Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I am very Irish and so St. Patrick’s Day has always been important to me. It is not a day for me to go out and get drunk but a day I think about where I come from. My dad was born in Ireland, My Grandpa Bill was also born and buried there. I have many relatives that came from Ireland on both sides of my family. I am sure I am like 65% Irish because I have Irish on both sides. I know that my grandma Rose’s great grandparents came over to America on a boat called The Spotted Cow. My dad’s family came over when my dad was a boy. I know that a lot of people are Irish which is cool and if you aren’t St. Patrick’s Day is a day you can pretend by wearing green.

St. PWhen I was little we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. A leprechaun came to our house and brought my sister and me a small gift. We would always look for the leprechaun and come up with schemes to catch him, but we were never successful. I guess the leprechaun was too smart and tricky for us to see let alone catch him.
I think it is important to learn about your family’s heritage and celebrate it. I don’t decorate my house in shamrocks or listen to Irish music all the time, but I am proud of where part of my family is from. I invite you to celebrate your heritage and pass it on to your children. If there are certain traditions, or songs or food, pass it on.

Please have a happy and safe St. Patrick’s Day.

Do You Celebrate Half Birthdays?

Do you celebrate half birthdays? When I was younger my family celebrated mine and my sister’s half birthdays. We would each get a present from our mom on our half birthdays. Well, I would usually get mine the day before or after because my half birthday is February 29th. Since most years don’t have that date that is how we celebrated. The only reason that we “celebrated” them was because my sister’s birthday was really close to my half birthday and vice versa. It was a reason for us to each get a present around each others birthday. I know a lot of people don’t do this and the other child or children get nothing on or in this case around their sibling’s birthday. That is perfectly fine of course. Each family does things differently. We never had a full blown party or cake or anything just a gift. My grandparents even gave us each a present as well.

I decided to continue the tradition with Noah. He doesn’t have any siblings, so I am not sure why I decided to do this. I am very big on traditions and I just thought he would enjoy it. I am trying to explain to him what a half birthday is and how we celebrate it. There is no party, no cakes, no streamers, just a present. I bought him this triple plane set for his half birthday and it was pretty expensive. I was planning on only spending ten dollars on his gift and I ended up spending thirty dollars. The funny thing is he really wanted something else before he saw what he ended up getting. The first thing was 18 or 19 dollars and I didn’t want to spend that much and I ended up getting something almost twice as much! I thought about going out for ice cream because Baskin-Robbins sends you a coupon for a free scoop on your half birthday and I had one too. I thought about using our coupons, but it is way too cold to go out for ice cream.

Does your family celebrate half birthdays? If you do what do you do for them?

PixeBaby Mobile App Review

I think as a parent, it is normal to take a lot of pictures of your child. I have so many pictures of Noah. I am constantly taking them on my phone. I love to share pictures with friends and family. Most of my family lives in other parts of the country and only get to see us like once a year. So, really we have to rely on phones and pictures to communicate. I love sending pictures on my phone to people but it can get time consuming having to send them one at a time to each person.

I learned about an app called PixeBaby, that takes away some of the work of sharing pictures with loved ones. It will connect all the cameras of your friends and family that also has the app and you can get those precious pictures easily. It would be great for new parents that take pictures of everything like I did. It would be an easy way to show off your new bundle of joy. I know when I had Noah the family members that live far away had to wait until they received the birth announcement to see Noah’s little face. I know it took me about a week after I got home from the hospital to mail his announcements and so my family in California had to wait a while.

I really think PixeBaby is a cool app because I know that I would use it a lot. I would love to see more pictures of my cousin’s kids and with them growing up so fast. My sister and brother in law now live in South Carolina and I know they both miss Noah a lot. You can even create collages with the PixeBaby mobile app. I try and send her pictures of him as often as I can. It would let others cherish those precious memories. I hate being so far away from my family and I look forward to every time we can get together even if it is not that often.

This app is only 99 cents. What a great deal! That is so inexpensive for such a wonderful app. When you invite your friends and family to use the PixeBaby app they can download it for free!

The PixeBaby app is available for Android Phones with the iPhone app coming out soon.

To download the PixeBaby app for Android Phones visit HERE. PixeBaby is also coming soon to the iPhone App Store.