The Busy Life of a Single Mom

Disney Cruise Line has followed most other major cruise lines and added a fuel surchage to their cruise rates. They held out for a long time while other carriers were adding this fee, but with rising gas prices, it appears they could hold out no longer. So I’m sorry to report this to you, but I am happy to report that Disney did wait as long as it looks like they could before making their cruises more expensive for us.

According to USA Today, all reservations made after May 28th (so hurry and book now) an $8 per person per day charge will be added. For a family going on the longer cruises, this is going to be a substantial increase. Luckily, it only applies towards the first 2 passengers and for the remaining guests (typically your children), the fee will be $3 per person per day).

As many of you readers know, as I’ve been learning to blog about my personal life, I’ve also been exploring some ways to make a little extra money for our family via my blog too.  I’ve experimented with several blogging companies and found that many are not useful (at least for a beginner blogger). I am continually searching for new ways and may have found a new one called SocialSpark.

For those that have been working on paid blogging, you have read about Google knocking everyone down on their rankings who do paid blogging. SocialSpark is an answer to this as they offer 100% transparency. You can use no follow links that hopefully Google won’t punish bloggers for. SocialSpark lists opportunities similiar to that of PayPerPost, but one difference I have already found that I like is that you can be put on a waiting list if the job opps have been taken. I have a horrible time qualifying at PPP it seems because the jobs are taken in just a matter of seconds. Another thing I’ve found that sounds great is that your reviews are encouraged to be honest - good or bad. I know I’ve turned down a few PPP opportunities because after reviewing them closely, I wasn’t comfortable putting a postive spin on a website.

From what I’ve been researching and found about SocialSpark though I have found one thing I don’t like already and that is that a disclosure badge must be present in every paid post. I like personalizing my posts and I don’t like the “advertisey” feel of disclosure badges. I always wonder if people really believe my posts (even though I am careful about only posting my true opinions) when there is a disclosure statement/badge. However, again, hopefully this is something that Google will appreciate which will allow rankings to not be punished.

We’ve reached the point on Dancing with the Stars where I’m sad to see each contest go - where I hold my breath and close my eyes during that final announcement. Last night Mario and Karina Smirnoff were eliminated, and I hated it. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to go. I didn’t want ANYONE to go actually, but I had decided that I was more ready for Marissa to go than anyone else. While I haven’t been a big Mario fan overall, I was really impressed with his dances Monday night. I think he had accomplished what I think is the goal of the show - to take a rough, no dancing celebrity and turn them into a polished ballroom dancer. Mario has gotten better each week, and I really thought he had found his “inner dancer” Monday night.

So who’s left? Christian De la Fuente, Jason Taylor, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Marissa Jaret Winokur.  I can’t wait for next week. This is a great set of dancers and the remainder of the season should be an outstanding show. 

I have been contemplating a short summer vacation for June or July with the family and another with my best friend.  For the vacation with my best friend, we’ve decided to just start watching airfare and when a low cost carrier runs a great deal, we’ll buy the tickets up quickly and then look for the hotel. However, this puts us in a situation of how will we get around once we get there? So now we’re thinking maybe we need to rent a car. After all even if we can get a shuttle from an airport to a hotel, we will want to do a little sightseeing wherever we end up. 

I’ve never rented a car so I’m now trying to do some research about car rentals. Advantage Rent A Car is one website I’ve checked out.  It seems to have lots of choices and some great prices. If you are looking for some specials, they have an entire page dedicated to their current specials here. I noticed several models of cars that I’ve wanted to drive and see if I would want to own. I’m thinking that renting it for a couple days woudl be a great way to test drive them.

I’m still on the lookout for car rental companies and researching what I need to know to make smart decisions, but Advantage Rent A Car is one that I’ve bookmarked, and I would encourage you to check them out too.

Over the last few weeks life has been busy and I’ve neglected to write some of my weekly updates on Dancing with the Stars. I’ve kept small notes and drafts, but not put any of these posts together into something I thought was good enough to publish.  So today I’ve pulled out those drafts, and I present to you some brief Dancing with the Stars highlights:

TV Guide’s Sexiest Stars - Julianne Hough, one of the professionals on Dancing with the Stars, has been named as one of TV Guide’s Sexiest Stars. And when interviewed, she comments that she loves sweets. Obviously with all the exercise from dancing, she’s able to burn all of those calories away.

And Julianne is not the only Hough making the news. Dancing with the Stars Romance? Shannon Elizabeth and Derek Hough (Julianne’s brother) are still making headlines about a possible romance between the two. According to E! Online on April 28, the two have been spotted together in Las Vegas and were spotted together in a Los Angeles mall together recently. According to the National Ledger, the couple have made their relationship more open since they were voted off Dancing with the Stars.

Received an order today and thought that I should share one of my favorite shopping vendors when it comes to custom printed items - VistaPrint. I’ve made countless orders from them, and I am satisfied after every order. They offer a wide variety of products from your basic business cards and stationary to promotional items like magnets, tshirts, and hats. I have used the tshirts and hats for gifts. I’ve used the postcards for Christmas cards and birthday party invitations. Becka has her own business cards with her contact info and myspace address on them that she loves. I have a professional set and a personal set that I carry around too.  My latest purchase was a calendar that I was able to customize with our family pictures on each month - and the best part was that hte first one I ordered was free. Yes, you heard me right. Even though VistaPrint offers great prices on their products, if you watch their website regularly, they are almost always running some of their products for free (you pay shipping and handling). This gives you the chance to try out things. This is what I did on the calendar. I had a great offer for a free desktop calendar.  I was so impressed with the quality and fast shipping that I have now ordered  a set to give to the grandparents in our lives as “thinking of you” gifts this month.  VistaPrint has great customer service too. One time several years ago, they did mess up one of my orders, and I had replacement cards super fast.  Not very creative? The idea of designing your own product scare you? No worries because while VistaPrint will let you be a custom designer and design your products from scratch, they also offer tons of templates for all of their products to get you started. So if you’ve never used VistaPrint, I recommend you check them out today.

Yea!  My last student has finished their last test!  Thank goodness. I’m so tired of watching kids take tests, and I’m so glad that it’s over.  This has been a very long week. Now I’m actually getting to interact with my kids and I’ve lucked up and ended up with a small group of good girls.  They are happy just to be able to visit after 4 straight days of testing, and I’m happy to babysit them and catch up on some of my online life.  :)  So hello friends. What are your weekend plans?

I’m going to my sister’s tomorrow for my niece’s 4th birthday party. Cameron is really excited to go see her cousin, and I’m happy to just have some downtime. Now that this week is over, I’ve got to figure out what to do for my mothers and grandmother’s for Mother’s Day. Any suggestions.

I tend to not be a big fan of sports until I know someone involved. I was never a real big football fan until I joined the marching band in high school. After watching a few games and cheering for my peers, I began to watch college and professional football too. A few years ago, I had not really paid softball much attention, but then when Cameron was 5, she wanted to play so I now watch for softball games when flipping through the channel line up on the TV.  This year Cameron started playing basketball, and yes, I found myself stopping and watching some college basketball games this season.  The school I started at this year also has tennis (the previous one didn’t) so I’ve been watching the students practice. They are very enthusiastic and enjoy it so I’ve been trying to follow their progress this year. So now I am beginning to look into tennis on television and see if I can also enjoy watching a few matches here and there on the television.

I think that to start with I’d rather watch the championship games - the best of the best.  While it would be ok to watch it on television, I’d love to land a set of Wimbledon debenture tickets. How awesome would it be to go to London and watch the champions match up against each other?  I’ve never been overseas so this makes it even more appealing. I’ve been looking at traveling somewhere outside of this country, and I’ve even looked into London. In researching tickets for Wimbledon, I found that they even have a queue for their fans and you can possibly receive free tickets.  Ever been to London? or Wimbledon?  Please share your experiences.

Ugh!  I hate days like today. They are so boring - and so NOT why I went into education. This week across the state of Texas we are doing standardized testing (the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, otherwise known as the TAKS) from the 3rd grade through the 11th grade. At the high school level, our tests started yesterday, and we have tests through Friday. Today I adminstered the 11th grade Math TAKS test.  It was sooo boring. There’s no interaction with our students because they are taking this important test (their graduation depends on this test), and we can do nothing else interesting (like read or blog) as we have to be “actively monitoring” our students. 

I won’t get on my TAKS soapbox and discuss the test itself, but just the long days of giving the tests. We started this test at 8 am this morning, and my last student did not finish until almost 3. For this entire time, I basically had to just stare at the nine poor teenagers in my room as I have to “actively monitor” and be sure they do not cheat. This makes for a very long day, and I think more exhaustive. I find it much more tiring to do this than to teach all day long. So I leave you today with just a couple brief blogs (and want you to know that this will probably be the norm for this week as I will be testing sophomores in Science and Social Studies for the next two days), but next week life goes back to normal, and I will continue with the Disney and Dancing with the Stars updates as well as some recipes we enjoy and such.

I found this quiz online and thought, “Hmm..I have been single for a long time now. Am I afraid of commitment?” so I clicked to see what this fun quiz had to say. It was a twenty question quiz that didn’t take but just a moment to take.  Are you ready for the results?

Well according to Bored Quiz, this was my result:
 
 

 
I’m not too sure what that means?!  But the quiz itself was kind of fun distraction from the many things I should be doing, and I like that you get the cute picture to post on your blog or social network (like myspace) page to show your results. In fact it was fun enough that I went back and took another. The second one I took was to determine how lucky I was. These questions were even more interesting than the previous quiz if you can believe it. It covered everything from school to gambling to my love life (oh my - we’re back to that again!). It even asked about my experiences with catching flights (wow! that may be one aspect where I have had pretty good luck). Apparently according to Bored Quiz, I am in fact much more lucky than I thought (which doesn’t help me figure out why I’m still single..hmm). Here’s my results from the “How Lucky Are You?” quiz. I’m thinking it’s time I need to go buy a lottery ticket.

Yes, I did have a good bit of fun playing around on this quiz site. I have seen people post the results of their quizzes in forum signatures and on their MySpace of Facebook pages, but never knew where they found them.  Now I have a clue. Bored Quiz is one place where you can take fun quizzes and post the results on your websites. It’s cute, and I’ll be checking back for more quizzes.