Sarah Has Another New Blog!

The kind folks over at Babble have seen fit to let me have my very own blog over on Babble Voices. I call it That's Right. You Heard Me.

Go check it out. They let me say whatever I want.

Suckers.

Why I Am Trying to be Healthy

Why am I trying to be healthy? That is a loaded question. There are so many reasons - vanity, longevity, I don't feel like buying new clothes, I feel better when I am healthy.

But the most important reason is easy. I try to be healthy to set a better example for my children.

I am not the biggest fan of exercise - or I wasn't until I realized that on the days I spent even 20 minutes on the elliptical I slept better, I cried less and my back didn't hurt.

I also seemed a lot less hypocritical when I made my kids exercise.

The same is true for eating. If I eat an apple or banana every day with lunch not only do my children see that I practice what I preach, they also see that it is normal. And maybe we don't all need dessert for every single meal.

I went to a panel this year at BlogHer 11 about owning your own beauty. The panelists talked a lot about how we can make our daughters see that they are beautiful by leading by example. It isn't about being thin, it is about being healthy.

I recently hired a personal trainer and I was so careful not to tell my daughter (who at age 7 has no body fat whatsoever and is 75% legs) that I was working out not to lose weight, but to get into better shape, to be stronger, to be healthier.

And I am. After three months I am stronger. I feel better. I am setting a better example of how grown ups can fit exercise into their lives ever day.

Well, maybe not every day, but at least four times a week.

Marie Callender's is trying to help it make easier for us to be healthy in a hurry.

Today I tried the Cheesy Chicken and Rice meal. It was only 380 calories and very, very filling.

The Cheesy Chicken & Rice is one of the nine one-dish entrees that Marie Cellender's offers for under 500 calories. Not bad, huh?

I try to be healthy for my kids and for my sanity. And you?

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Marie Callender's and The Motherhood sponsored this post, but these are my words and my opinions.

Sarah Struggles With Portion Control

Portion control is not my strong suit.

When the folks at The Motherhood and Marie Callender's suggested I write about portion control this week I chuckled. Besides beer, portion control is probably my biggest struggle when it comes to weight loss.

You know how when you buy a bag of Doritos you eat some and then put a chip clip on the bag and walk away? Yeah. I eat the entire bag. I am a like a dog - I will eat until my stomach explodes.

(When I first typed that sentence I typed "I am like a god" which is also true if you find eating a whole bag of Doritos a super human skill.)

So portion control is a problem for me.

When I went to pick out my three Marie Callender's meals I got a Chicken Teriyaki first. I know that teriyaki is great in low calorie meals and rice is good in frozen meals. For my second week I went out on a limb. I got the Smoky Cheddar Mac & Uncured Bacon.

I admit it. I was skeptical. Cheese, pasta and bacon for 380 calories? I figured it would either have like three noodles in it or taste like artificial sweetener, but the truth was not only was it good, there was plenty of food.

AND IT WAS ONLY 380 CALORIES.

And it was only $ 3.19.

Had I made a box of my regular mac and cheese it would have been 400 calories a serving, and you know I'm not measuring a serving.

I think today was a win. I'll definitely buy it again. This is a great choice for something to keep in the freezer for a super busy work day.

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Marie Callender's and The Motherhood sponsored this post, but these are my words and my opinions.

Sarah Eats on The Go

The theme I was given this week was eating on the go. The thing is, I work from home, and while yes, I am terribly busy, I am also rarely on the go. I am usually sitting right here on my butt at this computer.

That doesn't mean I have time to shop, eat, or plan meals wisely.

To be truthful, most of the time I am pretty good about dinners. My mom was a dietician and so I have a lot of ingrained ideas about family dinners and well balanced meals. I try really hard to make sure we at least have a protein, a vegetable and a starch for every dinner.

Now lunch - that is a different story altogether.

Response: That is a different story.

My typical weekday lunch is less than satisfactory. I would say twice a week my midday meal consists of Triscuits or Wheat Thins and whatever random cheese I have in the fridge. Sometimes it is even worse, if I am out on appointments or running the kids around in the summer I'll run through a drive thru and eat Value Meal #1.

With a coke.

This (and beer, sweet sweet beer) is probably the reason I ended up hiring a personal trainer.

I've been eating like crap lately.

Enter my friends at Marie Callender's.

Marie Callender's have out a whole (I keep wanting to use the word series) of frozen meals that are under 500 calories. I went for broke and tried The Chicken Teriyaki - it only has 280 calories.

It cooked in under four minutes and it was actually pretty cool. It came in a basket in a bowl. You put it all in the microwave and the sauce underneath steam the rice, chicken and vegetables and then you dump the food part into the sauce part and stir it up.

It was actually quite good. I was pleasantly surprised. I know Marie Callender's is usually high quality frozen foods, but my expectations were low since it was a frozen one dish lunch that was under 300 calories. It tasted good and I wasn't hungry afterward. What more could I have asked for?

And at $ 3.19 it is still cheaper than a value meal.

There are 34 different meals under 500 calories, but I'll be reviewing three of them. Stay tuned.

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Marie Callender's and The Motherhood sponsored this post, but these are my words and my opinions.

Sarah Helps Kleenex Save the Field Trip

Do you guys remember being in elementary or middle school and going on those big field trips? I remember back when I still lived in Ohio going to The Museum of Science and Industry and thinking how cool it was.

Last Thursday my kids (The Goon Squad) and I went to the Natural History Museum for one of those super cool field trips.

I would like to point out that I am well aware of how lucky I am to live just outside of Washington D.C. and within 20 minutes of some of the best museums in the world. I recommend ALL of the Smithsonian museums. Those places are amazing.

It was so cool. The kids got to go into a forensic anthropolgy lab and a discovery room that had a ton of hands on activities for kids.

I forced them to pose with this skull. They think I am crazy.

We also met the curator of the insect exhibit, hung out in the butterfly pavilion and saw an IMAX movie about water conservation.

It was a great day. Thanks to Kleenex for trying to Save the Field Trip. You can go to their facebook page and try to win a $5,000 field trip scholarship for your local school.

All you have to do to register your child’s school for the chance to win $5,000 in support of field trips is “like” the Kleenex Facebook page and click the pink “support your school” button on the Facebook page, then follow the instructions. Easy peasy.

They are giving out 100 of these scholarships, so don't be shy. Sign up!

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#KleenexFieldTrips is a campaign coordinated by The Motherhood. Kleenex sponsored admission to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is free but our tickets to The Butterfly Pavilion and IMAX, as well as vouchers for lunch, were provided. I am receiving compensation for my involvement in the campaign but all opinions are my own.

Further disclaimer: I copy and pasted that last disclaimer directly from Tech Savvy Mama's website.

Sarah Goes on and on About Her E-Mail

Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

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This is my second post about about how an e-mail has affected my life and I am having a heck of a time picking just one thing. I easily get 100 e-mails every single day. How has e-mail not changed my life? I now work from home. I could never do what I do for a living if it weren't for e-mail. I suppose I could still do some freelance writing but I could never sell swag. My artists live in Boulder. It would take weeks to get anything accomplished.

But how do you pick one?

I can think of a handful of e-mails that I got that made me geek out that were actually twitter notifications (a response from Warren Sapp, being followed back by Yoko Ono, being randomly followed by Eric B. from Eric B. and Rakim) but twitter notifications don't really count.

I can think of e-mail that were comment notifications (one time Nancy Lieberman commented on a post I wrote about her on BlogHer) or friend requests on Facebook or myspace (two long lost friends from high school on myspace alone) but those don't really count.

I was going to write about the time Erin asked me if I could go with her to see Duran Duran, but then I remembered that it wasn't an e-mail, it was an IM. I thought about lying and saying it was an e-mail, but if I have been honest here since 2005 it seems wasteful to start lying to you about that.

I could write about the first picture I saw of friend's babies. I could write about job offers or really cool sponsorships. I could write about being invited to have one of my pieces published in Mothers of Intention.

How do I choose just one e-mail?

I can't.

I mean, I already wrote about the e-mail from John Flansburgh. (Am I getting creepy about that? I'm getting weird, aren't I?)

I can't imagine living without e-mail. I spend probably too much time thinking about how different life would be if we had the technology we have now in high school. I love technology. I am an obsessive e-mail checker and I am okay with that. I have had e-mails that made me cry, e-mails that made me jump up and down like a little girl and hundreds of e-mail that made me laugh, and those are the ones I am the most grateful for.

Sarah Reviews Net Nanny

I had heard of Net Nanny. I even had a lap top for the kids once where it came pre-installed, but as so often happens when you are me, I didn't really know how to use it so I forgot all about it.

Yes, I am over here being ashamed.

But good news! I figured it out! And just in time, really.

As my children become more literate and more computer savvy, and also because they have computer lab at school as well as friends who unsupervised will watch hours of the Annoying Orange on youtube I think that it is time for something like this.

Now, I don't want you to think that I generally let my seven year olds go online completely unsupervised, but I tend to get engrossed in writing posts or tied up on work phone calls and there is always a possibility that my kids will stumble upon something unintended.

Say for example (and this has happened to a friend of mine) my kids wanted to do a google search for their favorite sporting goods store - Dicks.

Exactly!

And we all know that a SpongeBob video on you tube is one click a way from a related video that might not be what Nickelodeon originally intended.

I am pretty liberal and I don't mind explaining distasteful things to my children. What I really worry about is 1) online predators, 2) them spending my money by downloading stupid stuff, 3) them downloading viruses or 4) them accidentally seeing something that scares the crap out of them.

I only checked a few boxes, but you really have a lot of options with Net Nanny.

I hope that is big enough for you to read, but if not you can block things like sex, religion, violence, auctions, social networking, racism, pay to surf, lingerie, chat, shopping, hacking, alcohol etc.

I love that you can personalize it.

I am fine with it if children choose to read about religion or racism as I am happy to talk about it with them later, but if they want to learn about hacking they are going to have to ask their uncle. I don't need two seven year old hackers living this close to the pentagon.

If your child (or you, if you forget to turn it off) stumbles upon a restricted site, they will get a very clear message and a redirect.

Easy peasy.

The other cool thing is that you can go back and see what your child was doing online.

My kids are pretty predictable, then again, they are seven and haven't yet really learned how to surf the internet.

Here is what it looks like when I am on.

Exactly.

Net Nanny is $39.99, but you can check out a free trial here for mac or here for a PC.

I am also giving away a few subscriptions, so leave a comment here and tell me why you want it and I will randomly choose the winners who I will then e-mail a code so please don't forget to leave me your e-mail address.

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Disclaimer: I received a free subscription and compensation for this review, but these words and opinions are my own.