National Parks Week

April 16th - 24th, 2011

is National Parks week. 

Usually there is a small (or kind of a lot in a student's budget) fee for park entrance. 

But, lucky for us, during National Parks week its Free!

Check out a list of participating parks is HERE.

What a better way to welcome back spring than to tour one of our 

beautiful National Parks. 

For more details and a list of featured events click HERE. 

This includes our Allegheny Portage Railroad National Park. 

Ooo, sounds exciting.

Up for a drive? Lets go check it out.

Also, the National Junior Ranger day is Saturday, April 23rd. 

So check out a {free} park then and let your kiddo earn their very own 

Junior Ranger badge. 

Lets get out and enjoy nature!

Pittsburghs International Children's Festival

May 11-15, 2001

University of Pittsburgh Theaters and Schenley Plaza

The Festival brings together artists from around the world and features professional theater, dance, music and visual arts, plus a festival grounds area bursting with crafts, workshops and activities. For families and children of all ages! The Festival hours are: 9:30am - 5:30pm

Admission: $2 - $8; and many activities free. 

The ticketed events are starting to fill up, so if you're interested in checking any of those out

HERE is their website for more information. 

Mark it on your calendar and hope to see you there!!

Chick-fil-a

For starters the deal: Chick-fil-a (in Monroeville, I'm not sure about others) is offering 8-count chicken nuggets for free (with no purchase necessary) when you wear green on St. Patricks day (i.e. tomorrow from 11am-7pm).
=


Now the event(s): The Chick-fil-a in Monroeville has a family night once (or more) a month. I unfortunately just missed letting you all know about the one this month (Dr. Seuss story night) that was this past Tuesday. But they have an additional fun night this month on the 24th called "March Madness night". You can see the details and check out all their other upcoming promotions and events on the calendar here. Usually for family night, in addition to whatever else they have going on, you get a free kids meal with purchase of an adult meal.

I guess as a disclaimer you should all know that I really like Chick-fil-a, especially this one. Not only is the food yummy, but it's always clean (including the play area) and everyone is always very friendly and helpful (I have no fears taking 2 small children there by myself, which is really saying something).

For those of you who don't live near or visit Monroeville, you should check your Chick-fil-a locator to see if there is one near you that is as "involved in the community" as this one.

The Knack - Cupcake Craft

Karah was nice enough to let me contribute to her fun new blog. 

So...I just wanted to share a quick event for this weekend. 

Michael's does some of the cutest kids crafts. They are usually done on Sundays (bummer) so I was extra excited to see that they were making these cute cupcakes this Saturday. 

So cute! 

So head on over to Michaels this Saturday, March 19th from 10-Noon and make your own. 

PS - this info was received from the Michael's newsletter - "The Knack"

Subscribe HERE to receive email updates (and coupons!). 

Library

I love love LOVE the library! It's like the best free (or nearly so) thing ever. I love that I can get a near constant supply of different books for my kids to read (not to mention the movies and other stuff) without having to spend a fortune or even a penny (except for those late fees). I love that the same applies to books on cd for my hubby to listen to and hard copy books for me to read. Plus we can rent most of the new and old movies we want (even if we have to wait a little while sometimes... we don't usually get to watching them too quickly anyway) and keep them for a week or 3. I also love preschool story time - we've been going for a couple years now - book-reading, a craft and getting out of the house (especially in dreary winter months) is fantastic!
On top of all this, I love the annual book sale that the CC Mellor library has. It's coming up this weekend. Click on the link for more details. How can I pass up 5 children's books for $2? We've got a couple of my kids favorite books past years, I'm hoping to add another couple this weekend :)

My personal links

I just want to point out quickly that on the side bar over there --> is a conglomerate of all the websites I'm a member of that have personal referral links (i.e. you sign up through my link and I get some bonus). If there are any that you have not yet joined, but would like to, might as well go through my link right? If you have questions about any of them let me know, I have used them all and can report on my experience :)