Author: admin

When we bought the place there was not really that much of a backyard, it was mostly wooded and it took me a good long time to clear it off. Now we have about three quarters of an acre inside a six foot high privacy fence. I got lucky with the fencing. I was looking for a good price on swings for children when I simply drove past a place where they were piling up all of this fencing on the curb. I stopped and asked them what they were going to do and the guy said that he was just going to give it away. Of course a section of fence like this is going to cost you at least sixty or eighty dollars, so a fence like this would have cost me around a thousand dollars or more if I had bought it new. Instead I only had put about half that much in it, since I got half of the fence for free.

Of course a free fence does not sit on the curb for long, so I had to rush back home and get my trailer. Then I went and picked up these two 18 year old kids who live down the street. They are always looking to pick up some money and one of them has a truck too. Once they figured out what I was doing they were tempted to double cross me, since they knew they could have sold the fence sections for more than I was going to pay them. Some other guy showed up just when we were leaving and he did not care what I thought about it. Someone leaves free stuff on the curb you know it is not going to last very long, especially not if it is worth something.

When my wife and I found out that she was pregnant, it was the happiest day of our lives. We had been trying to conceive a child but encountered some difficulty along the way. Immediately we started buying items for the baby. The first thing we bought was a baby monitor to watch the baby. Like with many baby products, there are a lot of variations of baby monitors, with some being better than others. For us, it came down to the Infant Optics DXR-8 vs Motorola MBP36 in a battle of the best baby monitor.

Both monitors had some good features, and they seem pretty equal in quality, but ultimately the deciding factor for us was the price. The Infant Optics model came at a lower cost than the Motorola model, and even allowed for two way communication, which is something that we really wanted. The signals from the monitor don’t interfere with any existing wireless signals, which is also a plus.

We wanted to buy clothes for the baby next, but weren’t sure whether it would be a boy or a girl, so we bought a few unisex items for the baby, and held back on any gender specific colors. We did a comparison on strollers to see which one was the safest for our baby. There have been a lot of stroller recalls in the past few months and in some cases, babies have gotten injured. It would crush us to see something happen to our baby, especially knowing that it could have been prevented with a little bit of research. We did the same level of scrutiny when picking out a crib as we did with the stroller. In some cases, babies can suffocate in their own crib, and the parents wouldn’t even know because they were sleeping too.

Neighbors of ours have a daughter the same age as our little girl. Their birthdays are a couple of months apart. Their little girl’s birthday was held recently in their home. They have a nice big back yard and all of her friends were invited. Our little girl went and we attended too in order to have some conversation with the other adults there. They had scheduled some acts to entertain the kids. One was a Brisbane magician they hired to wow the kids through illusion and sleight of hand. I have seen magic shows before, but for this one I watched the audience of children instead of the act.

There was a mix of reactions early on in the audience of kids. A couple of opening tricks kind of got their attention. Then a couple were done where even the oldest kids were wondering how he did it. As an adult I knew that the tricks were all expert maneuvers of misdirection and the precision use of props. The added goofiness of humor and an appropriate magician’s costume added to the show. I watched the adults mingle in and begin to pay attention to the show as well.

I wondered about us all and how this fun attempt at entertaining kids at a birthday party could be used on a larger scale to mesmerize people. However, as a writer, my mind wonders about a lot of things like that. I wondered how much of politics especially is sleight of hand and illusion. Those folks are trained to look, speak and act a certain way in public to get votes, and who knows what really goes on once the cameras and microphones are off. I have seen the same look that was on the faces of this audience on those who have attended speeches of leaders. Still, this was just a child’s birthday party with a very talented Brisbane magician performing for them. There were plenty of laughs, oohs and aahs to go around.

When I became pregnant, my husband and I were over the moon about it. We had been trying for so long, and it happened about six months after we finally decided we had enough. Go figure! Anyway, we were really happy, but there was one thing that made me sad too. We own our own business, and I knew that I would not be able to just stay home with our baby. Because of that, I started doing research to find the best hospital grade breast pump even before I was in my second trimester.

I knew that I was going to have to pump my breast milk, so I wanted to make sure that I had the best on the market. I had seen some in a few maternity shops I was in, and that is where I found out that I definitely wanted to get one that was a hospital grade because they are the best quality of any on the market. I was able to find a site about breast pumps that answered all of my questions, even ones that I didn’t know that I had.

I knew that I wanted a quiet one, which I knew from experience. My sister-in-law had one that had to be the noisiest contraption on the planet. I also wanted one that will be easy to take with us since we do go on the road a good bit. I wasn’t always going to leave the baby with our folks, but there were times that I was going to have to do that. Convenience and durability were my two biggest concerns, and I was able to find a breast pump that fit those requirements plus many others. We ended up having everything we needed before I even hit my fourth month of pregnancy!

When my sister asked me if I would help her plan a special birthday party for her eight year old daughter, I was more than happy to help. She is a single mom raising four kids, and I have none, so I spend as much time with them as possible. I knew that times were tight for my sister, so I decided to handle the expenses myself too. The first thing I did was go to www.brisbanekidsmagician.com.au, a website that a work friend suggested I take a look at for the party entertainment.

I know my sister was talking about maybe blowing up some balloons and getting a nice cake, but I also knew that the kids would have a lot more fun if there was some type of entertainment there. I was thinking about different kinds of party games for kids when my friend told me about the magician that her boyfriend had hired for his own child’s birthday party. When she gave me the details, I knew that I wanted the same thing for these kids. The best part about it is how involved the magician actually is with the crowd.

Instead of just performing magic tricks and collecting his pay, the magician actually involves the crowd, making sure to pay particular attention to the birthday child. She showed me pictures of the kids having fun, and I knew I wanted to see the same expressions on my niece’s face as well as her brothers and friends. It was easy to secure the date and time for the magician, and the price was very reasonable for the time he would be at the party. To say the party was a success would be an understatement. The birthday girl had a blast as did all of her friends, and even the adults enjoyed it!

I guess my friends are all being a lot of smart alecs. They decided that all of them were going to get me gag gifts for my birthday this year. Of course they got together and hatched this supposedly brilliant scheme. You can go on the internet and see the things they got me. They are called Lullapets – the musical companions and the idea is that you can collect all ten of them. It is a little stuffed animal with a little voice recorder and an mp3 player in it. Of course they spent a ton of money these thing. They cost 39 dollars and 95 cents each according to the web page. These jokers got me three of them and so they spent a hundred and twenty bucks on all of them just because they thought it was funny. Of course they took the voice recorder and recorded obscene messages on them before they gave them to me.

I am not sure they expected the boss lady to be there when this was going on. They thought they were being really cute, but the boss lady is a very strict woman who is a really devout Catholic and she was standing there when this cuddly little stuff animal suggested that I do something which would have been both rather painful and anatomically not a practical possibility. She just turned and walked away. No one knew if they should laugh, but of course they had to hold it in. Of course I will take the dirty messages off of the mp3 recorders and then I will give them to some of my nieces and nephews. I am pretty sure everyone assumed that was what would happen all along. It just seemed like a lot of trouble for a cheap laugh.

Of course the major goal of parenting is to create a well developed person who can manage his own affairs perfectly well. If you do it right you would want to end up with a kid who could be president or who could run a major company. At the least a guy who can do an important job successfully. Obviously that requires a lot of basic skills and we are trying to teach them responsibility right now. So we are giving each of them a small number of tasks which they need to accomplish and we are trying to make it clear that they have to do what they are expected to do. It is just simple thing for the moment, like picking up after themselves. Obviously that is an important concept. You do not need the child to grow up thinking that someone else is some how responsible for going around behind them and cleaning up whatever mess they might might. You want them to realize that they take responsibility for the things that they do.

Asking them to solve problems is another thing. Some of them are simple enough in theory, but a child does not always look at the same problem you do and see an easy solution. It is important that the child learn to adapt to the world around him and not let things defeat them easily. Any problem can be overcome if you are creative enough in devising a solution. It is an important concept, but it is not an easy thing to teach. For starters it is not always obvious which solution is the best and trial and error often leads to a string of disasters obviously. It is a big deal if you can do it the right way and hard to manage properly.