Touch A Truck & A Band Festival

One of the my favorite parts of being in Pittsburgh is the amount of activities available to families. We try to keep a balance of the commitments of our or our kids' activities and community events as well.  We've been fortunate to find so much to do that reaches our family make up of a teen all the way down to a toddler! This weekend is no exception!


This Saturday, there is a  FREE Touch-A-Truck event from 12-4pm on California Avenue in Avalon (15202).   There's a special "quiet hour" (12-1) for those who don't like all the noise too! Great for families who have little kids or special needs!

There will be local police, fire, and public works vehicles, buses, a replica "Back to the Future" DeLorean, ambulances and rescue vehicle, a Hazmat vehicle, construction vehicles, a vehicle from the Animal Rescue League, an accessible van and more! The Pitt Mobile Science Lab will conduct forensic science experiments with kids of all ages.

Also, there will  be a big book sale with prices starting at just 25 cents! Vendors, concessions and baked goods for sale, and free games will be available.  You can bid on raffle baskets featuring themes like truck toys, Halloween goodies (including Fright Night tickets from Kennywood), board games, Avon products and Minions toys! You can join the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/703376169795620/
The Friends of Avalon Public Library is proud to support the Avalon Public Library.

After your afternoon, you can fill your evening with the sounds of local marching bands at the

  55th annual North Hills Marching Band Festival!

This is a special year where the alumni band will also be performing!  

Tickets are $6 for everyone above 5 years old. 5 and under are free!  There will be tons of amazing concessions, baked goods, and marching band merchandise available for sale!  Come out and support young musicians in our community!!  This is our biggest fundraiser which helps support all instrumental music in our school--not just the marching band!

Of course, it doesn't hurt that my son will be there performing and this proud mama will be cheering him on!

If you see us, be sure to say hi! 

Getting Inventive

Late August and early September mean one thing in our house...back to school.

With 3 of 4 kids in school this year, I've found myself thinking of inventive ways to stay busy during the day because let's face it, I'm really missing my kindergartener this year.  I've had 10+ years to get used to my son being gone all day and my stepdaughter has been with us for mostly school time for the last 4 or 5 years.  I'm nearing the end of one child's school career and one hasn't even begun yet. It's pretty surreal!  Being a 42 year old mom of a sophomore in high school, I find myself being "the younger mom" while at the same time being "the older mom" with my 22 month old.

With all these kids in school, I find myself overwhelmed with paperwork all. the. time. Buried under it.  How to keep it organized?  Ordinary paperclips don't cut it.  But if you #RecycleYourPeriodPad , you've got an easy way to keep groups of papers together neatly!

5 or 6 people in the bathroom getting ready for school and work frequently leads to a lot of water splashed all over the sink and the mirror.  How to keep up with easy cleaning?  #RecycleYourPeriodPad, of course.  They're absorbent and effective!

Now that you've learned about some of my creative ways to deal with back to school, let's get real. Sometimes when you're sneezing, laughing, coughing, you find yourself dealing with a little LBL.

What exactly is LBL? - 1 in 3 women experience Light Bladder Leakage (LBL) – little leaks that can be triggered by everyday occurrences like coughing, sneezing, laughing and exercise. -Weak pelvic floor muscles, pregnancy, childbirth and weight gain are just a few LBL contributors.

Women deserve the best options for managing LBL so Poise brand has introduced new Poise Thin-Shape pads, which are up to 40% thinner than original Poise brand pads and are made specifically for bladder leaks with the trusted absorbency of Poise brand.

Do you need those bulky period pads to help protect your LBL?  Who wants to wear something so heavy for something so light? Not me! That's no fun at all.  Poise and their new Thin-Shape Pads:

If you are the 1 in 3 women with light bladder leakage and are ready to ditch the period pads be sure to visit the Poise site where you can get a free sample!  Once you give Poise a try, you'll totally be ready to #RecycleYourPeriodPad!    Click on the picture below to get your free sample!

Poise Pad Sample Kit

Enjoy an ideal balance of comfort and protection:

• 1 Poise Thin-Shape Moderate Pad
• 1 Poise Maximum Pad

Smart is Cool! #StreamTeam

I mentioned in my last Netflix #StreamTeam post that I wanted to share the fun experiments the girls were doing with the Project Mc2 goodies we received.

Lily has been over the moon excited about all of this and it's been fun to watch her and listen to her hypothesize what she thinks will happen and then discuss what actually happened and why.  My sweet little scientist! Though, don't call her that because she's quite emphatically tell you, "I'm just Lily!"  Oh, girl there is nothing "just" about you. ♥

Lily and Reagan love to go fishing. So they decided that the "ice fishing" experiment was the first order of business.

Lily's first job was to get the ice while Reagan got the water ready.

 Next up! Time for the required tools to be put to use--water, ice, salt, string.

Oh no!!!  We didn't catch any ice cubes! 

We talked about why they didn't "catch" any ice cubes and what Lily thought.  I was impressed she said they needed to try more salt!  So they added more salt and tried again...

Yay! It worked!

They recorded their observations in the notebook and got ready for the next experiment! 

The next experiment was Lily's favorite!  It involved g-l-i-t-t-e-r!  They made glitter tornadoes using water, dish soap, glitter, and then added food coloring too.  They talked about what they thought would happen if they shook up the test tube versus swirling it and again wrote down their guesses and observations in their notebook. 

Thanks, Netflix for allowing me to be part of the #StreamTeam and for encouraging my kids to get excited about learning, creating, thinking!   

We still have a couple more experiments to complete! And cannot wait! 

Oh! And just so she didn't get left out, Violet decided she wanted to participate in the glitter experiment as well...

Somebody got into the glitter today. #violetilyanna #sheleavesalittlesparklewherevershegoes

A photo posted by Stephanie (@littlepunkyandpumpkinpies) on Sep 5, 2015 at 3:30pm PDT