I am always on the lookout for movies that we can take Madison too.  It is a great reward for a  job well done, and she is old enough now to enjoy the movie theater.  However, finding appropriate movies can be a real challenge.  A movie with Brendan Fraser however is usually a winner in my book. I read somewhere that he only wanted to do movies his kids can see, and he has held true to that with his latest movie. Have you seen the trailer for InkHeart yet? If not, you can watch the trailer here. I tried to embed it but it autoplays which annoys people including myself.

Now, after watching the trailer, I want to go see this movie.  This movie opens in a couple of days, and we are seriously considering going to it.  From what I’ve seen so far, the plot is that a book comes to life when Brendan’s character reads it.  However, something happens and they get stuck in a story in one of the books and have to get out.  I haven’t seen this movie get a whole lot of press, so I definitely want to draw your attention to it, because I think it looks that good.  My favorite line has to be Helen Mirren’s character says “I prefer a story that has the good sense to stay on the page where it belongs”.

If you go and see it, let me know what you think!

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I’ve gotten this same email about five times now, so I wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you tend to give gift cards around the holidays, you need to be careful that the cards will be honored after the holidays. Stores that are planning to close after Christmas are still selling the cards through the holidays even though the cards will be worthless January 1. There is no law preventing them from doing this. Below is a partial list of stores that you need to be cautious about:

Circuit City (filed Chapter 11)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide closing
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine’s to close 150 stores nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down specialty stores
J. Jill closing all stores (owned by Talbots)
Pacific Sunwear (also owne d by Talbots)
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores mo re to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing down remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stor~s
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close down some stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

(If any of these stores are wrong, let me know so I can correct it.  Snopes has confirmed some of these)

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As I wrote in my other post, my cousin recently died.  My cousin was beautician and had been doing my mother’s hair for the last 33 years.  She really needed a perm, however, she was waiting for my cousin to get better.  Obviously, that did not happen.  My mom made an appointment at the same place that I had my hair done at for my wedding.  We had great service at that time, and she remembered that it seem like an older person place.  They put her with a wonderful woman named Michelle.

You know how you get to talking to the beautician doing your hair?  Well, my mom and Michelle started talking.  They talked about how they both grew up on farms — her in DePere, my mom in Suring (now Suring is an hour north of Green Bay and has about 500 people living there).  When my mom said Suring, Michelle was like I know somebody from there.  My mom was like “Oh really!  Who?”  Michelle said “Well her mom’s name started with a B.  I think it was Beulah.”  Well, Beulah was my aunt.  She died several years ago of ovarian cancer.  The person she knew was my cousin Carmen.  Carmen died 12 years ago.  She was 6 months pregnant and in the hospital for kidney infection.  She had a brain anerism and died instantly.  She was a first grade teacher at the time.  Honestly, it was the sadest funeral I have ever went too.  Not only was my family shook up, there were all these little kids there who understood to varying degrees what was going on.  Well, Michelle’s daughter had Carmen as a teacher.  The school put a memorial bench in Carmen’s honor.  Michelle was the one who collected the money to get that done.

Now, Green Bay isn’t a small town, so for my mom to run into this lady is just well odd.  I am glad she met her.  It was like it was meant to be.  When she was telling this story, I felt like I should be sitting in some home theater seating and eating popcorn, because this whole situation feels like it came out a movie.

Ever have something like this happen to you?

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Don’t you wish the kids nowadays were more responsible?  I know that I hear that a lot from older people.  When you have younger children like me, now is the time to install that.  Liberty Mutual has made that a little bit easier for us parents.  They created a series of short little films for you and your kids to watch called The Responsibility Project.  Thanks to Mom Central who told us about these awesome films, Madison and I watched several of them.  I found that because they were short, she was able to pay attention to the movie.  She also found The Hot Seat quite funny (which it was because anyone who has worked in an office has seen this very thing happen). They were able to show how not taking responsibility for something can truly make a bigger mess of things. They also showed how it makes people happy when you do take responsibility.  I am going to try and embed the Hot Seat so you can watch the video with you little ones too.  Little stories like this can go along way.

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I know this is a little late, since this happened last week, but I just found the video! My mom had told me he had gotten all choked up and emotion. Wow — he really did. If you missed it like me, here you go:

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