Here Comes the Boom Real Parents Movie Review

Here Comes the Boom is a comedy, rated PG, about a disenchanted teacher (Kevin James) who found inspiration from a talented and dedicated music teacher (Henry Winkler).  Kevin James decided to help Henry Winkler save his music program from the recent budget cuts.  Kevin James needed to raise a significant amount of money and figured out that his best chance was to enter a MMA fight. After watching a MMA fight on TV, he decided he could make a bunch of money simply by losing. This led to him having one of his adult students (Niko from a Citizenship class he taught at night) agree to be his trainer (played by legendary MMA fighter Bas Rutten, who absolutely stole the movie).  Niko took him on as a student and got him fights at small local shows.  You can obviously see where the movie heads to, but the way they got there was funny and touching.  Was this movie predictable? Yes, it was. Does this movie take elements from other fighting movies? Yes, it has elements from Rocky and Karate Kid. Yet, we all still enjoyed it.  It was funny throughout.  There are a bunch of great characters and actors including Henry Winkler and Salma Hayek.  Many famous MMA fighters have tiny roles, and it was fun to recognize them (Shoutout to Mayhem Miller).  The end of the movie even had a few really touching moments. 

 

 

Disclosure #1:  From my DH:  I have to admit - I am a MMA fan and watch UFC regularly which may be why the fight scenes didn't bother me at all.  If you have never seen an MMA fight you might want to catch a few minutes of one before heading out to see this movie.  Other than that, there is really nothing to find objectionable at all about this film.  There is very little cursing that we can remember and absolutely no sex at all. We took two 14 year old boys to this movie and they both loved it. They both found this movie to be hilarious and they sat through it twice in two days.

If you liked Paul Blart - Mall Cop you will probably also like this movie as well.  We loved Kevin James in King of Queens and he was just as hilarious in this movie as he was on that show.  This is a fun movie that you will enjoy seeing and will laugh about afterwards.

 

Disclosure #2: We won passes to attend two screenings of this movie.  All parts of this review are our own thoughts and ideas and we were not at all influenced by the grouchy reviewers who were sitting in front of us discussing how many minutes the movie would be and how much they were dreading being there.  Do not listen to the negative reviews and give this movie a chance!

Get Unreal!

Candy Season is upon us.
You will be required to buy candy in a few more weeks.
Don't you want to buy candy that is missing all that junk?
Get Unreal candy has done the hard work for you.
They have come up with 5 flavors that taste just as good as the candy bars you had as a child, but free from the junk you no longer want to feed your family!
Do you have a few minutes to watch a cute video?  Lots of people have discovered Get Unreal candy, so check them out!

Let's take a minute and look at a bag of Peanut M&Ms.  A small 49 gram bag has 250 calories and 25 grams of sugar! The rest of the stats on your favorite peanut M&Ms are 30 carb and 13 grams of fat.
Now I would like you to met Unreal #54. A rival to the Peanut M&Ms.
Unreal #54 is a 42 gram serving, the perfect size for small hands.
Unreal #54 has only 200 calories, 16 grams of sugar, 11grams of fat, and 20g of carbs.

Most importantly the ingredients on the Unreal line are clean!
No corn syrup
No Partially Hydrogenated Oils
No Artificial Ingredients
No GMOs
No Preservatives
and a low glycemic index.
Candy is not served very often in my house, but if I am going to serve my kids some candy, it will definitely be UNREAL

We tasted all the Get Unreal candy options and they all taste amazing.  We really did prefer them to regular candy bars.  My teen boys said these bars were much better than regular candy and filled them up for a long time!  I loved that we were eating less junk and cleaner ingredients.  Try it for yourself. If you see me out and about, I might just have a bar for you to try.

Disclosure: I was invited to host a GetUnreal party and to learn more about the Get Unreal mission and brand.  I was provided product to sample, take home, and give away to friends and family.  The opinions expressed above are my own.  We had a really fun party where we tasted all the different UNREAL candy and put them up against the well known M&Ms Snickers, etc... The Unreal candy won by a landslide.  You can make up your own mind about this product by purchasing a bar at CVS or Michaels.  Additional retailers to launch soon. Check out the Get Unreal website for product information.

Chevy Volt Electric Car for our Family??

My husband got a mailer all about the Chevy Volt.  Very nice I told him.  A few days later he said he was going to go look at the Volt.  Really? A four person car for our 7 member family?
Yes, he said. It would be a great car for when we are just a small group.
So he visited the Volt a few times and I still was not sold.
The car is way too small I repeated.
But since this would be my husbands car I told him fine.  You want it, you can get it.

So now we are proud leasers of a new Chevy Volt.
The first few weeks I really hated the car.

It smiled at me and then started to grow on me a bit.
I started to love some things about it.
Positives:
*No gas to pay for.  With prices hovering in the $4 a gallon mark, I did not miss filling up my car as often.  Each charge will get you about 36-38 miles of driving without needing to plug in again.  There is a small gas tank as a back up if you are going on a longer drive.  I am proud to say we have gone almost 500 miles and not used even .1 of gas, woohoo!  This picture is hard to see but it says 478 miles and 0.0 of gas. I love this!

*Smaller groups are quieter to drive around than larger ones. :)
*Onstar for the life of the lease. Onstar is awesome!
*XM Radio with a way of rewinding a song.  Can you say Call Me Maybe played over and over again while driving to preschool? Maybe this should be a negative.

*Easy to park, I have only driven big cars for years now and this car is really easy to park!
*Speedy little thing.  You barely step on the pedal and woosh you are off!  Careful though, you do not want to get a speed camera ticket.
*Quiet.  This car is sooooo quiet.  You turn it on and you can barely tell it is on.  Sometimes people will stand next to the car and not realize I am trying to drive away.  There is a teeny horn that you can use to alert pedestrians that you are moving. Smart Chevy Volt designers!
*Great NAV system and console area. Easy to figure out and use.
*Race car feel says my 4 year old. She only wants to go to school in her race car.

*Last positive is a very comfortable seat for each person. Bucket seats all around. A real improvement from the minivan days.


Negatives:
*Remembering to plug it in.  Sometimes you just do not remember that extra little step.
*You cannot fit as much in the trunk as you can in the minivan.  I buy a lot at the store and need a way to bring it home.
*You try to plan your trip to be in the under 40 mile mark, so that you will get back home before you need to charge it.
*There are not that many charging stations YET. We do have a few, but not at every store we go to.

Macy's Spelling Bee

Is your 8-11 year old a great S-P-E-L-L-E-R?
Do you live near:

*Houston TX
*Aventura FL
*Coral Springs FL
*Orlando FL
*San Diego CA

If the answer is yes, you are in luck! Tomorrow, Macy's is sponsoring a spelling bee with truly amazing prizes.  Would your child like to win an Ipad 3? What about a $100 Macys gift card? A year's worth of online tutoring from Kaplan?  Or maybe the online gift card from Scholastic is what they would love to win.
Get there early to line up and sign in.  Watch Twitter for live tweets and follow #MacysBee for updates throughout the day.
We had the opportunity to interview a number of this year's contestants from around the country.
The contestants gave us lots of advice and suggestions.
Many of the kids who try out really love spelling.  They enjoy spelling games, get quizzed on spelling words at meals, and practice spelling lists during their free time.  Some contestants are really serious about this.  Other kids we met just were walking by and thought this looked like fun.  The best tip we learned is that you can use your entry number as a piece of paper and you can practice "writing" the word on your "paper" with your finger.  The kids said this way of visualizing a word can really help them.  What a great tip!

The Macy's Spelling Bee has some incredible sponsors including:

*Reading is Fundamental
*Kaplan Kids

*Scholastic
*Radio Disney

Even if your child does not fit the age range, it is really fun to meet the contestants and cheer them on.  It is inspiring to hear their stories, and watch them spell words under pressure.
Some fun websites to practice spelling that my kids enjoy are:
 http://www.spellingcity.com/
http://www.kidsspell.com/
http://www.abcya.com/dolch_sight_word_spelling.htm
and finally this website has a really cool way to practice your weekly spelling words!
http://www.scholastic.com/kids/homework/spelling.htm

Good luck to all the spellers this weekend!


Disclosure: I am a member of the Everywhere Society and Everywhere provided me with compensation for this post about Macy’s Spelling Bee.  All thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own.  I have two amazing spellers in my house and one day I hope to be able to watch one of them win a spelling bee!

Anyone else concerned about Halo?

I just got my latest Cravebox in the mail yesterday and most of the items were really fun.  The theme this month was "back to school".  The pens and pencils were really awesome.  So were the cute tissues.  But one item in the box really concerned me.

Have you seen this product before?
Halo Germ Defense.
Like I would with any food I plan to eat I looked at the box carefully.
What did the cover say to me? It looked to me like a little girl was spraying this product into her mouth on this box.  Hmmmm, keep reading. I turn the box once to the right.  The box tells me I should use Halo when I am exposed to airborne germs, and they suggest that these airborne germs are found in:
*offices
*classrooms
*airplanes
*elevators
*malls
*and restaurants.

I turned the box over to the back side.  Active ingredient is: Cetylpyridinium Chloride.  WHAT? That does not sound good to me.  And yes, you are supposed to spray this product three times into the oral cavity( I am guessing they could easily have said mouth here)  allow the medicine to spread through the mouth, then swallow.
Next step for me was to google  Cetylpyridinium Chloride. Here is the wiki page for this ingredient.  Scroll down a bit and it says "It is toxic when swallowed or inhaled".
So now lets go back to the cover picture. To me, that looked like a little girl.  She would be going to school and I would want to protect my little girl from all the terrible germs in the air.  But WAIT!  The back of the box says this product is only for adults and children 12 years of age or older and it says Children under 2 should consult a dentist or physician.

There are so many things that scare me about this product.  And if you know me, I am a huge germaphobe who must ask the kids 100 times a day, have you washed your hands recently??

I googled "Halo germ Defense Concerns" and I got nothing.
I am the only person worried about this product?
Forget about the main ingredient of Cetylpyridinium Chloride for a minute.  Lets look at the inactive ingredients that are included:
copovidone
flavor, yeah, what is that?
methylparaben
PEG-60
hydrogenated castor oil
propylparaben
sodium benzoate
sodium saccharin
xantham gum
xylitol

My google search gave me very little so I went to the Halo Facebook Page. Here I found lots of, save yourself from germs, use our product posts.  I also saw lots of people posting that they got the Halo product in a goody bag, at Blogher, or as a sample and they just loved it.  Other people posted that they were going to use it everyday.  These posts scared me even more.

Any scientists here who can explain this product to me, and tell me why it is safe?
If not, I will be keeping my oral cavity clean and free of Halo, and probably getting sick as soon as my kids bring home the next germs from school.

4 weeks of school

Is it possible that we have almost 4 weeks of school behind us?
It really has flown by.
Sure we have had some tough days, weeks even.
Our Sunday plans were recently ruined by illness and the depressing too much homework disease.
But overall we have mostly survived the first 4 weeks of school.
Good job kids!

Before school started I had really big plans for how I would be spending my days.  My youngest is now in a full day program.  That means I am usually home by myself from 9-2:30 every day.  I thought wow, I will be getting so much accomplished!  Yeah right. Funny one.
Somehow I have been busier than ever the past 4 weeks, accomplishing very little.
The other assumption I made was that my little girl of 4 years old would be so tired from an 8 hour day of school that she would be going to bed much earlier.  HAHA she said.  Since school started she is going to bed a bit later than usual.

I guess the lesson I learn from this is, never try to figure things out in advance.  Always go with the flow.  Play things by ear.  Enjoy each day as they come and do not try to make too many plans in advance.  All that free time I thought I would have is consumed by helping in the kids schools, helping with homework, shopping, doing dishes, taking people where they need to be, and occasionally finding time to post on my blog.

I hope you have enjoyed your first 4 weeks of school!!

One last thing.
I think I forgot to post a video that I made with my oldest son.
We were asked to make a video with back to school tips for teens.  HP and Walmart sponsored our video.  The outtakes from this video were hilarious.  Our bird was flying around, then refused to get off the top of the fan, and different kids were crying, all while trying to shoot the video. Diane wanted to be in the video, then not be in the video.  It was really a lot of fun ;).  I should make videos with the teens more often, it sure does keep them quiet as soon as the camera starts to roll.
Anyway, if you want to see our video, here it is:

Only 3 Ingredient Dessert

Sometimes I get so busy making a nice dinner that I run out of time for a nice dessert.  I do not serve dessert very often, but when I do, I want it to be healthy, and be ready in minutes.

I have the easiest dessert ever for you.

One problem though with this dessert. You need to buy one ingredient at Trader Joes.  TJs, as we call it around here, is one of my favorite stores. They have so many great products, with healthy ingredients, and at a great price. What more can shoppers ask for?

Last week while shopping, I noticed a new dessert mix.  It was called the Blondie Bar Baking mix.  I then looked at the preparation instructions.  Add in one egg and one stick of butter.  Seriously, one stick of butter? No way, no how.  I think I use one whole stick of butter in about 5 months in my house.  I knew I could make this mix better, so I still bought it with the intention of making it my way.

I tried a few different combos with healthier ingredients.  But the best combo by far was easy.  Put the Blondie Bar mix in a bowl, then stir in one egg (you can easily sub in egg beaters or a flax or chia egg here) and 1/2 cup of apple sauce.  That is it! Stir it just till blended and then put in a well sprayed 8x8 pan.  I made this in my toaster oven and it was ready in 26 minutes.

This is what it looked like before baking.
There is no photo of the after blondie bars because they were almost all eaten up.  All the kids loved them.  No complaints means a successful dessert.  No one said these tasted healthy and the proof is in the empty pan.

Leave me a comment if you have an easy and healthy dessert you like to make for you family.