Tis the season to start ramping up the holiday fun – both with local grandkids and long distance grandchildren. One grandchild and I spent a delightful hour in Big Lots enjoying the Harvest and Halloween decor aisle. We left with a tiny scarecrow for the mantel, a bigger scarecrow for great-grandma’s room, and a cute metal decoration for the front door – three pumpkins and the inscription, “Bless This House.” Thanks to Big Lots’ prices it didn’t cost much and we had a terrific time picking just the right items!

Christmas and Thanksgiving decor were there as well, but we ran out of time to investigate those. We’ll have fun with them later. Picking out and displaying holiday decorations have always been some of my favorite traditions. Would you believe I have a full-sized scarecrow that is over ten years old! We used to put him in a chair right outside the front door to greet visitors to our door. Now he’s in the house as my grandkids absolutely dote on him! They dance with him, hug him, use him as a pillow to watch TV and just have the best time with him! The memories from this particular tradition are priceless and will be just as special 20 years from now!

My long distance grandkids also love Autumn and Autumn decor. They are wonderful at sending me Harvest pictures to help decorate the house! Those are always a special treat! 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some fun and free (one of my favorite ways to save money ) craft ideas for the holiday season – from Autumn and Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Years. Keep checking back for more fun ideas and also we’d love to hear your suggestions as well!

For more Family Friday articles, be sure to visit Home Ever After, where they have a great article about lunch notes for our grandkids!

Recently, while traveling for senior home care giving purposes, I was sitting on a plane at the Atlanta airport. According to our pilot, it’s the busiest airport in the world and it has the people, lines, and delays to prove it! As I was looking out the plane’s window, I was amazed at the long parade of planes going by – big ones, little ones, and in-between. I started chuckling as I realized it looked just like a scene from one of my grandkids’ favorite educational videos, Mighty Machines. This is one of the fun and educational TV shows and videos for kids that we discovered on Netflix’ instant option – another of my favorite ways to save money! They have several episodes including:

• Lights and Ladders
• Tremendous Tools
• Roadways to Runways
• Diggers and Dozers
• Winter Blast
• And many more.

In fact, according to Wikipedia, we’ve only seen a small fraction of them. I’m definitely going to keep my eyes open for more! All of the videos in this series show the lead characters which are the actual “vehicles” going about their normal daily duties as they “talk” to the audience and each other. They explain what they do and discuss how they accomplish their tasks while enjoying pleasant conversations with each other. My seven year old grandson likes to watch each of them once while my five year old grand-twins enjoy watching them over and over. They’re fun and downright entertaining. I enjoyed learning more about sawmills and airports as I kept my grandkids company watching them! They make an excellent addition to social studies classes for homeschooling programs as well as Saturday morning educational entertainment in case we grandparents want to sleep an extra half hour. These are terrific little videos that are wholesome and interesting! Perfect for younger grandkids and their grandparents. Be sure to check over at HomeEverAfter for more Family Friday ideas for you and your grandkids! 

P.S. Want to know more about Netflix and their great options for fun and educational TV shows and videos for your kids and grandkids? Click here for a special offer for all of us in the Sandwich Generation –  TV episodes & movies from Netflix – now instantly to your TV! Free trial

Kaye

My young grandkids and I occasionally get to travel long distances together in the car. As I’ve already written, a DVD player is a wonderful thing for those long trips! For that matter, so are electronic games and a fun DS.  Even the younger crowd can play those. After a while, though, the littler grandkids start getting bored and that’s when I dig into my “grandma travel bag of car games” for some fun activities to keep us all too busy to notice how long the drive is.

The first games we usually play include a family favorite alphabet game with as many different sets of rules a we have people in the car. It can be as difficult as having to find items or signs outside the car that start with the next letter of the alphabet. For instance, Avenue would count for A, Blvd. for B, etc. Or we can go very simple by saying that as long as a sign has any letter that matches the alphabet letter we are on, it’s ok. In that case, Avenue would count for A, V, E, N, or U. We also have fun with Animal Alphabet, Random Rhyming, and Story-Go-Round.

Recently, I decided it was time to add some new games to my “grandma travel bag” and I had fun finding a few interesting new ones. We’re going to give them a whirl on our next long trip. If you beat us to it, we’d love to hear how you liked them:

First I discovered some cute printable car games for kids at Nick, Jr. Dora and Diego’s Car Bingo games are not only fun for the grandkids to play, it helps them (and grandma) learn some words in another language! Hmmm, after we’ve played with these a few times, we could make up our own, and even vary the languages. We could have German, which I took in high school, and French which their mom’s took in high school. Very fun!

I loved the educational games I found at About.com’s homeschooling site. They’re great for all kids, including those involved in homeschooling programs and those in brick and mortar schools. My two favorites were Odd or Even which even my youngest grandkids can probably play, along with License Plates – adding (or for that matter subtracting, multiplying and/or dividing) the numbers on the license plates. How fun!

One more, from A to Z’s Cool Homeschooling Site, included several interesting and educational travel games. My two favorites here were Semi Search (withOUT the Air Horns game ) and Trivia. That one is similar to the alphabet game. Someone selects a letter, then everyone spends the next ten minutes looking for as many things as possible that start with that letter (or that sound).

With all these fun new car games, I’m really looking forward to our next long trip. How about you? Do you have some fun car games not mentioned here. We’d love to hear about them. 

This is part of the Family Friday event sponsored by HomeEverAfter, where you can find even more fun ideas and interesting info that is great for grandparents as well as parents.

Looking for a fun new game for your grandkids? My 5 and 7 year old grandsons and I had a lot of fun with games this summer and we wanted to share our favorite with you. Pictureka is a funny sounding game name, with a funny looking board, that they absolutely LOVE! There are 9 board cards that you set side by side in three rows to make one huge board. They have a “zillion” different pictures in various directions, similar to the I Spy books and the Where’s Waldo? books. There are three sets of playing cards. Very simply, you pick a card, then look on the big board to find the picture from the little card. Sometimes everyone looks at the same time. Sometimes, only the one player looks, depending on the roll of the two different dice (one with colors and one with numbers), and the arrows on the playing cards.

The rules for this version are quite simple. BUT the game is geared for 8-15 year olds and my little grand-guys are a bit younger than that. I bought it because they LOVE the Where’s Waldo and I Spy books. Trying to play the game by the rules, I found that waiting until they were 8 for the regular game would have been better. SO we made up our own rules for a younger kids version.

SandwichINK version of Pictureka Game for Younger Grandkids:

Turning this into a cooperative team-building game, we only use the red and green cards. As each person rolls the color dice, he picks the appropriate card if it rolls red or green. If it rolls blue, he gets to choose between red and green. Then he rolls the number dice, and we ALL work together to find that many items each of whatever the picture is. It’s so much fun watching them help each other. They will often share a picture with another brother first before moving on to their own pictures.  You have to understand, this is not the norm with most of our games, so I really have appreciated the good team-work lessons they are learning.

Shopping at Target this week, I discovered there are a couple of other versions of Pictureka, including Pictureka Kubes which includes a version for younger kids. I read the directions for that, in a hurry, and had a hard time understanding them, so we will hold off on that one. It did look nice, because it takes up less room, but we are having so much fun with the primary game, we’ll stick with that for now. I am eyeing the smaller playing card version of the PICTUREKA Game, though, for our next long trip…

Family Friday is back, along with exciting happenings over at HomemakerBarbi. They have a new name, HomeEverAfter.com, along with an interesting article, Pregnancy Later in Life: Does Age Matter?

It’s not that easy to pick out a good kid’s wading pool. They are definitely NOT all created equal. Up until last year I would use a hard-sided toddler wading pool for my grandkids’ visits. It was easy to fill, easy to empty and didn’t get holes easily compared to a small, inexpensive toddler inflatable pool. For that matter, it also didn’t require an energetic but not necessarily strong-winded grandma to blow it up.

One of my grandkids has a special needs’ condition that led to him spending four years having a difficult time dealing with water of any kind, including in a swimming pool. Once we understood that, I started using a separate smaller wading pool for him.

The rest of the grandkids could cavort happily all summer in the bigger wading pool, splashing to their hearts’ content. My youngest grandson could take his time with the smaller pool, one toe at a time if necessary. It was always the highlight of my summer when, after weeks of summer play, he was finally able to jump in the pool as quickly as the others! After that, it was always a free-for-all as they all enjoyed running back and forth between the two pools

This year the tiny wading pools have been passed on to the Salvation Army and all the kids, youngest included (YAY!), have graduated to their very cool new inflatable pool at their house. Their mom sets it up using an electric air pump (Yay! Grandma still doesn’t have to blow it up!) It’s actually big enough for four kids (6,6,7,12) and they can even bring some toys in the pool. I’ve also been pleased to notice that it has proven to be very sturdy. Even with four very active children playing in, and sometimes ON the pool and its sides, no hole in the vinyl and the summer is almost over!

Before settling on this simple, yet fun, inflatable pool, we each tried a couple of “cool” inflatable “swimming” pools with lots of bells and whistles. Unfortunately they looked great but weren’t much bigger than our original waders. We didn’t want to spend over $50 so that definitely limited our choices. My grandkids’ big inflatable swimming pool is about 6 feet by10 feet and was under $50!. It  is much more fun because there is plenty of room to play, have toys, and even float with a couple of smaller pool toys.

This is not to say that having a pool guarantees a problem-free summer. Grandkids being grandkids, there will be fusses, feuds, and finagling. I’ve been royally splashed when it felt good and royally soaked when I didn’t want to get wet. There have been fun times and there have been time outs for misbehaving. Overall though , these pools are a great boon to Sandwich Generation grandparents everywhere.

In fact, even our aging parents can enjoy them. I have such great memories of my dad sitting – at a safe, non-splashing distance – and laughing and smiling as he watched his happy great-grand-tots playing happily. My senior mom loved turning on the sprinkler over our little wading pool and helping them play in water coming from the top and the bottom. It was our own mini water park.

Yup, fun times in the summer time for this Sandwich Generation family always include some kind of portable wading pool or inflatable pool in our back yard! How about you?

For more Family Friday fun ideas, be sure to pop over to Homemaker Barbi. This week is part 2 of a two-part series on helping train a grand-toddler to help around the house.

I was wandering through a most delightful bookstore with one of my granddaughters last week when we spied an intriguing craft magazine geared for children. Purchasing it, we took it home to see what ideas it had for us.

Cool Kids’ Crafts from Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications is currently on sale for $4.99. The cover states:

• 156 Super-Easy Projects
• Great DIY Ideas Under $10

Having fallen for such claims in the past and then being greatly disappointed, I was a bit leery as I opened the magazine. I hadn’t even made it through page 16 of the 96 pages when I realized the cover told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It really is a great magazine for grandkids and grandparents to have a lot of fun with!

Many of the projects are, indeed, simple. The materials required range from construction paper to paper plates to foam. There are also some larger projects needing such items as socks, paint, wood, t-shirts, etc. Overall, though, many of the crafts are really simple and easy – perfect for busy grandparents who are also providing senior home care for aging parents.

Some of the craft ideas include:

• A cute picture of a house with windows full of photos of family members. We could fill it with grandkid pictures and use it as an adorable gift for great-grandparents.
• Grandsons and granddaughters would enjoy the cool sunglasses they can customize, not to mention the cute and easy-to-make sunglass holder.
• For those of you who, like me, are already thinking fondly of Autumn and Harvest fun, there are several adorable pumpkin crafts ranging from an ultra-simple pumpkin-face garland made from paper plates to a more difficult pumpkin totem made from plywood!
• There are even some cute Christmas projects to help you and your grandkids get a really early start on your Christmas cards and decorations. That’s always a good thing for us Sandwich Generation caregivers, since we never know when unexpected illness might slow us down in our holiday preparations.

All in all, this is a very useful little craft magazine. And at its discounted price, it’s also one of those fun ways to save money while having fun with the grandkids!

For more fun Family Friday ideas for you and your grandkids, be sure to take a peek at Homemaker Barbi’s site! She’s got a great article on rainy day fun. Not only that, I found another early-Christmas-planning compadre at Life As Mom who has written on getting started with your Christmas planning now. Pre-planning Christmas expenditures is one of our best ways to save money, not to mention time!  Since both are vital necessities for Sandwich Generation caregivers, do check it out.  Merry Christmas, in July. 

When my kids were little I would shop one or two times a month, depending on how often my husband was paid. With five of us, I could buy in bulk, and not worry about using it all up before it spoiled. My biggest problem then was keeping enough of any favorite item in stock! Now I’m in a different season of life. My kids have kids, my senior mom is living with me, and I'm a full-fledged member of the Sandwich Generation.

My caregiving has increased but my shopping needs have decreased. Except, of course, when I am babysitting grandchildren. I love having them spend the night, the day, or even the hour. Depending on the needs of the week, I might have several visits, no visits, or one or two visits. It is only problematic when it comes to making sure I have enough food for our needs. I rarely drink milk, but they love milk with cereal. I try to avoid having cookies in the house, because I have NO willpower. But when the school age crowd is here, I need to have snacks to pack in their lunches.

What’s a Sandwich Generation Granny Nanny to do? Tiny comes to the rescue. Tiny as in tiny options. I discovered there are tiny little bottles of milk, much like the bottles delivered to my house when I was a very little girl. (Can you tell I’m a also a member of the Baby Boomers Generation?    ) These aren’t glass and I’m very glad for that. Less for me to break!     But they are small. I think they are about a pint. They also seem to have a very long shelf life. So I am reasonably safe keeping one of these in the fridge for those fun overnights. Then I just have to remember to give it to them if it gets close to the expiration date.

Tiny packages of snacks and cookies are also wonderful. Keebler, Kraft, and Nabisco all have great sets of pre-packaged cookies and snacks. They are even nice enough to keep many of them to 100 calories per package. Not only are they great for school lunches for my grandchildren, they are wonderful for helping me stick to a healthy and low calorie diet. As I like to say, a healthy grandma is a grandma who is up to plenty of fun activities for grandparents and grandchildren, such as playing and wrestling and having fun with her grandkids! My particular favorites are the Oreos and the Ritz Snack Mix. My granddaughter and I also love Smartfood’s White Cheddar Popcorn when I can find it.

I always look for healthy, no-sugar fruit juices in small containers. Capri Sun and Libby’s both have delicious options there. For the lunch itself, the grandkids really love the Lunchables. I keep a couple around at all times. Now, I know what you’re thinking. These choices are a bit ungreen, more expensive, and sometimes not that healthy. That’s true for a large family on a day-to-day basis. But for all of us Sandwich Generation grandparents who need to be prepared for unexpected visits, they are a real lifesaver! I waste a lot less food since I’ve switched over to buying these, not to mention that these are great ways to save money as well. I can even order several of these online at Amazon when I need to, saving me precious time and money!  That means more play time and reading time with those sweet grandkids! My grandma was right. Good things DO come in small packages!

For more Family Friendly Ideas, pop over to Homemaker Barbi's Family Friday. And…

Summer vacation and grandkids just seem to go together like a horse and carriage, not to mention love and marriage. I’m looking forward to seeing my long distance grandkids later this summer, and my close up grandkids just got to visit with their long distance grandma. When I see my little cutie pies, we will eat a lot of meals at their house, but I’m also planning on treating them out a couple of times. It’s my way of saying thank you for their sweet hospitality, give my daughter and son a treat, and enjoy the Mongolian BBQ we don’t have locally. Fortunately, they love it too. It’s not a super cheap money saver, but sooooo worth it.

They live in a small town, so there’s not a huge amount of choices. However, thanks to a great article at MSN’s Delish page, I’m going to get to save money on another night. That’s because I discovered that Applebee’s has Monday Night Family Nights where kids eat free, 1 kid per adult. And if you have more than the three adults that will be going in my group (and we do ), extra kids are only a buck apiece. SWEET! Of course, I also made sure I read the small print that warns this money saver deal is good only at participating locations. I’m just hoping that will include my future location! I know the grandkids will be thrilled. They already love Applebee’s for their balloons. This grandma loves Applebee’s because of their delicious brownie desserts. Throw in  the free kids’ meals and I’m going to be an extra happy camper!

Whether the grandkids come to visit you, you go to visit the grandkids, or y’all decide to take a multi-generational family vacation, the odds are good you will all be eating out together at least once or twice this summer. So head on over to MSN’s Delish site to read Where Kids Eat Free from A-Z.     You’ll find 25 money saver restaurants, along with links to directions, reviews, and even some great recipes to cook at home! And Happy Eatin’ to you as well.

For more great Family Friday ideas, be sure to pop over to HomemakerBarbi’s!

Do you love Davy Jones of the Monkees, Steve Lawrence, Neil Sedaka, Sha Na Na, BB King, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys? Do you enjoy the music of the 50’s?  Do you have fun reading to your grandkids? Would your aging parents say yes to any or all of these? Then I have a wonderful book and cd set to share with you. I can’t believe I just discovered it as it is by one of my absolute, all-time favorite children’s book authors, Sandra Boynton. My only excuse is that I normally focus on her books, but still…

One of my daughters called and told me I should listen to the Penguin Song by Sandra Boynton. I was a bit surprised by that, but I checked it out on YouTube and LOVED IT. I called her back to ask if she was talking about the Personal Penguin song sung by Davy Jones. “Yes, I think so,” she replied. “That’s Davy Jones of the Monkees – one of my all time favorite groups AND singers!” I excitedly reported.

As I watched this adorable song with the cute illustrations from the book, the verse, “A friend loves at all times,” came to my mind. The story makes a great illustration for that verse!

Looking further at the YouTube directory, I discovered another video by Sandra Boynton, herself, explaining how they created one of her recent projects, “The Blue Moo.” It turns out that The Penguin Song is part of that project. It was fascinating – both to hear the story of the book, and to watch the clips of many of my favorite singers in the recording studio.

I have to tell you, The Blue Moo is absolutely adorable! My senior mom is going to love it because of the 50’s flavor. My grandkids are going to love it because of the cute songs. And I’M GOING TO LOVE IT because of so many of my favorite singers AND the cute songs AND the special Sandra Boynton touch! As a matter of fact, I’m getting it today! And can’t wait! How about you? 

As a matter of fact, thanks to Workman Publishing, you can have the Personal Penguin song “to have for ever and ever” (or at least until your computer crashes – so don’t forget to back up often ). This is the same song as above, but at the Workman site, with a link to an mp3 download for Personal Penguin. Scroll down to just below the words DAVY JONES to the words “Right-click here and select “save link as…”" Your grandkids are going to love it and your elderly parents might even like it as well. Enjoy!

WOO HOO. The 4th of July is coming up and that can mean fun times for grandparents and grandkids at family get-togethers. For that matter, it can mean fun times for the days preceding the 4th, whether you will get together on the 4th or not.

For instance:

• DLTK has fun posters, games and yummy recipes that you and your grandkids will enjoy
• Activity Village has fun mazes, word searches, kids coloring pages, printables, cards, crafts, and more recipes
  
• Kaboose has some cute treat holders for licorice and popcorn (a tasty patriotic decoration, no less)
• Enchanted Learning has great projects, activities, coloring pages to print, and educational info which is great for your grandkids’ summer homeschooling programs.
  

With all these fun ideas, you could spend the whole week making tons of goodies, such as patriotic pinwheels, star wreaths, and colorful planter pots. What do you do with them, though? Decorate your house and their house, of course.

Then, how about looking around for any elderly neighbors who don’t have family living nearby. What a great encouragement it would be to them, and what a great character building exercise for your grandkids, to take some of those goodies over to the neighbor on or around the 4th. In fact, Grandma Gifts of Love has a great article about that.

If you start today, you could even make some cute goodies and patriotic decorations to send to cousins or aging parents who don’t live close by. How fun to open up a package the day or so before the 4th and find all sorts of colorful, patriotic decor and know that your family has similar sets. It can make the distance seem not so far away.

I hope this gives you plenty of fun ideas. And I hope and pray you and your family all have a peaceful, blessed 4th of July!

Don’t forget to check HomemakerBarbi for more Family Friday Fun Ideas to share with your grandkids!