The Talented Psychotics, Episode 1

You may recall that my children are now filming their own show.  Here is their first episode: The Killer Ball!

Horses for Heroes

     Not long after moving to Vegas I heard about an interesting program for military kids called Horses for Heroes.  I decided it would be worth checking out after talking to a gal in the phone about it.  So, I got the kids up early and took them out to the place they hold it here locally for the weekly playdate.
     I found out that it is a nationwide program.  They have it in Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia, and many other states but not all states. The are apparently looking for other horse owners/ranches to get involved. This program is also for firefighter and police families.  Each facility gets to decide how they run it and what they offer.  It seems that most have apnea time fee to join this program between $35-$50 Here in Nevada they offer:

Weekly Playdates: you can pay $10 and your little one gets to ride a horse or two.  Depending on the age they receive some instruction. The kids get to participate in a variety of chores and they get to play with and brush the other animals like a bunny, goats and dogs.

Introduction lessons: 4 one hour lessons for $50.

Operation free ride: once a week the entire family can come out at a designated time and ride for free.

Lessons: ongoing lessons $10-$15 depending on type of lesson.

Going from flag to tackle football

My oldest child is nine and he played four years of flag football. He started when he was five and took to it pretty easily. Every year he was a stand out player. He first played through the YMCA. It was very laid back. Then he played through the NFL flag program and it was more rules, longer games, and they had referees.


We knew last year he was at the point. He was going to have to play tackle this year. I was very nervous. At his age Pop Warner put him in a 9,10, &11 age group. At 9 he was going to be one of the youngest and smallest on his team.
This wasn't the only change. We went from 1-2 practices to 3 practices a week 2 hours long with a game on Saturday. A FULL game I might add 2.5-3 hours long!
It was tough watching him get slammed into the ground, but it was exciting when he got his first big tackle.
I was worried he wouldn't play this year, but he is. He is the second string running back and he had two good carries at today's game. The 1st of the season.

St. Augustine, FL a great family destination

Back in March we got the chance to go to St. Augustine for the first time. This turned out to be a wonderful weekend getaway for our family. 

Surprisingly, no one in Florida had recommended it to us.  I came across it in a magazine.  After reading about it I decided it could be the perfect weekend trip.  We already had to go to Daytona Beach for a gymnastics meet on Sunday which gave us plenty of time to hang out in St. Augustine first.

St. Augustine 

St. Augustine is the oldest city in the nation. There is an old Spanish fort here, Castillo De San Marcos. Which was built around 1672.  Some of it has been restored and most of it is still in very good condition.  So much so, that you can walk all around the outside and the inside.  There are other forts in the area as well, but we didn't have time to visit those.

Castillo De San Marcos

Of course this we had to go to the fort first thing.  It was cheap to get in. Once inside we got to walk across a restored draw bridge, look at various rooms and artifacts including lots of old cannons. We also got to watch a reenactment of soldiers preparing and firing a cannon.

There were all kinds of cannons everywhere.  There were a lot of other artifacts as well.  Afterwards we were able to walk around the entire outside. 

Near the old downtown area was a massive playground. It was near the parking garage.  There are two sides to the playground.  This picture only shows a small part of the playground.

Historic St. Augustine

The old town was very cool. It reminded me of New Orleans and it definitely had a party vibe going as the sun went down.   At night time they did ghost tours of the area.  The tour guides were dressed as pirates.  We didn't schedule a tour, because we thought it would be too scary for the kids.  After seeing the tours guides, I think it might have been okay.  I recommend staying in one of the hotels in old town.

You can stroll down main street with your kids without worry, because there are no cars are allowed. 

There were tons of neat shops and restaurants. The very first Ripley's Believe it or Not is here.  I found out after the fact restaurant.com had lots of places in old town on their website.  For some other info and family fun things to do check out Child Mode's post on St. Augustine.  She has great suggestions.

Rule #1 - Book Review

Now that I'm a work at home mom making a little extra money; I was very excited to figure out how to invest my money. I mentioned to one of my husband's friends my frustration with my mutual fund. My mutual fund was still losing so fast you couldn't even tell I was still contributing. He recommend the book by Phil Town; Rule #1 Investing. I immediately started to read it.

I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it. He broke things down so clearly and explained things so well. I had never picked out my own stocks to invest in. It was so nice to have a step by step explanation of how to go about how to pick out stocks. He even went so far as to tell you what info to find out about your potential investment and where to find the info. I like the fact that he shows pages from MSNmoney and showed you exactly what to click. This was all brand new information to me and it was nice to have someone point blank point me in the right direction. I will admit I have had to read some of the sections over and over until I "got" it.

 Phil Town has a website/blog where you can get an idea of what he is about or get additional resources. He also has a members site where you can get access to his calculators. I tried to run formulas with out these for a while and just couldn't. I found the calculators extremely helpful.
I wish I could say I have made obscene amounts of money investing, but I am still trying to figure it all out. Phil in his book encourages you to learn it before you do it. I am still in the learning phase, but I am watching about 30 stocks now and slowly figuring out what is a good or bad company. I have only made one investment using his method (BRK.B in a college account for my kids) and I am eagerly putting aside money waiting for the right company at the right price and then I will invest again.
Start reading this book and next week I will tell you about a great investment tool for my kids college account that I stumbled upon while trying to learn Rule #1.