baba re-live their adventures from the past year and celebrate with the Northern Lights, nature’s very own fireworks.
Care Bears & Cousins head to Share Bear’s Shake Shack to gear up for a belly badge-tastic countdown in Care-a-Lot.
Inspector Gadget saves New Year’s Eve from a mischievous M.A.D. agent just in the nick of time for a dazzling firework display.
King Julien lives up to his party animal persona with a countdown to dance your way into the new year. My personal favourite guy!
Mr. Peabody and Sherman venture around the world to gather their favorite talk show guests for a star-studded countdown event featuring Hiccup and Toothless, Puss in Boots, the Croods and the entire Dinotrux team.
Project Mc2 stars McKeyla, Adrienne, Bryden and Camryn team up for NOV8’s most important mission yet: Party!

Check out the Netflix: It’s Almost Midnight Trailer to get a sneak peek.

Enjoy your New Years Eve celebrations!

Disclosure: I am a Netflix StreamTeam Member and receive perks with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.

December 14, 2015

The Month of #NetfliXmas:Baking,Family Time and Netflix

It is hard to believe but it is almost time for one of our favourite family holidays – Christmas! The month of December for us is always busy but to make things fun we try to do family activities like baking, hiking and spending time watching movies on Netflix. What better way to get into the Christmas mood with #NetfliXmas theme movies?!

Besides how easy it is to use Netflix (one button on our Smart TV and wham – Netflix is there!), one of the best features of Netflix is the crazy amount of holiday favourites which includes films that I enjoyed from my own childhood!

So while our Elf, lovingly named Captain, terrorizes our home with his silly pranks (I have to admit I prayed that an Elf would never visit our home – I sure am happy to have this one in our home!) and we practice our baking skills with popular recipes such as Amaretti cookies and chocolate dipped snicker doodles, we are getting in the #NetfliXmas mood with some very popular titles that includes Christmas with the Kranks, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Santa Paws.

Looking for more #NetfliXmas spirit makers? Why not check out these titles: Caspers Haunted Christmas, My Little Pony: A Very Minted Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Swan Princess Christmas. There are many titles to help you make the holiday movie night a hit!

To help you and your family get into the #NetfliXmas spirit, Netflix Canada is giving two of my readers a six month free subscription to Netflix! Pretty awesome, right?! My Canadian readers, eighteen years of age and older can enter via the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Premiering December 24th is DreamWorks Dawn of the Croods, get a small preview now!

Disclosure: I am a Netflix #StreamTeam member and receive perks with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.

November 13, 2015

But Mom, Five More Minutes Please!! #5MoreMinutes

Bed time. You would think that this would be the easiest part of the day for parents, right? Wrong!

I have put every tactic into place from a variety of parenting books but still I can’t get my children to go to bed when I ask them to. I have tried quiet time, bath time followed by reading time, lavender on their pillows and sitting quietly with them in their rooms.

But still I hear:

“Mom, I am thirsty. I can’t sleep without water because my throat hurts.”

“Mommy sweetie pie, you know you are the prettiest lady in the whole wide world.” Okay, I have to be honest I do cave when he calls me his sweetie pie because it is so darn cute!.

“Mom, I am hungry.” (But you ate three bowls of pasta??)

“I never watched my favourite show, how am I supposed to go to bed? I never get to watch tv or do anything fun!”

Now tell me I am not alone here? From the graphic above, clearly as parents we are not alone! Children will do anything and everything they can to play the power card over their parents and get that extra five minutes.

So what do we do as parents?

Instead of dealing with tears and frustration, Netflix understands the spot parents are in and has launched (with DreamWorks Animation) five-minute shows. Yes – you heard that right, five-minute complete shows for your child!

The five more minutes series is based on the new DreamWorks hit on Netflix, DinoTrux. The best part it leaves everyone happy: your child still feels that they had a choice in the matter (they were able to watch a show and stay up a little bit later) and you as the parent eased them into bed with no tears. A win win!

What is the best five more minute excuse you have heard from your child?

Disclosure: I am a #StreamTeam member and receive perks with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.