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July 2009
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February 2009Gary Locke , the choice for U.S. Commerce secretary, stopped by to visit live on KING 5 News at 5 tonight, still exuberant about his nomination this week. Imagine flying with your kids on an airline that charges you to use the bathroom. Believe it or not, Ireland's Ryanair is reportedly considering charging passengers one British pound to use the potty. Airline executives say the toilet fee would lower ticket costs. Keep in mind, this is the same airline that pioneered charging customers to check bags, use a check-in desk, and use a credit card to book online. As one of my colleagues joked, "The... Probably no forecast is fraught with more peril than the dreaded lowland snow event. It's a four-letter word for most in these parts, and predicting where and how much snow will fall is a daunting task. While former Washington Governor Gary Locke was being introduced by President Obama as his nominee for Commerce Secretary inside the White House, an old friend was reporting on the event outside the White House.
Here's a quick tip to pass along from the folks at ParentMap magazine: personalized study bins. I tried this at home with my 6-year-old and it worked great. On the morning show this week, we were talking about creating a good study zone in your home for your kids, a special place they can call their own, to entice them to study more. ...15 and a half years has gone by in a flash! I have an implicit understanding with a few of my non-hiking Seattle friends: I try not to proselytize about how they should enjoy the great outdoors more and they don't have to pretend to enjoy the great outdoors, but pity them if they ask how my hike went. That's when I enthusiastically put them to sleep with an involved narrative of my day. Everybody wins. So I was pleasantly surprised when my friend Eric said he wanted to take a hike with ... Whoa!! Not that you needed evidence to support something so obvious, but you wouldn't believe the number of studies that now support what gardeners have long believed: Getting kids active in the vegetable garden is good for their minds, bodies and diet! ...I remember being a teenager, standing over the dishwasher wondering how in the world a family of four could dirty more glasses and dishes than a greasy-spoon diner on Route 66. Doing dishes was one of my daily chores. As Tonya Mosley pointed out in an earlier post, people all around us in the newsroom are sick. I'm wondering how many of us served as carriers to our co-workers, compliments of our children's bugs? To read about whether Ken Griffey, Jr. will return to the Mariners is to sense that to Seattle, Griffey is the old boyfriend or girlfriend that you still have feelings for long after the fact. To others, he's the ex who you're glad to be rid of. But why not split the difference? Why can't he just be a friend or acquaintance? That's about as much investment as fans should be giving to this. With Valentines in the air this weekend, I fell in love all over again. A long-overdue return trip to Whistler sent my heart and skis racing. It was as if someone implanted Colorado weather in the Northwest for a few days; bright sunshine and deep blue skies predominated. Immaculately groomed trails made for perfect "hero snow" conditions: It was easy to look like a pro on the smooth corduroy. Powderhounds were probably wishing for more fresh ... Bree Schaaf graces the KING5 airwaves once again tonight. We did a profile of the Bremerton native on the 5pm news. You don't judge a book by its cover, and you often can't tell the weather in the mountains by what it looks like in Seattle. With that in mind, I set out last Saturday for one of my favorite hikes: Granite Mountain, just off I-90 on the way to Snoqualmie Pass. Seattle was tucked in under its blanket of gray, but it was dry, so I hoped the mountains might stand above the lowland murk. Sure enough, the clouds parted near North Bend, and Mount Si... Who doesn't want a great deal on free stuff these days, especially parents? Check out this new company that just launched this week in Seattle - www.kashless.org - which helps people find and give free stuff. The founder, Martin Tobias, is a firm believer in "ReCommerce" and making it as easy as possible for people to recycle everything they can. Kashless connects all kinds of sites, from Craigslist to cha... Yesterday, my son decided he was done with sliced cheese forever. Thanks to a splurge yesterday on some VIB's (very important books) to motivate my son, we will be eating beans out of a can at my home this week. OK, so a lot of it is. There's a new trend in parenting called "Positive Discipline," which parenting experts (notably, Alfie Kohn, whom you may have seen on Oprah and the Today Show) say is incredibly effective. It does away with rewards and punishments, calling those just "bribes and threats." Instead, it focuses on developing children's moral development by letting them make their own decisions and then live with the consequences. Kohn suggests parents t... It's been a pretty tough week with grisly economic news and local layoffs. My mood wasn't lifted at all yesterday, when I walked up to the passenger side of my little black car and suddenly realized something embarrassing. Thanks to my 5-year-old, I've been driving around town for probably the last two weeks with a HUGE word scrawled into the dusty grime. POOP. Big enough to read a block away. Part of me was humiliated. But on the flip... During the Presidential campaign I signed up to receive e-mail updates from Senator McCain and now President Barack Obama. Little did I know, well after the campaign, I'd be updated daily by not only President Obama, but First Lady Michelle and campaign manager David Plouffe. It's interesting to receive updates directly from the administration on what's going on in Washington. I'm still getting used to seeing, "Hi Tonya" as the e-mail ... From one worry-wart to another, I'm just curious what, and if, you're sharing with your kids about the recession. One-third of US children and teenagers take vitamins, according to this new study released in the February 2009 issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The study suggests that most of those taking the pills are healthy, active kids who probably don't need them. I know parents who get on waiting lists years ahead of time, hoping to get their child into the best preschool. I'm not one of those parents. We simply marched down the road and signed our son up for the Montessori preschool in our neighborhood where some of our friends' kids went. ...There is an art to attending inaugurations--secrets veterans may not tell you. Not because they want you to run into roadblocks--and the path to see the president is full of them--I think they just forget how much first-timers need to know. Such as:
Last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a one year stay of enforcement for lead and other testing requirements of products intended for children 12 and under. I imagine there was a collective "Yippee!" from small toy makers. Under the law, there was a fear that small businesses and second hand stores would have to pay a hefty sum to get all of their toys tested. Some said, this mandate would put them out of busines... |
