Carnival of Family Life

At last, the Car­ni­val is in town!

All sum­mer, the city’s chil­dren have gazed long­ingly from the win­dows of their fam­ily vehi­cles, ask­ing their par­ents yet again, as they passed by the Car­ni­val grounds, “How much longer?” Groups of young­sters have rid­den their bicy­cles past the grounds numer­ous times en route to or from each oth­ers’ houses, the soft­ball dia­mond, the pool or the movie the­ater, double-checking the sign to make sure that the open­ing date of the Car­ni­val hasn’t changed.

And then this morn­ing, long before dawn, the trucks rolled off the inter­state and through the streets of the sleep­ing vil­lage, pulling one by one into their des­ig­nated tem­po­rary home. The ride oper­a­tors and their assis­tants spent the wee hours assem­bling the rides — check­ing the mech­a­nisms and safety devices to assure a smooth, but excit­ing expe­ri­ence for each carnival-goer who steps up, presents a ticket, and boards. The sou­venir and game ven­dors worked fever­ishly to dis­play their wares in the most allur­ing and irre­sistible way, while the food con­ces­sion­aires ensured that their inven­tory of corn dogs, pret­zels, beer, caramel and candy-coated apples and, of course, sugar and col­or­ing for the cot­ton candy-maker are sufficient.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, step right onto the Mid­way and enjoy the thrills that await you here at the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life!

Fam­ily Cook­ing & Recipes

K shares Food Shop­ping and Menu Plan­ning pub­lished at Almost Fru­gal.

Matthew Philip shares EHI Quick Tip: Clean those Stinky Onion Hands pub­lished at Envi­ro­Hu­man­Im­pact, explain­ing, “You may be sur­prised at how easy and ‘green’ the method to remove the smell from your hands after slic­ing or cook­ing with an onion actu­ally is.”

Fam­ily Finance

Stephanie shares What is lurk­ing in your closet? pub­lished at Stop the Ride!

Matthew Paul­son shares How to Improve Your Chances of Retir­ing pub­lished at Amer­i­can Con­sumer News.

Debt Free­dom Fighter shares How Much Is Enough For Retire­ment? pub­lished at Dis­cover Debt Freedom!

Sil­i­con Val­ley Blog­ger shares Mak­ing Money Through Day Trad­ing: The Secret Lives of Stay-At-Home Mommy Spec­u­la­tors pub­lished at The Digerati Life, “an off­beat story about some sub­ur­ban moms and their families.”

Edu­ca­tion

mom & dad share Books for Teach­ing Kids About Puberty, Sex, and Grow­ing Up pub­lished at raising4boys.com.

cate3 shares Thoughts about health, food, and par­ent­ing pub­lished at Why Home­school.

Fam­ily Health and Wellness

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez shares Com­put­er­ized Cog­ni­tive Assess­ments: oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­cerns pub­lished at Sharp­Brains: Your Win­dow into the Brain Fit­ness Rev­o­lu­tion. “You know your weight and your level of phys­i­cal fit­ness, as well as a vari­ety of other health-related met­rics. But what about your degree of brain fit­ness?” asks Alvaro.

Jeremy Neal shares Three Kids in the Sum­mer­time — Deal­ing with Sleep Depri­va­tion pub­lished at Dis­cov­er­ing Dad.

Dianne M. Bux­ton shares Shocker — Sugar and Inflam­ma­tion Make Life Less Sweet pub­lished at Ultra Omega 1200.  Inflam­ma­tory ill­nesses are afflict­ing chil­dren at younger and younger ages.  This arti­cle will help you assess whether you need to make lifestyle changes in order to safe­guard your family’s health.

Aparna shares Mango bite to save your sight pub­lished at Beauty and Per­son­al­ity Groom­ing.

Chief Fam­ily Offi­cer shares The Jar­dine crib recall is being han­dled poorly pub­lished at Chief Fam­ily Offi­cer.

Fam­ily Crafts and Activities

Melitsa shares Let­ter Scav­enger Hunt pub­lished at Play-Activities.com.

Fam­ily Humor

Madeleine Begun Kane shares My Con­fes­sion pub­lished at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.

Tony Chen shares Cr– and Other Four-Letter Words pub­lished at Savvy Daddy, a descrip­tion of how, not sur­pris­ingly, his child learned four-letter words from him.

Par­ent­ing Tips and Advice

Lisa Mitchell shares Group Writ­ing Project: Let’s Talk Sleep pub­lished at Let’s Talk Babies.

Jen­nifer John­son shares What Am I Going to Do With You? pub­lished at MommyABCs.com.

Andrew Scotch­mer shares How To Choose A Name For Your Baby pub­lished at Com­plete Kaizen.

Reina shares Teen Preg­nancy pub­lished at BestForYourKids.com.

Kevin Heath shares Par­ent­ing Tips for New and Expec­tant Dads pub­lished at More4kids.

Super Saver shares A Kitchen For The Mind pub­lished at My Wealth Builder.

Fam­ily Fiction

Jenn shares The Draw­ing pub­lished at Mixed Metaphor.net, a fic­tional story about a woman deter­mined to ensure that her daughter’s child­hood is far dif­fer­ent from her own.

Fam­ily Rela­tion­ships and Self-Improvement

Kristy shares count ‘em: four pub­lished at Our Life in Col­orado.

Jonathan shares Mis­un­der­stand­ing: The Root Frus­tra­tion In Fam­i­lies pub­lished at Bet­ter Rela­tion­ship Builder.

Joseph Smith shares Things it means to be a Dad … pub­lished at Joe’s Thoughts.

Fam­ily Travel

Money Answer Guy shares How Do We Take A Vaca­tion — We Can­not Afford One? pub­lished at The Money Answer Guy.

Matthew Paul­son shares Nature’s Own Slip and Slide pub­lished at The Travel Advo­cate.

muse shares And S’More Pic­tures pub­lished at me-ander.

Ray­mond shares How To Get A Free Roller Coaster Photo At Six Flags or Dis­ney World pub­lished at Money Blue Book.

The mid­way lights are com­ing on — it’s the last night of the Carnival’s run here in our town.  Time to get the kids home and put them to bed … they’re exhausted and a few have upset tum­mies from the com­bi­na­tion of the rides and the var­i­ous foods they sampled.

But we’ve had a great time on all of the dif­fer­ent rides, enjoyed our favorite foods, and even won a few prizes in the shoot­ing gallery.  Hope this gold­fish lives longer than the one we brought home last year!

After the last vis­i­tor passes back through the gate on his weary way home, the Car­ni­val per­son­nel will get to work dis­man­tling the rides and pack­ing all of their equip­ment and wares back onto their trucks in antic­i­pa­tion of the jour­ney to the next town.

If you would like to par­tic­i­pate in next week’s edi­tion of the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life, you can use the form on the left to sub­mit the link to and rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion about your post. Be sure to review the Car­ni­val guide­lines if you have questions.

Would you like the Car­ni­val to pay a visit to your home­town? Check out the host­ing sched­ule, select a date, and then drop a line to JHS let­ting her know.

Thank you all for par­tic­i­pat­ing and sup­port­ing the Carnival’s stopover On the Horizon!

Wel­come back to On the Hori­zon! So glad you’re vis­it­ing again. Be sure to leave a com­ment and add any posts that you like to the var­i­ous social book­mark­ing sites using the links just below the posts. Thanks for stop­ping by!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Blog Car­ni­val, Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life

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