Just a little type A

Schroeder Family Challenge Zamzee Giveaway

Don't hate us because we're competitive.  I bet you thought I'd say beautiful, like that Loreal commercial? I almost went there...

 If you read my post about Zamzee, now's your chance to get your very own Zamzee, enter a Rafflecopter giveaway.  

Here are the players:

The Big One: occassionally rides his bike to school, on the cross country running team and practices 5 days a week including cross country meets on Friday afternoons

The Little One: occassionally rides his bike to school, on the cross country running team and practices 4 days a week including cross country meets on Thursday afternoons; on a competitive soccer team and practices 3 days a week including two soccer games on the weekends

Jeff: rides his bike to work adding in 10 - 30 extra miles on the way; rides @ 200 miles a week (not counting his commute) for pleasure (yeah, I agree, weird); runs about 3 days a week

 

Deb: still recovering from a broken foot, pretty much sedentary, occassion walk with the dog and have  made it back to Zumba twice

If you feel like taking a guess as to which Schroeder racked up the most Zamzee points, leave a comment.  

We're giving away a total of 5 Zamzee meters (1 brand new Zamzee meters and 4 used Zamzee meters).  

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Zamzee

Photo Credit: Zamzee/HopeLab

One of the sponsors at BlogHer '12 was Zamzee.

I can hear you thinking, "Zamzee. What the heck is Zamzee?" and immediately doing a Google search.  So I'll save you a little time.

"Zamzee is a social enterprise on a mission to make it easier for tweens and families to be more physically active."  

Social enterprise on a mission? What? Are we talking Star Trek? What?  I'm confused...

In other words, Zamzee is a cleverly designed, fun way to get your couch potato preteen off the X-Box, PS3, Wii or Nintendo, and out the door doing something a little more physical than moving their thumbs.

Zamzee is a Fitbit for tweens, without all the fancy graphs, calorie count, etc. that a preteen could care less about.  Zamzee is what Fitbit used to be: simple to use, tracks physical activity, plain and simple, nothing fancy.  And unlike Fitbit, Zamzee is FREE to use, after you've purchased a meter for only $29.95. Or you can get one (or up to 5) for free by participating in our Zamzee Giveaway. 

Setting up Zamzee is easy. Plug it in to the USB port on your computer or laptop and while it's charging, you can customize your avatar.  

Can you guess who is who?

Then you pop that little puppy on your body, you can clip it to your waistband, your shirt pocket, or leave it in your pocket. Zamzee likes skin on skin action best and tracks better when it's clipped on your waist.  

You can download the information each night to track daily progress or just wait until the end of the week.  Nightly downloads give younger kids more immediate gratification.

Badges are earned for different levels: Newbie badge just for joining, 1st Timer Badge for uploading your first activity, and the list goes on.

Badges aren't the only things your kids can earn, they can earn Zamz (Zamzee currency) which can be used to buy tangible items like iPod Nanos, Wii and X-box games (yeah that cracked me up too - here we have a system designed to get kids to stop playing video games and one of the rewards is video games, but you've gotta give the kids what they want), and $25 gift cards.

A drop down prepopulated list of activites are available for your child to select what they were doing, where they were, and how they earned pointz (yes, that's a "z" on the end of points to correlate with the spelling on Zamzee), all designed to capture your child's imagination and get them to become an active participant.  

What they were doing choices (well over 50 possibilities) range from the realistic "kickball", the silly "blowing bubbles", to the outrageous "taming ogres". 

Where they were choices (again, tons to choose from) include "at Hogwarts", "in disguise", and "in zero gravity."

How choices include "and using the force", "like a Zombie", and "with my BFFs." 

Perfectly geared to tweens, Zamzee was easy to use and fun.  For adults, Zamzee is too simplistic, by golly we want to know how many calories we burned.  Not having an option to create a field for what you were doing was also an issue. 

But again, Zamzee was designed for tweens and not obsessive, type A adults.

Speaking of obessive, since we had four Zamzee meters, we opted to do a family challenge to see who could rack up the most activity pointz.  

The bad news: You'll have to stay tuned to find out the winner of the Schroeder Family Challenge.

The good news: You can win your own Zamzee.  

Read the Schroeder Family Challenge Zamzee Giveaway post to enter and win.  

Note: Other than receiving 4 Zamzees to review, I was not compensated in any way for this post.  All views are my own.  

 

 

Cutting The Cord

Photo Credit: Babyproofing Your Marriage

At what point do you cut the cord?  When do you push your kids out of the nest?  

At what age are you comfortable with letting your kids do things on their own? 

Like riding their bikes to school? Or taking the subway as did the nine year old child of Free Range mom.

We've been struggling with the boys and responsibility for a few years.  Specifically, how to help the boys become more responsible.

Chores haven't helped. Nothing seems to have stuck. At their ages, they should already have developed a certain level of responsibility, but they haven't.  

As a parent you wonder if you've failed. Have you coddled them too much?  What did you do wrong? Or is it simply your kids are lame? Or just lazy?

Believing that to become more responsible, you have to be given more responsibility, today we went back to making letting the boys ride their bikes to school.  This year they're at different schools so there's that worry that something could happen, but that's just my type A nature and helicopter mom coming across.

The Big One wasn't too excited about the idea at first when I broached the subject while picking him up from school a couple of weeks ago.

The Big One: "I have to bring my bike with me to every period."  

Me: "You're telling me there are no bike racks on campus?"

The Big One: "Yeah. I see kids having to push their bikes around campus all day."

Me: "That doesn't make sense. I'll tell you what. I'm gonna park and see for myself."

Seized with fear that his mom would come on campus while there were still students around, the Big One immediately responded, "Um. Maybe there are bike racks."

Yeah, just what I thought.

So they rode to school this morning. It didn't take them as long as we had thought, only 15 minutes each as opposed to 30 minutes. Definitely faster than if I had driven them.  

I've gained one hour in the morning and two hours in the afternoon during the workweek, with the exception of the days they have cross country meets.

An extra three hours a day to get more work done on my businesses and blogs, and extra time to practice on my machine.  Extra time so that I can get up to 250 words per minute.

But will it work? Will riding their bikes to school help develop that sense of responsibility that they have been lacking? Or will it just give me more gray hairs while I wait for the phone to ring, letting me know that they made it to school safely? 

 

 

 

 

 

Forgive Me Father, It's Been 16 Months Since My Last

 
16 months and 4 days. That's how long it's been since my last Zumba class.
 
That pesky broken bone in my foot has taken this long to heal.  What? Yep, almost a year and a half for a fractured metatarsal to heal.

Good thing I didn't break a hip, I'd probably still be in a convalescent home. 

If you're interested, these posts detail my broken foot journey:

• Little Piggy Goes To Market
• Week 21
• R&R Again
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• 9 Months Along
• You Walk Like An Elephant

Oh, and the kicker. While the foot has healed, the soft tissue around the bone still hasn't...  

Are You A Gold Digger?

 

Nike's Gold Digging Shirt

 

Apparently Nike is taking some flack for their shirt.  Really?

I mean, come on, people. It's a shirt.  It's supposed to be funny.  But the critics claim it's sexist and demeaning to women.  What?

Ok, if it included a picture of a young woman and old guy, then yeah, it would be sexist and inappropriate.  But it doesn't.

It makes you wonder if those who are crying foul the loudest have a guilty conscience?

 

Free Kids' Haircuts

JC Penney is offering free kids' haircuts for every child (K-6th) for the entire month of August.  Save yourself time by booking an appointment at 1-855-JCP-KIDS.

BlogHer'12 Recap

 

Sparklecorn's lone unicorn

BlogHer'12 has come to an end and it's time for a BlogHer'12 recap.  

This is the first of twelve short posts about my BlogHer'12 experience.   

1. Hilton New York - The Mother Ship
2. Transportation - Cheap or convenient
3. BlogHer '12 - 5,000 Attendees (4,992 women and 8 guys)
4. Food - Options for all
5. Sessions - Don't bother taking notes
6. Geek Bar - Geeks rule
7. Parties - Sparklecorn, it's no joke
8. Sponsors - Only if you were one of the chosen
9. Swag - Vibrators Galore
10. Roommate - Sharing a room with a stranger
11. Bloggers - New friends and blogs to read

Although this post isn't on the list, it counts.  Check back or make it easy on yourself and subscribe via RSS feed.

 

Please, Cut In Front Of Me

While waiting for the cashier to hand me my receipt at Costco this morning, I overhear an older man (late 60's, maybe early 70's) ask the guy behind me who had already loaded half his flat trolley onto the conveyor belt while simultaneously trying to keep his adorable but energy filled 4 year old in line and in check, if "Do you mind, if I just jump in front of you. I only have two things?"

Having heard this I was curious to see how it was going to be played out.  The dude behind me politely told the old man "You know, I've been waiting awhile so I prefer not."

Well done, tattooed dude. I'll have to remember to phrase it like that next time instead of my standard, "Are you kidding me? Like your time is more valuable than mine?"

All kidding aside, I'm with LA Ink, generally I say yes but if I have pressing needs (like a free range 4 year old in tow) I'll say no.

What are your thoughts on letting people cut in front of you in line?  

 

What Happens When I Travel

In the past whenever I was traveling, I would come home to find that Jeff had thrown out my things cleaned the house and tossed organized my piles of stuff.

It only took me about five years of traveling to get my revenge realize that if I got rid of organized his things when he was gone, he'd stop doing the same.

Things have been good the last few years and Jeff has left my piles alone.  Things have taken a different turn...

While at TBEX during the Road Rally (good thing Colorado Mountain Express has free WiFi on their shuttles), I got a text from Jeff that he was going to replace the two tiles in front of the dishwasher that had cracked.

My thought was he could redo the entire kitchen floor, replacing the 12x12 gray Travertine tiles with the 18x18 Beigeish Brown Travertine tiles we now have in the addition and bathrooms.  This way the entire house would have the same tile.

His idea, replace the two tiles and the dishwasher.

What?  Exactly!

Our dishwasher works fine.  Albeit it is old - the previous owners replaced the dishwasher as an added feature when we bought the house over 18 years ago.  Sure, it was old and loud, but it did the job and worked fine.  Why spend money replacing something that works, when you can use that money for something else, like an iPad....

But, as I was thousands of miles away and not in a position to have more a direct output, I came home to a new dishwasher.

Sure, it's pretty, stainless steel and matches our granite countertops.  It's also whisper quiet and we don't have to scrub the plates off before we put them in the dishwasher.

Hmm, I think it may be growing on me....

Dirty Car Art

Photo by Scott Wade

Might give you a second though about washing your car, least you hinder a budding Picasso.

Check out the rest of Scott Wade's work at Dirty Car Art.