Dove® VisibleCare Renewing Body Wash

When you're a busy work-at-home parent with three kids, you take your "me" time whenever and wherever you can.  Over the years, I've perfected the art of finding "me" time, and now I can chill out and find my inner zen in the most ordinary of places:

* Driving on the highway
* Sitting in the dentist's chair
* Singing in the shower

I'm singing extra loud in the shower these days, now that BlogHer has sent me a bottle of Dove® Visible Care Body Wash.   I've always associated Dove with richness and moisturizing (growing up in the Philippines, it was difficult to find Dove bars, and my mother would give first priority to my baby brothers because she said Dove was the best thing to keep the moisture in their skin!), so when Dove Visible Care claims to give visibly  more beautiful skin in just 1 week, I don't have a difficult time believing it.

Family Game Night Giveaway

None of my kids are born performers; they're never comfortable being the center of attention, and even The Pea, who participates in several dance recitals and shows each year, always confesses to feeling butterflies in the pit of her stomach whenever she gets up and thinks of all those pairs of eyes on her.

Giveaways on Bonggamom Finds

Since I'm leaving for BlogHer in 2 days, I'm trying to do my bloggy housekeeping early in the week, and as I clean up old links and do other boring stuff, it occurred to me that it has been a while since I've plugged my giveaways. I've got quite a few good ones running, including giveaways for gift cards and DVDs, so I thought I'd give them a shout out:


* Uprinting.com poster -- ends August 2
* $10 iTunes gift card -- ends August 5.
* JetBlue travel activity kit -- ends August 7.
* Totally Together planner -- ends August 7.
* Chuggington DVD -- ends August 10.
* Hairmax product pack -- ends August 10.
* RIO DVD -- ends August 10.
* Dance Pocoyo Dance DVD -- ends August 15.
* $50 to Photo Card Creations -- ends August 15.
* THE HELP movie prize pack -- ends August 15.
* Box of CLIF Kid snacks (2 winners!) -- ends August 15.
* $25 Ross Dress for Less gift card -- ends August 19.


Entries are fairly low (less than a hundred entries each for most of these) so your chances of winning are great!

The importance of outdoor play

When my twins were little we used to joke about how they needed to be "let out" to run around and get their wiggles out, every single day, rain or shine, as if they were puppies. The day was just not complete until they had a chance to get outside and play. We don't live near a park, so on cold days I was only too happy to open the door and let the boys run out into our gated back yard. I'll never forget the time we realized that a simple latch was no longer enough to keep them in -- at age two, 3Po and Jammy figured out how to ram their Little Tykes car into the gate hard enough to loosen the latch. I only found out about their new little trick when I poked my head out the door and saw them racing down the driveway into the street!

Now that they're older, their need for outdoor play is as strong as ever; if anything, it has intensified.


Click here to keep reading about why I think outdoor play is so important, and to read about Sprite's ongoing effort, Spark Parks, to refresh parks, playgrounds and active spaces across the nation. You can also enter for a chance to win a $100 Shutterfly gift card!

Open giveaways on Bonggamom Finds

It has been a while since I've plugged my Bonggamom Finds giveaways on this blog, so I wanted to give a shout out and remind everyone that I've got some great prizes up for grabs!


* Post-It Notes, ends May 6
* Mothers Day prize pack, ends May 8
* $10 Target gift card, ends May 12
* Folgers Black Silk prize pack, ends May 15
* Save 2nd Base t-shirts, ends May 18

Zumba!

Yesterday I attended my first Zumba class. For those of you who aren't familiar with Zumba, it's a cardio workout based on dance steps and music, mainly from Latin America. During the hour-long workout, we danced to salsa, merengue, cumbia, reggaeton, samba and hip-hop. It was smooth. It was hard-hitting. It was sweaty. It was shoulder-shaking, hip-swinging, shimmy-shaking fun!

Back on BlogHer

Being a review blogger is probably as close to my ideal job as I could get -- especially when I'm blogging as a BlogHer Reviewer. I get to try all kinds of new products, I get to host great giveaways, my blog gets great exposure, and I get compensated for my time. What more could I ask for? How about the chance to blog about topics near and dear to my heart? I was quite excited when BlogHer invited me to host a new review series, the Jimmy Dean D-Light "Better Breakfast, Better You" program, because it meant my post would live right on the program's landing page. And since there are 25 chances to win $100 at stake, you can be sure that thousands of people are going to be heading to the landing page and reading my post! Hopefully they'll remember the name Bonggamom -- and if they do, I'll have BlogHer to thank for it. Click here to read my post, and enter to win $100 with 25 other BlogHer reviewers.

Halloween Treats

One of the things I love best about Halloween is creating themed dishes for my Halloween parties and the kids' class parties. Even something as simple as a marshmallow ghost stuck on top of a pumpkin muffin can make a party seem more festive and special -- as long as it's also nestled in Halloween-themed cupcake liner, of course! Over the years I've made all kinds of Halloween-themed treats, from cupcakes to cookies to sandwiches to brie wheels. Here's a sample of them (hopefully you can get some inspiration for your own Halloween parties!):

Eyeball Cupcakes

Weekend Mornings

Right now I'm camping out somewhere in San Francisco with the other participants of the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. It started this morning, and we've already walked 20 miles. Which sounds like a huge accomplishment, and it is, but we still have 40 miles to go, spread out over 2 days. My body is bone tired and I'm really looking forward to going to bed! I'm hoping we get a good breakfast tomorrow morning so I can find the energy to keep walking. I'm dreaming of yummy breakfast food....

.... sliced fresh strawberries swirled into vanilla yogurt, sprinkled with cinnamon and granola.....




..... banana oatmeal bread, smeared with butter and jam.......


Yum!


Click here to see what else we like to eat on weekend mornings -- and enter to win a $100 Visa gift card!

Getting Back on Track

You know what they say: The higher you fly, the farther you fall. And boy, did we fly high this summer. We spread our wings and soared to far-off places like Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Dover, Birmingham and more. After five weeks of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, living out of a suitcase, doting in-laws who did all the laundry in between trips, going to bed late because the sun was shining until nine-thirty in the evening, and trying a new English chocolate bar every day, it's not surprising that coming back home felt like more of a crash-landing than usual (Literally -- the day before we left the UK, Jammy did a spectacular face-plant into the sidewalk after skateboarding without a helmet, which was only further evidence of how far removed we had become from our normal rules and habits).


Going home meant going from walking in places like this:



To this:


Getting back to our schooltime routine this year involves quite a bit more than getting used to waking up early -- Click here to find out what we're doing to get back to our regularly scheduled program (and enter to win a $150 Visa gift card!)

Great Giveaways

Joined any great giveaways lately? Here are a few giveaways from my latest Friday Finds linky that caught my eye:

Win a iPad from FreeLunched, ends 8/23
Win a Nintendo DS Lite from Swimtown Pools, ends 8/30
Win a $30 Target giftcard from Anonymous8, ends 8/24


And here are some great giveaways I'm running on Bonggamom Finds:

Win a McDonald's prize pack, featuring a $25 Arch Card, a vintage tee, beauty products and more. Enter my McDonald's giveaway by August 25!

Win a $100 Visa gift card. This one has a lightning-fast turnaround -- just one week, ending August 23 -- so enter my Kellogg's giveaway #2 , pronto!

Win $1000. Yes, my Crystal Light giveaway, hosted on BlogHer, is still going. Enter by August 31 for a chance to win!

Giveaways I've joined (or would love to join if I could)

Boy am I glad I started my Friday Finds series of posts on Bonggamom Finds! I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have a great giveaway but low entries, so having the linky gives other bloggers a chance to promote their giveaways. Some of the giveaways that people list down are so great, I just have to join them too! Here are a few giveaways from my Friday Finds linky that are too good to keep to myself:

Win a Casio camera from A Gal Needs...

Win a $160 gift certificate to CSN Stores from Linda Gerber (don't forget, I've also got a giveaway for a $50 gift certificate to CSN Stores on Bonggamom Finds!)

Win Adobe Photoshop Elements software from Mocha Dad



And since we're talking giveaways, I want to showcase some of my own -- I'd totally join these giveaways if I weren't hosting them myself :)

Win a McDonald's prize pack, featuring a $25 Arch Card, a vintage tee, beauty products and more. Enter my McDonald's giveaway by August 25!

Win a $100 Visa gift card. This one has a lightning-fast turnaround -- just one week, ending August 16 -- so enter my Kellogg's giveaway #1 pronto!

Win $1000. Yes, my Crystal Light giveaway, hosted on BlogHer, is still going. Enter by August 31 for a chance to win!

How do you say "One Big Mac, no pickles" in French?

The whole family had a great time chowing down on all kinds of foods during our trip to Paris: crusty baguettes, croque monsieurs, camembert, croissants, pain au chocolat, crepes and more. Sadly, we didn't get a chance to have snails or frogs' legs, but we did manage to sample some new cuisine -- at the local McDonald's.

I know what you're thinking -- eating at an American fast food restaurant in France?? It's not as crazy as it sounds. I've always known that international McDonald's restaurants often carry menu items customized to local palates -- fried chicken with rice and spaghetti with sweet sauce and hotdogs are top sellers in McDonald's Philippines -- so I wanted to see (and taste!) for myself what sorts of things Parisiennes were ordering with their French fries (or frites) and drinks. And during the McDonald's Family Getaway I attended in June, I learned about all the healthy menu items available in kids' Happy Meals in other countries, so I knew the kids would be able to eat a well-balanced meal. Besides, we had been driving all day and wanted someplace fast and inexpensive to eat (in a city where you can spend 30 Euros for 5 drinks at a cafe, that's important!).


Alfie and I had a beef patty on something that looked like ciabatta bread, with tomatoes, cheese and -- oh yummy, yummy day -- sauteed mushrooms. Instead of ketchup, we got little packets of frites sauce (it tasted like aioli or garlic mayonnaise).

Who Inspires You to Lead a Healthy Lifestyle?

My latest Crystal Light post is up on BlogHer -- it's about your inspiration(s) for leading a healthy lifestyle -- and I'm loving the comments I've read so far! Many readers are inspired by their children, like I am. Some are inspired by their parents, who are living energetic and healthy and happy lives. Some role models come from the celebrities whose youthful looks and bodies belie their age. One reader, who used to be stuck in a rut and has turned her life around for the better, uses the promise of better days ahead to inspire her to live longer. What inspiring answers!


Click here to read my Crystal Light post on BlogHer -- if you leave a comment on that post you will be entered to win $1000!

Taking a Break

Everyone needs a break in their busy day. Whether it's going out for a walk to get some fresh air, grabbing a snack, or even throwing some clothes into the washing machine, it's a good way to stretch your muscles and clear your head. And when you're at work, every minute counts -- so you don't want to spend too much time pfaffing with preparing a complicated snack. Prepared snacks are always easy.... but are they nutritious?? I recently reviewed Ritz Crackerfuls for BlogHer -- click here to read what I thought of the product, and enter to win $100.

Staying Positive

What a great way to start the day -- seeing both England and the USA make it out of their group and advance to the second round of the World Cup tournament! It was a must-win for both teams, and both games were nail-biters all the way. I'm particularly impressed with Team USA's performance -- Landon Donovan's 91st-minute goal was like a fairytale come true. From "no chance to advance" to actually coming out top in their group, they are on fiyah! They play Ghana next, and although I'm really happy an African nation made it to the second round, I'd be even happier if the USA made it to the quarterfinals -- I'm hoping the team's success will help promote The Beautiful Game in the USA (read my rant about the shameful lack of World Cup 2010 coverage in the US media, on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog), so the further they advance in the tournament, the better it will be for soccer in the US. Things are looking good!

On days like this, it's easy to stay positive, but on other days when I'm feeling depressed, I have to become my own cheerleader and do what I can to lift my spirits. Here are 3 things I like to do:

1) I run
2) I blog
3) I celebrate

You can read more about my self-motivating strategies on my latest BlogHer post. Leave a comment there and you'll be entered to win $1000!

Speaking of BlogHer and winning loads of cash, my final BlogHer Tropicana Juicy Insiders Post is up on Bonggamom Finds -- leave a comment there and you'll be entered to win $50!

Which brings me to one more thing I like to do to stay positive: enter lots of giveaways and fantasize about winning them all :)

My AI Wardrobe Dilemma

I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that I'm headed to LA next week to watch the American Idol finals. Last week I received my ticket confirmation email for both the final performance and results shows. It's going to be held at the Nokia Theatre, and everyone has to be in their seats by 4:30PM since the telecast begins at 5:00PM (8:00PM EST). I forgot about that East Coast delay -- it's going to be weird knowing who the winner is before Alfie and everyone else in Northern California watch it!

The ticket confirmation also had some wardrobe restrictions printed on it: No logos, t-shirts, hats, or shorts. Oh well, I guess I'm going to have to save my "Simon is my American Idol" shirt for the daytime. But I'm still undecided on what to wear. I'm hoping people will give me suggestions, so here are a couple of bribes for you:

* Leave a comment with your suggested outfit here and you could win an American Idol tshirt from CafePress.

* Leave a comment with your vote for the best outfit here and you could win $100 from BlogHer.


What are you waiting for? Help me out!

The Moment that Got Away

Have you ever shot a video of your kid and felt like a great parent for capturing those precious memories, only to find out that the video was less than perfect? We do it all the time. Sometimes it's because we screwed up and ended up with unwatchable videos. We have videos that are too blurred, or too dark. We have videos that are so jumpy that watching them gives you motion sickness.

Check out this video done in "portrait mode". I took this one with our regular point-and-shoot camera, and turned the camera on its side, forgetting that I was shooting a video, not a photo. So we've got a cute video of Jammy, learning how to jump, but not quite understanding how to keep both feet in the air at the same time -- but you need to turn your head ninety degrees to watch it.



Check out this video of a great indoor soccer game when The Pea was five. Alfie We must have pressed the "Record" button without knowing it. Then, when things started happening and we zoomed in to capture The Moment, we pressed the "Record" button thinking we were turning it on.... not turning it off. Hence this lovely video of a basketball parquet floor.



But the most frustrating videos are the ones we never get to capture. Do you have a video moment that you missed? Share it with us, and you could win $200! Click here to go to my Flip Video post and enter to win a $200 gift card.

How do YOU use technology in your daily parenting?

If you've been following my @bonggamom or @bonggafinds tweets for the past couple of months, I'm sure you've noticed a fair number of them contain the #momspotting hashtag. For those who don't know what that is, I’ve been participating in BlogHer’s Family Connections citizen journalism project as a Momspotter. Basically that means I tweet a few times a day with the #momspotting hashtag about how I use technology in my day-to-day parenting life.

This week a bunch of Momspotters are participating in a fun meme about digital parenting. Feel free to laugh at my lame answers and leave a comment on this post -- I promise I'll drop by your blog sometime this week to thank you for spreading the commenting love. Even better, join the meme and share with everyone how technology affects your parenting style! Leave a link to your post on the Mr. Linky below, or in the comments section, and I'll visit your meme post sometime this week and leave a comment.

(By the way, if you leave a comment on this post or do the meme on your own blog, you'll be eligible for an extra entry in my Chocolate Cheerios giveaway! Head on over to the giveaway post to see what you could win!)


1. Which expensive electronic device do you most often let your older children abuse or your baby drool on?
Our Bose cd player. Which is why it has been broken for about 6 months now.


2. How many take-out restaurant numbers do you have programmed into your phone?
We don't do take-out. If I'm going to be spared the cooking then I want to be spared the cleaning up and the washing up as well!


3. How many hours of television do you so totally not let your kids watch a week?
Technically each kid is supposed to be allowed 1 hour of screen time a day, which includes video game time, computer time and tv time. But on weekends or days that I'm totally engrossed in blogging........


4. Do you think people who say “we don’t watch television” at playdates but really mean “we just watch DVDs” are lying liars from Liarville?
Yes, and Alfie and I are the mayor and vice-mayor of that lovely little town.


5. How many miles have you driven with your child and not one device of electronic entertainment in a single car trip?
Usually our rule of thumb is that you should be able to entertain yourself by listening to Kidz Bop or staring out the window or hitting an adjacent sibling on trips shorter than 20 miles or so. But remember, we are the mayor and vice-mayor of Liarville so that 20 miles maaaaaay occasionally lose a zero.


6. What’s your record for calls to the pediatrician or Ask-a-Nurse in a single day?
I think it must have been about 3 in a single night -- that was when The Pea was about a week old and she spat up blood after a feeding. We were new, sleep-deprived parents and it didn't occur to us that the blood was probably from me (newborn learning to breastfeed, nipples unaccustomed to breastfeeding, you get the picture).


7. What’s the sexiest thing your husband/partner could text you after a hard day?
If Alfie ever texted me that he'd had a "hard day", that term alone would provide fodder for many, many naughty texts.


8. What’s your favorite iPad joke?
Aunt Flo will be so happy!


9. What’s the dumbest parenting tool, gear, gadget or device you ever bought?
The Pee-pee Teepee. What is that, you may ask? Read my post about it here....

10. How many years will it take for your child to become more tech-savvy than you?
Not long, which is why we're limiting their screen time!






Disclaimer: I have not been compensated for this particular post but I do receive compensation for my participation in BlogHer's Family Connections project. Although I have offered extra entries in my Chocolate Cheerios giveaway as an incentive to join this meme, BlogHer and Sprint (sponsors of the Family Connections project) are in no way affiliated with that giveaway or with the giveaway sponsors (General Mills and MyBlogSpark).

Get ready for 12 days of giveaways!

It's almost Christmas and the presents, they are a-comin'! Have you been naughty or nice? At Bonggamom Finds, it doesn't matter, because everyone gets a chance to win! My 12 Days of Christmas Giveaways event on Bonggamom Finds begins on December 25 and I'll be giving away one present for each of the 12 Days of Christmas. Don't forget to stop by and enter to win!