• family

    Spring Fever: Nerf Rebelle and Nerf Bash Ball – Review

    April 2, 2014 - By 

    Bye Bye Winter. It’s Hurricane season. Hurricane Ainsley season that is. Spring fever has hit hard here – FINALLY.   I am not complaining. It was a long snowy, cold winter and we are still not entirely free of the season. There is still frost on the rooftops here most mornings and it’s April 1st! But the first hint of spring in our area of Ontario, Canada and my kids were racing outside knocking on doors in our new neighbourhood trying to make new friends. New Nerf toys like Nerf Rebelle helped start new friendships.   We moved into our new…

  • Health

    Hey Mom, What’s a Bong? Answering Kid’s Drug Questions

    March 4, 2014 - By 

    Kids really do say the darndest things. Usually when I am driving. It’s a minor miracle I don’t crash the minivan with their constant random Nattering questions and hijinks. I’ve heard Mom, did birth mom have any other kids? And can I meet her now? Like tonight? Also random statements like: We aren’t biologically related, right? Then there’s always: Do you miss Grandma? Does Daddy miss his Mom? Do you know why the sky is blue? Did you ever smoke? Did Daddy smoke? Here’s me driving along thinking, ‘Hey what’s for dinner? What did I thaw? Did I forget to…

  • Food - Giveaways - Health

    Boost Your Child’s Health with Webber Naturals

    February 10, 2014 - By 

    Post may contain affiliate links as a service to readers. Any purchase made via the link here results in a small commission for Thrifty Mommas Tips at no extra cost to you.   A good vitamin supplement like Treehouse Vitamins from Webber Naturals can be like nutritional insurance for your child. In this neck of the woods, during one of the nastiest cold and flu seasons we’ve witnessed in recent years, insurance is important. My kids eat well, but we lead a very busy active life and sometimes I worry. My youngest, is especially prone to colds, and flu bugs. And she…

  • american_girl_event
    family

    American Girl’s First Ever Blogger Event #BittyBaby

    August 26, 2013 - By 

    The years are brief, in which girls play with dolls. Blink your eyes and they are almost done. Even shorter, if you have a sporty girl who had no interest in anything girly until very recently. So colour me happy and a wee bit shocked too when this one – who has been christened sporty spice, bug, two foot tornado and Hurricane Ainsley at various points in her short nine years – decided she was a doll girl. She is prone to these whiplash about turn moments now as a young almost tween. So, when I was invited to an…

  • family

    Best Birthday Gifts for Crafty Kids: Kiwi Crate Review

    March 8, 2013 - By 

      I was going to show you the web site for Kiwi Crate, but then I realized I needed to capture how fun this experience is. I spied Kiwi Crate crafting experiences on line, likely in someone’s twitter mentions at some point and realized I really wanted to take a peek under the hood so to speak. So the Faboosh people at Kiwi Crate sent me one this week.  My girls are craft crazy. They always have been. My oldest child at the age of three would endlessly search the house for recyclables to turn into crafts. She has yet…

  • adoption_at_camp
    Parenting

    Adoption and Camp: Realities of #adoption

    August 12, 2012 - By 

    My daughter left for sleepover camp tonight. I raced back from Blogher in New York City to drive her down a gravel laneway ever closer to her grownup self. It is a little thing for some, developmental grains of sand slipping through a timer. But, I have learned, as a speaker, an adoption advocate and most of all an adoptive parent, there are very few little things when you are adopted. Everything is amplified. Everything is different. How does adoption at camp differ than any other camp experience? In a lot of ways actually. From separating from parents and understanding…

  • beauty products - parenting

    When It Takes A Village – Dove #CelebrateMom

    July 16, 2012 - By 

      This post is part of YummyMummyClub.ca’s support of the Dove Celebrate Mom contest.I received compensation as a thank you for my participation.This post reflects my personal opinion about the information provided by the sponsors.You can nominate inspiring moms here: celebratemom.ca In many ways my family is the truth at the heart of that saying It Takes A Village To Raise A Child. It took a village to help us build a family and when we adopted our girls, both as infants, well I knew always that  I would seek to find them strong role models to help guide them…

  • Parenting

    Tooth Fairy Tales and How to Fix the Fails

    July 7, 2010 - By 

    My Payton has had a wobbly tooth for about one month now, so we’ve been anticipating the tooth fairy visit for a while. Her wobbly teeth seem never to be nudged along by prying hands or crunchy foods or anything else for that matter. She is content to let them fall out when they are ready and that’s okay by me. It’s the kind of girl she is. Cautious and happy to just take life as it comes.   Our Tooth Fairy Adventures Anyways, it is the sixth or seventh tooth she has lost. The process should be firmly entrenched…

  • Travel

    14 Things You Must Have on a Family Road Trip

    August 10, 2009 - By 

    Heading out on another family road trip which means I have some packing to do. Since we started this great foray into family travel my husband and I – well mostly I – have learned a few things about the tricky business of travelling with tots in tow. My first tip for travelling with children is planning, planning and then planning some more. When we flew to Disney last year it was my daughter, Ainsley’s first flight. She was four and, for those of you who don’t know, she has sensory processing disorder, which means life is often too loud,…

  • family - Travel

    East Park Golf and Waterpark

    August 3, 2009 - By 

    Thriftymommastips decided to take her family for a holiday weekend adventure at a nearby waterpark in London, known as East Park, 1275 Hamilton Road. While the weather Saturday was lovely and the waterslides excellent the adventure was not inexpensive, so be forewarned. East Park offers many different packages and many different activities but for the holiday weekend a special family of four for $50 deal was advertised in the newspaper. The deal caught my eye and we figured we’d give the waterslides a whirl. Now it should be noted that we had no complaints and spent all day at the…