beniebuzz blog

Are you starting to think about school starting?  Even though we have about a month before schools start throughout much of the country, I cringe as I write this article because it seems like summer just started.  AND then there are some parents who secretly (or not so secretly) can’t wait for school to start!

Has this ever happened to you? I had just worked an 80 hour week preparing for vacation with my family. We left after work on Friday and arrived at our destination hotel late that night. I was SO excited with the prospect of sleeping in on Saturday morning! But, my plans were foiled, for what did I hear at 6:30am? Not the pitter patter of little feet, but the jumping, screaming, running pounding feet of excited vacationing kidlets. All that sound reverberating through the acoustical hotel hallway with nothing between me and my well-deserved REM sleep but a flimsy wood door.    

Did you know that during the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day? As with many things in America, commercialism won out! According to History.com, struggling depression-era retailers and advertisers “redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a ‘second Christmas’ for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.”

Did you know there was NO summer vacation until the early 1900s? Before that, breaks were dependent on the location of schools – they were planned quarterly (town schools) or to coincide with planting and harvest seasons (rural schools). 

Fast forward 100 years and it seems like the entire year revolves around summer break! We plan for summer vacations, summer jobs, summer school, summer camp and let’s not forget the summer movie line up (Despicable Me 2 comes out 7/3, just sayin’!).  

It’s summer…go crazy and get lazy! OK, slow your roll there, Paris.

Last week, we shared an article called 3 Ways to Keep Kids Sharp This Summer and we learned that summer is NOT the time for kids to get lazy. We’re blessed to know some great teachers with fantastic experience and we’re working on a tight timeline before summer starts, so we’re back with more!   

Do you have an annual “spring cleaning” routine?  I’m more of a “continuous cleaning and purging” kind of person, but I’m beginning to understand the benefits of spring cleaning!

Spring cleaning started in the 19th century and those were dirty times! Think about it:  there were multiple people crammed into a few small rooms all winter long.  Top it off with dirty, dust-producing fuels (wood, coal) to warm the home, no filtration systems to clean the air, and they certainly didn’t have vacuum cleaners for a little rug touch-up!  

Did you know you have 60,000 – 90,000 thoughts per day (well, if you’re an “average person”)? Did you also know that 96% of those thoughts are the same as the day before?  For all the thinking we do, only 4% per day are new thoughts.  Yikes!

I remember the first time I heard about the Yoga trend. I thought it was some crazy mystical thing where you did stuff with your chakras (I don’t even know what that means?) and twisted yourself into a pretzel! You’ll be happy to know, I’ve since become more educated and less judgmental about this activity. The fact that I love yoga pants doesn’t hurt!