Letting bad-boy Russell Brand supply the voice of the Easter bunny sounds like a promising way to add spice to a warm and fuzzy family flick. Too bad the movie winds up about as bland as carrot-flavored jelly beans, and its gooey sentiment and hare-brained gags are likely to appeal only to very young kids.

Directed by Tim Hill, a veteran at blending live action and digital animation on “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties,” “Hop” skips and jumps between the fantasy land beneath Easter Island, where rabbits and chicks manufacture holiday candy, and the human world of Fred O’Hare (clever character name, huh?).

Fred (James Marsden) is a grown-up slacker living with his parents, who hound him to get a job and move out. Down under Easter Island, young Easter Bunny (voiced by Brand) is about to take over the family business from his dad, but dreams of becoming a rock ‘n’ roll drummer.

Written by the “Despicable Me” team of Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio, along with Brian Lynch, “Hop” mostly is a lot of slapstick adventures between the bunny and Fred. They gradually form a kinship, find common ground and go through all the other usual things that arise when man befriends rabbit.

The animation is the movie’s strong point, presenting a rainbow-colored world that should satisfy young children’s cinematic sweet tooth.

By David Germain, The Associated Press

“HOP” | Bunny tale
** STAR RATING (out of 4) | Bunny tale
PG. 1 hour, 34 minutes. Russell Brand, James Marsden. At area theaters.

New graduates and young professionals are often faced with a barrage of financial advice. The challenge is separating the bankable wisdom from the myths, particularly at a time when so many of the well-established rules have been upended.

Consider the many moving parts: Sweeping overhauls of credit-card and health-insurance regulations were signed into law. And after suffering steep losses, retirement accounts are just now moving past where they stood at the peak of the market. The implications of such events can be difficult to process for those just starting their financial lives. But early decisions can dramatically alter futures.

Young people who’ve toiled to earn a degree still have more work to do.
“You want to sit down and plan, so you really have something to show for it down the road,” says Greg Womack, a certified financial planner in Edmond, Okla.
To avoid regrets, don’t buy into these myths:

Nobody is hiring in this economy
The U.S. unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at 8.9 percent. The bleak headlines are discouraging.

Still, positions constantly open up as a result of turnover, even when a company has a hiring freeze. The key is to be prepared to capitalize on those opportunities.
Rather than post a resume on general job sites, for example, look to establish targeted connections. That could entail joining a professional or alumni association to start meeting the right people.

“Make yourself a known personality,” says Eleta Jones, associate director of the Center for Professional Development at the University of Hartford. “So when a position does open up at a company, you’re at the top of everyone’s mind.”
That’s not to say there won’t be disappointments. But the outlook is improving.

Debit trumps credit as a way to avoid debt
Credit cards get a lot of heat for burying consumers in debt. Young people, in particular, can run into trouble as they set up new apartments, buy clothing for work or spend to fill the gaps left by an entry-level paycheck.

Debit cards, meanwhile, are viewed as a way to control spending and stay on budget.

Yet, when used responsibly, credit cards offer more advantages than debit cards. Users benefit from greater fraud protection and can earn valuable rewards for spending.

More importantly, those just starting out should understand the role credit cards play in building a strong credit history. That, in turn, lays the groundwork for when the time comes to buy a car or a home.

It’s true that carrying too high a balance or missing payments can seriously damage credit histories. But new regulations now protect consumers from many of the questionable practices that gave credit cards such a bad name.

Health insurance is a waste of money for the young and fit
There’s a higher percentage of uninsured among 19- to 29-year-olds than any other group in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s, in part, because young adults are more likely to have jobs that don’t offer benefits.
Under the health care overhaul, however, young adults can now piggyback on their parents’ insurance plans until they’re 26. It’s an option worth taking advantage of, even if it costs a little extra to stay on a parent’s plan.

Paying for coverage may seem like a waste, but the truth is that a single medical incident could result in considerable debt. With a few precautions, that’s a scenario that easily can be avoided.

Retirement savings is the least of your worries
When paychecks are modest, it can be a struggle to keep up with rent, student loans and credit-card bills. Retirement seems like such a low priority.
But saving early is more of a necessity than ever before.

Companies are scaling back benefits and putting more responsibility for saving on workers. Today, just 15 percent of private- sector workers have a pension plan that guarantees a steady payout during retirement. That’s down from 39 percent in 1980, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.
The bottom line is that there’s more pressure than ever to build up a nest egg. Even if paychecks are stretched thin, be sure to sign up for a 401(k) if it’s offered. Earning compound interest for decades on even a small monthly contribution will make a huge difference.

Forget about buying a home without a big down payment
It’s a great time to buy a home, with the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage still below 5 percent. But young people who don’t have substantial savings might assume they can’t take advantage.

Although lenders have tightened standards, there still are options for individuals who have a solid credit history and a steady income.

Anyone can apply for a loan from the Federal Housing Administration, which only requires a 3.5 percent down payment. Borrowers also will have to pay for mortgage insurance.

“The economy has created a lot of hesitation about buying,” says Greg Herb of the National Association of Realtors. “But in a few years, a lot of people are going to be looking back and saying, ‘I wish I would’ve bought then.’ “

Twenty-three second-graders file into Virginia Edwards’ technology classroom at Grant Ranch School, take a seat at their iMacs, pull on headphones and launch a program whose graphics and audio prompts teach them crucial keyboarding skills.
Gradually, the staccato tapping of their fingers will supplant the graceful curves of what once stood as an academic rite of passage: cursive handwriting.
In an increasingly paperless world, and with ever-greater student-performance demands in core subjects, state standards have gone silent on cursive.
In Colorado schools where it is still taught, the time devoted to its practice generally has diminished, although pockets of avid supporters still enthusiastically defend its rightful place in the elementary curriculum.

At Grant Ranch, a K-8 school in southwest Denver, teachers have wide latitude to address cursive as they see fit — and their approaches reflect the growing institutional ambivalence with regard to the flowing script.
“My 5-year-old granddaughter is interested in it,” says Edwards, a technology teacher who taught kindergarten for 12 years. “But to have her have to use it, to make it required, I can’t see that — because keyboarding is so much faster.”
Generally, students here are introduced to cursive in the middle of third grade, when teacher Jennifer Wilson welcomes kids mostly eager to embrace its fluid form.
She wants to make sure they can read cursive — something she figures could have social or job ramifications. And she has noticed that some students write more legibly in cursive than manuscript, which can help their scores on the Colorado Student Assessment Program exams, among other things.
Even so, she spends no more than five to seven minutes on form at the start of the day, with take-home exercises for practice.
“Cursive’s not dying,” Watson observes, “but there’s a lot less of it.”
By fifth grade, the emphasis diminishes.
Handwriting on the wall?
Until this year, teacher Sue Workman subscribed to the idea that cursive’s efficiency provided a key skill for note-taking in high school and college. Then her student teacher explained how she navigated college entirely without handwritten notes.
On top of that, one of her son’s high school teachers remarked that he wrote in beautiful cursive — in fact, he was the only student who did.
Those were her tipping points.
“If they’re not using it when they’re older, why are we demanding it now?” Workman says. “The kids don’t like to write cursive, and it’s always an argument every year. I decided it’s a battle I don’t want to fight anymore. Now, I’m starting to think it really is becoming obsolete.”
Vanderbilt University professor Steve Graham, who has studied writing instruction extensively, doesn’t see the handwritten word disappearing from schools anytime soon.
Studies have repeatedly shown that word processors produce better overall writing than anything performed by hand, Graham says, and computers tend to dominate at home and in the workplace.
But most schools don’t have nearly enough technology to serve every student.
His own research has shown that, despite the “gloom and doom” surrounding handwriting, more than 80 percent of first- and third-grade teachers say they teach manuscript and about 80 percent of third-grade teachers still teach cursive. But instruction “pretty much disappears” after that.
Handwriting, Graham points out, also carries two significant effects — a “writer effect” and a “reader effect.”
The first refers to the difficulty of writing fast enough to keep pace with one’s thoughts.
But the “reader effect” has two aspects. While terrible handwriting can obscure the message, the quality of legible handwriting has been shown to have a more “insidious” effect on how ideas are perceived.
In compositions scored solely on the quality of the ideas, poor but legible handwriting can drop scores as low as the 16th percentile while a very legible hand can propel the same concepts to the 86th percentile, Graham says.
Word processing eliminates the reader effect because of its uniform legibility, he says. And eventually, many paper documents such as job applications that require handwritten responses will disappear.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Graham says. “We’re not at that point. I think handwriting is important because schools don’t use 21st-century tools. I don’t see it going away, or every kid having a computer for a while, with few exceptions. Until that’s the case, it’ll stay in play.”
Classroom priorities shift
Denver Public Schools chief academic officer Susana Cordova doesn’t think anybody is actively opposing cursive writing. But like most districts, DPS wants to devote the most classroom time to what’s most heavily emphasized in state standards.
Once kids have learned to print in first grade, she says, the standards move away from letter formation and focus on aspects of writing such as organization, message and grammar.
While how much time to devote to cursive instruction is left to individual schools and sometimes to individual teachers, DPS aims to make students fluent in keyboarding by sixth grade. That’s the form most of their middle and high school assignments will take, and even standardized assessments are moving toward a computer-based model.
“In many respects, it’s only inside our schools where we see such emphasis on paper and pencil,” Cordova says. “The move outside our schools, and in innovative schools, is toward technology. There will always be a role for the written word by hand on paper. But the experiences most of us have, with 30 minutes a day practicing cursive in class, has gone by the wayside.”
Cursive holdouts
Well, not entirely.
Nowhere is the case for cursive stated more emphatically — and more passionately — than at James Irwin Charter Elementary School, a K-5 on the south end of Colorado Springs.
Officially, Cindee Will holds the title of assistant principal. Unofficially, she’s the ardent keeper of cursive’s flickering flame.
She cites both developmental and cultural reasons to embrace cursive.
Ball-and-stick printing sometimes reveals what she calls “tangles in the brain” — not necessarily dyslexia, but a more common issue manifested, for instance, by confusing the letters b and d. Will contends that cursive, in which the pencil generally doesn’t leave the paper until the end of a word, can combine with a phonics program to reinforce a left-to-right directionality that more effectively ties writing to reading.
“When kids get to third and fourth grade, when they’re supposed to be composing, they can use more brain space for content than mechanics,” she says.
Will acknowledges the importance of technology but maintains that sometimes cursive offers the most effective way to communicate — for instance, on a job application that asks you to put your thoughts into writing.
On paper.
“I do believe one of the best forms to reflect literacy is with a beautiful hand,” Will says. “How is a stranger going to know what’s in your brain if it’s not revealed on paper?”
Examples of student work papers the hallways at James Irwin, all exhibiting an even, flowing style. They do not teach ball and stick here. Starting in kindergarten, cursive is not just the script of choice but a culture unto itself.
When it’s time for a 20-minute lesson, students systematically prepare at their teacher’s prompt by checking their posture, the angle of their paper on the desk and the proper pencil grip.
From there, it’s part close-order drill, part pep rally. The rhythmic clapping of the classroom aide accompanies the sing-song chants that direct the students to properly form a letter.
When the teacher’s example, projected onto a screen, dips below the bottom line, she asks what’s wrong.
“No sinkers allowed!” barks the class.
She tries again, with the lower part of the letter coming up short of the bottom line.
“No floaters allowed!”
Then the students attend to their own practice lines. Feedback is immediate, in the form of little stars or corrective marks written on their exercises by the teacher and an aide who roam among the desks.
After a few minutes of serious attention to their handwriting, they get to have a little fun working out their wiggles.
“Shake to the left, shake-shake- shake! Shake to the right, shake- shake-shake! Stand up, sit down, write-write-write!”
Will, a former kindergarten teacher, figures she has taught nearly 1,000 students the “cursive first” approach. She laments how cursive has become a lost art and, in many schools, a casualty along with art and music.
“Think of how the Declaration of Independence would look if our forefathers hadn’t been brought to a high level of fluency,” she says. “Would that be as beautiful on a computer, or with ball and stick?”
Sticking to the old school
For a variety of reasons, some private schools also have remained solidly behind cursive instruction.
In the Archdiocese of Denver, curriculum guidelines for Catholic schools say that cursive will be taught in late second and early third grade. They also emphasize the importance of practice in later grades to continue developing the skill, says associate superintendent Sister Elizabeth Youngs.
“When we were first using computers, people said we don’t need to memorize math facts,” she says. “There’s a certain time in brain development that you need to learn that skill. I believe cursive writing develops part of the brain as well. You may keyboard exclusively, but that doesn’t mitigate the needed skill of cursive writing.”
She highlights two reasons: It fosters hand-eye coordination that develops the brain; and learning to write cursive means learning to read it as well.
At the Denver Montclair International School, some students learn to write in cursive as early as kindergarten — in accordance with standard French and Spanish curricula.
Part of the reason lies in fine motor skill development, says executive director Adam Sexton, but there’s also the matter of spacing.
“By having single words connected and then having space in between, the (cursive) philosophy is helping them distinguish individual words,” Sexton says. “I don’t know why schools are discontinuing it.”
The portion of the curriculum that students learn in English deals primarily with block printing that complements the cursive students learn in French and Spanish — but teachers don’t discourage students more comfortable in cursive from employing it in their English studies.
(Students immersed in Chinese also learn calligraphy, but it’s “more art than script,” Sexton says.)
By fifth grade, when the curriculum is split evenly between English and the target language, students have the option of using either cursive or printing.
“The manual writing takes on part of the culture, in my mind,” says Francois Penalver, the school’s academic director. “Plus, we do not forget that they have to use computers — starting in fourth grade, they have typing lessons. There’s a space for everything.”
At Stover Elementary in Jefferson County, principal Andrew Zapotoczny notes that a few years ago, when Jefferson County Public Schools revised its curriculum and prioritized various elements, cursive came out low on the scale: If you have time, teach it.
“With the way the world is changing these days, with all the skills people need, it’s a matter of finding priorities,” he says.
When parent Pam Bates learned that cursive was no longer being taught at Stover, she resolved to do something — not just for her own third-grade daughter who’d been looking forward to the experience, but for all students.
Last fall, the after-school Cursive Club was born and immediately attracted 40 students. With the help of parent volunteers and with the principal’s encouragement, Bates lashed together her own lesson plans that included six weeks of 45-minute sessions.
This spring, she’ll teach her second group.
“I absolutely get that we’re moving in a world that’s technology-based,” Bates says. “But I’m of the old school that believes you can’t forget where you came from to get where you’re going. There could be a day the computer crashes.”
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739 or ksimpson@denverpost.com

A: In 1980, a NASA study on rebounding published in the Journal of Applied Physiology called it “the most efficient, effective form of exercise yet devised by man.” NASA found that rebounding was 68 percent more efficient than a treadmill because the G-force created by jumping overwhelmingly increased the oxygen absorption in the body due to the alternating experience of being weightless one minute and impacting a more solid surface the next.

This creates a pumping action in the body that pulls waste products out and oxygen and nutrients into the bloodstream. They also discovered that rebounding was helpful in rebuilding the bone and muscle lost by astronauts from extended weightlessness. For us earthbound humans, this is good news indeed.

With a personal-sized mini-trampoline, the activity can be performed in the home or office. Because bouncing is a fun and efficient way to accomplish cardiovascular exercise, people tend to enjoy, rather than evade, a workout.

Unfortunately, backyard trampolines send thousands of people to the hospital each year to be treated for head, neck and spine injuries, according to statistics. These injuries are frequently life-threatening and crippling. A backyard trampoline, therefore, should be dealt with as a serious purchase with a clear understanding of risks, as well as rewards. This is not a toy.

Marc Rabinoff, a professor in the Human Performance and Sport Department at Metropolitan State College of Denver, has worked as a forensics examiner in more than 300 cases of litigation in which equipment failures have injured people. He warns that the only way this equipment is safe is if everyone obeys these three rules to the letter:

1. No double jumping — only one person jumping at a time.

2. No flips or somersaults.

3. Direct supervision at all times.

“Ninety percent of injuries on trampolines are from backyard trampolines, and 60 percent of those injuries are from falling off. Many of those people are now paraplegics,” Rabinoff says. Enclosures for all trampolines are now the industry standard, which has helped reduce injuries. However, the cheaper — and most widely available — varieties, made with low-grade metals, springs, pads and mat materials, are still hazardous because the design allows jumpers to slip through the springs, get tangled in the enclosures and suffer injuries from hitting support rods.

“Parents are being led to believe that if they put up an enclosure that they are installing a safety net. Unfortunately, this is just a false sense of security,” says Rabinoff. He explains that the incidence of closed-head injuries — especially from people crashing into each other as they bounce on the mat together — has increased dramatically. “Even with an enclosure, the three rules listed above still apply,” says Rabinoff. “This equipment is not a playpen.”

Many professionals recommend the Springfree trampoline, designed by a New Zealand engineer to eliminate the impact areas that can cause injury. A Springfree trampoline costs about $1,200 (springfreetrampoline .com, 1-877-586-7723), compared with $300 for those commonly found at discount stores. But the high quality and safety features are worth it, experts say.

Linda J. Buch is a certified fitness trainer in Denver; linda@ljbalance.com.

In the glory days of radio, who among us didn’t lie on the living-room rug, tune in and listen raptly as a disembodied voice read us the Sunday funnies?
That bit of gone and long ago would not be news to Brian Walker, son of Mort Walker, the cartoonist who created “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois.” What he doesn’t know about newspaper comics and their creators isn’t worth knowing. Since childhood, Walker the Younger has been up to his elbows in pen and ink and is the author of the newly released, massive volume “The Comics: The Complete Collection” (Abrams, $40).
In a bit of publishing sleight of hand, “The Comics” is actually a combination of two books previously authored by Walker that chronicled the history of newspaper comics before and after 1945. It’s a mammoth undertaking, running 659 pages in a large format with copious reproductions of comic strips from “The Yellow Kid” to “Doonesbury,” beautifully printed on slick paper.

Newspaper comic strips have been around in this country at least since the 1890s and probably longer. Most historians of the art credit “The Yellow Kid,” which made its first appearance in Truth magazine on June 2, 1894, as the progenitor of all that followed. Not so, says Walker. The Chicago Inter-Ocean began running a regular color strip called “The Ting Ling Kids” in 1893.

But comic art began well before that, even to primitives who classed up their caves with wall drawings. Blessed by the arrival of mass color reproduction, “The Yellow Kid” — whose creator, Richard F. Outcault, later turned down a $10,000 offer to draw “Buster Brown” for The Denver Post — gained its fame when it made its color debut in the New York Journal on Oct. 18, 1896. Circulation jumped to 375,000 copies. “Color comics on Sundays were a circulation builder,” Walker points out. “Back in those days there was no radio or television; comics were huge.”

The comics were not always child’s play. Early on, they included violence, crude language and prejudice against women. They were rife with stereotypes. “The Katzenjammer Kids” used pidgin German to mock its participants. “My,” exclaims Mama in one episode. “Vot a bummer! Und I chust cleaned der house mit der vachym cleaner!” Cops were fat and Irish. Blacks were maids or chauffeurs.

“It took a lot longer for racial stereotypes to evolve,” says Walker. “Even in the ’20s, black characters were still maids and jockeys.”

Today, characters of all racial stripes inhabit the funny pages. “Jump Start” is about a black family; “Baldo” documents the lives of a Latino family; and “Scary Gary” is all about, well, who knows?

Walker is often asked whether there was a golden age for the comics. “I think the 1920s was actually the golden age. Look back to the ’20s. Comics are distributed all over the world. Cartoonists are superstars.”

Nevertheless, as he does in “The Comics,” Walker, interviewed by phone from his home in Connecticut, sees a shining light in many periods.
Adventure strips in the 1930s gave Americans left reeling by the Great Depression characters that laughed in the face of danger, took on risks and triumphed. They were, writes Walker, “reassuring to Depression readers.” The bigger-than-life heroes of “Joe Palooka,” “Tarzan of the Apes,” “Prince Valiant,” “Buck Rogers” and “Terry and the Pirates” invaded the comics pages.

He defends the importance of the ’20s. “You go back through the 1920s, particularly the Sunday comics, most features ran full page,” says Walker, who co-founded the International Museum of Cartoon Art and has written and edited more than a dozen books on cartoons. “Beautiful colors. I document how that change happened. The truth of it is it started to change in the 1930s when they started putting advertising into the sections. They started doing different formats.”

Strips outlive artists
Some cartoons have remarkably long lives. “Beetle Bailey,” which Brian and his brother Greg help their father produce, just turned 61 years old. “Blondie” has been around since 1930. Younger cartoonists sometimes scoff at the old-timers. Wiley Miller, the creator of “Non Sequitur,” complained, “Too many newspapers are running too many cartoons by dead guys. The guys who created ‘Blondie’ and ‘Dick Tracy’ have been dead for years and so are the strips.”
“Peanuts” has maintained its popularity in reruns even though Charles Schulz, the man who first drew Charlie Brown and his little friends in 1950, died in 2000. And there are some, like “Fred Basset,” whose extended popularity is unexplainable.

Hundreds of comics have died an early death. Three, in particular, lived lives that were too short and, interestingly, all three were born about the same time in the 1980s. “The Far Side,” “Bloom County” and “Calvin and Hobbes” brought a new, more irreverent look to the funnies. “The Far Side” was the work of Gary Larson, who cleverly melded the worlds of humans and animals; “Bloom County,” by Berke Breathed, featured Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat in an often-bizarre fantasy world, and Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” chronicled a boy and his stuffed tiger, real only to him.

All three were huge hits. “The Far Side” sold 6 million book collections and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987. Breathed’s “Loose Rules” was on The New York Times best-seller list for 32 weeks in 1983 and appeared in more than 1,000 papers. “Calvin and Hobbes” did even better, appearing in more than 1,800 papers at its peak.

Then, in quick succession, all three artists pulled the plug in 1995, citing creative burnout. Walker has a simple explanation: “It is kind of a grind to do a comic day in and day out. You have to reach pretty deep for inspiration.”

Walker doesn’t love all comics. “I did a book on ‘Nancy.’ I said, ‘I hate this strip. It’s the same every day.’ But I went on an intellectual journey. I just realized it taught me an important lesson: You can be simple and be brilliant at what you do. Ernie Bushmiller (who created the round-faced girl with the spiky hair in 1948) was a very erudite guy. He said, ‘My strip is for the gum chewers of the world.’ A lot of modern cartoonists think it’s the Zen of comics. The ultimate realization after finishing these two books on comics history is that it is so rich and rewarding, even to someone like myself who’s been in it my whole life.”

Universal themes
This newspaper runs 46 comic strips daily. Most deal with family situations, whether it’s the young parents in “Baby Blues,” teenage angst in “Zits” or the changing day-to-day worries in “For Better or Worse.” Most can trace their ancestry to “Bringing Up Father,” a domestic comedy about a social-climbing family whose father, Jiggs, won’t go along with their shenanigans. It debuted in 1913 and became immensely popular, garnering 80 million readers in 500 newspapers and translation into 16 languages in 46 countries.

“There are certain universal themes,” says Walker. “Comics come in daily doses and they function best when they deal with daily life, doing the basic things of life. Cartoonists create friends for people. People get very attached. They are characters that people really care about.”

Like many other newspaper features, the comics have taken a hit as circulation and advertising have declined. An alert reader will notice that the strips are smaller, characters have become more simply drawn and words are fewer and far between as the comics have shrunk.

“Shrinking column widths in daily strips started in World War II. Papers were cutting back, eliminating strips,” says Walker. “There’s always challenge and accommodation. There was a major size reduction in the 1980s, when they adopted new standards.”

Nevertheless, Walker, an unreconstructed fan of the art form, is mildly optimistic about the comics’ future in printed newspapers. “The graphics don’t look the same on a computer screen as they do in newspapers,” he writes. “Perhaps someday, in the not- too-distant future, an enterprising newspaper editor will experiment with enlarging the comics and printing them on higher-quality paper. The newspaper’s circulation might take off.”

And, he says, “I would hope, in my dreams, that newspapers would think, ‘We’re losing advertising to Craigslist. One thing we have is comics.’ They should be putting them on the front page or printing them in color.”

And for the third season in a row, Tracey Gifford saved the day. The proud mother of two elementary-age boys is the owner of the Just Between Friends sale in Denver and offered to compile this year’s schedule for me. As a word of thanks, I’d like to offer a little shout-out to Tracey’s sale April 7-10 at the National Western Complex, which is the largest kids’ gear and clothing resale event in Metro Denver.

Not familiar with children’s consignment sales? Thousands of shoppers find bargains on kids’ clothing for newborn-preteen, toys, strollers, furniture, baby equipment, books, shoes, maternity items and more…all at 50-90% below retail. Most sales have a nominal entrance fee and be sure to bring your own large bag or laundry basket for shopping.

February 26-27

Shop Kids Event
Saturday 9a-6p; Sunday 9a-2p (Half price sale)
Where: American Furniture Warehouse, Firestone
shopkidsevent.com

March 4-5

Southwest MOPS
Friday: 8a-6p (no strollers before noon); Saturday 8a–2p (Half price sale)
Where: Bear Valley Church, Lakewood
mops.bvchurch.org

March 5

Twin Connection
Saturday, 12p–3p, $1 admission
Where: Jefferson County Fairgrounds, Golden
orgsites.com/co/twinconnection

March 11-12

Grow With Me Kids Sale
Friday, March 11 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m.-2 p.m. (1/2 price day)
Where: The Ranch in Loveland
twinsntriplets.com/sale/

March 12

Supertwins of the Rocky Mountains (STORM)
Saturday 9a-12p, $1 admission
Where: The Shrine Center, Denver
stormcolorado.com

March 13-14

Your Kids Closet
Sunday 9a-5p; Monday 9a-2p (Half price sale) $1 admission
Where: The Wildlife Experience, Parker
yourkidscloset.com

March 18-19

Just Between Friends of Douglas County
Friday 830a–7p.; Saturday 9a–3p (Half-price sale) $2 admission all days
Where: Douglas County Fairgrounds, Castle Rock
jbfsale.com/douglascounty.com

March 25-27

Just Between Friends of Aurora
Friday-Saturday: 9a-5p $2 admission
Sunday: 9a-2p (Half price sale)
Where: Arapahoe County Fairgrounds, Aurora
jbfsale.com/aurora

March 26

Darling Doubles
Saturday, 8a–11a $1 admission
Where: Adams County Fairgrounds, Brighton
darlingdoubles.org

March 31-April 2

Mini Mania Sale
Thursday-Friday 9a-6p, Saturday 9a-3p (Half price sale)
International Dance Club, Colorado Springs
minimaniasale.com

April 7-10

Just Between Friends Denver
Thursday-Friday 10a-7p $2 admission, free to Mile High Mamas
Saturday 10a-4p Military Appreciation Day and 25% off sale
Sunday 10a-4p (Half price sale)
Where: National Western Complex, Denver
jbfsale.com/denver

April 8-9

New to You
Friday 10a–8p; Saturday 8a-12p (Half-price sale) $1 admission
Where: Christ Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch
newtoyousale.org

April 8-10

Shop Kids Sale
Friday 9a-6p; Sunday 9a-2p (half-price most items Sunday)
Where: Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont
shopkidsevent.com/

April 9

MOPS at Cherry Hills Community Church
8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Where: Cherry Hills Community Church, 3900 Grace Blvd, Highlands Ranch
cherryhillsmopssale.com

April 13-16

Just Between Friends of Colorado Springs
Wednesday-Thursday 9a-4p $2 admission; Friday 9a–4p.;
Saturday 8a–4 p.m. (Half-price sale)
Where: The Event Center at Rustic Hills, Colorado Springs
coloradosprings.jbfsale.com/

April 15-17

Just Between Friends Loveland/Ft. Collins
Friday 9a-6p and Saturday 9a-4p, $2 admission; Sunday 10a-3p (Half price sale)
Where: Outlets at Loveland
jbfsale.com/loveland

April 16-17

Haute Tots Sale
Saturday 9a-5p, Sunday 9a-2p (Half price sale) $1 admission
Where: Table Mountain Ranch, Golden
hautetotssale.com

April 16

Double Delights
Saturday, 9a–12p, $1 admission
Where: Grace United Methodist Church, Denver
http://www.orgsites.com/co/doubledelights

April 21-23

Just Between Friends of Arvada/Louisville
Thursday 9a-8p $1 admission; Friday 9a-7p; Saturday 9a-3p (Half price sale)
Where: Flatirons Marketplace, Broomfield
jbfsale.com/arvada

April 29-May 1

Just Between Friends Broomfield/Brighton
Friday and Saturday 9a-6p $1 admission; Sunday 9a-4p (half price sale)
Where: Adams County Fairgrounds, Brighton
broomfield.jbfsale.com

May 5-7

St. Phillip Early Learning Center
Thursday 9:30a–7p.; Friday 9:30a – 2p; Saturday 8a-12p $ 1 admission
Where: St. Philips, Littleton
stphilip-co.org

May 13-16

Just Between Friends Longmont
Friday-Saturday 9a-7p; Sunday 9a-3p; Monday 9a-7p (Half price sale)
Where: Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont
jbfsale.com/longmont

June 24-26

Serendipity Sale
Friday 5p-8p; Saturday 9a-5p; Sunday 9a-12p
Where: The Ranch, Loveland
serendipitysale.com

Have we missed a children’s consignment sale? Please sure to tell us about your favorite!

Seriously, I won’t even take my kids to Target when I need new hair color.   I can’t be distracted, and  I certainly don’t want to talk about it after the deed has been done.   Sure, I’ll talk to myself a bit in the mirror, just enough to berate myself for growing bad hair, and then if the color is really bad, I’ll share my pain with my friend Katie, who’s been known to do a “double dye” in the same day too.  At least she can blame Ben when things go wrong.  He’s her husband and hair care provider, all the while, I only have myself to blame.

I’m getting off track.  Target can do that to a person, in case you didn’t know.  Today was different though.  I went into Target with a purpose.  Okay, a few purposes, the first of which, was to purchase an Icee for my son Will.  I’m not proud to say I sometimes distract him with treats in order to stay focused on my list.

But back to my purpose. Today at Target, the goal was to buy a can of pumpkin puree.  I know.  Stupid huh?  I don’t even like to cook.  People tell me there’s a difference between baking and cooking though, and I tend to believe them.  I hate to cook, but I do fancy myself a bit of a baker.  But only if it’s dessert item, and has 10 common items or less.  That’s why the pumpkin puree is such a big deal.  I’ve never considered buying it before, until three things happened recently.

1.  My son Jack reminded me how much he loves pumpkin products.

2.  I saw a recipe for pumpkin cake, and the frosting looked good.

3.  Amber Johnson wrote a whole big post on pumpkin puree and told us she’s hoarding it in her basement.  (Am I the only one who is jealous of her endless supply of food in a disaster?)

Today I will discover whether the purchase was worth it or not.  I hope it is, for many reasons.  Mostly I hope it brings joy to Jack.  Also, I’ve been trying to find a good hoarding item too, and this might be the one.  Those cans are pretty cheap, and I bet they’d last at least 10 years.  The final reason I’d like this cake to turn out is that I’m in charge of desserts for our Thanksgiving dinner at my dad’s.  Usually I’m relegated to “rolls and drinks”, which is highly unglamourous and believe you me, there’s very few rave reviews at the table for frozen rolls.  But not this year!   I can already hear all the compliments! “Why Lisa, did you make that seasonally appropriate cake with your own hands?  It’s so delicious.  You’ve really outdone yourself!”  My poor sister is going to feel pretty stupid with her boring green bean casserole.  I hear those are super easy to make.

Anyway, I’ll be sure to let you know what happens.  The oven just beeped at me, and darn it all, the kitchen smells pretty good.  Billy, Faith and Will are all going to hate it, due to the fact it’s a pumpkin product.   But that’s okay.  If Jack likes it, I know I did good.  

He might even be Thankful.

Saturday. Boulder lights up for “Switch On the Holidays,” the official start to downtown Boulder’s holiday festivities. Prepare for Santa’s arrival with performances by the Casey Middle School and Boulder High School choirs. Then, Santa makes his appearance, led by the Fairview High School drum corps. He’ll throw the switch on more than 35,000 lightbulbs on Pearl Street, plus the Boulder County Courthouse lights and the star on Flagstaff Mountain. After the lighting ceremony, head to the ice rink at One Boulder Plaza for “Light the Ice,” a special ice show, and free skating until 10 p.m. 5 p.m. Saturday. The 1300 block of Pearl Street, Boulder. Admission is free. Learn more at boulderdowntown.com.

Saturday. Youngsters get a lesson in rockabilly swagger when The Velvet Elvis performs as part of The Music Train’s family concert series at the D-Note. Also known as Jonny Barber, the Velvet Elvis does a pretty convincing imitation of his idol, complete with mutton chops and rockin’ dance moves. Feel free to dance along — blue suede shoes aren’t required. The Music Train is a local organization that offers music classes and concerts for little ones and their families. 4-6 p.m. Saturday. The D Note, 7519 Grandview Ave., Arvada; 303-GO-DNOTE. Tickets are $8 for adults, $2 for children; kids under age 3 are free. Visit dnote.us for more information.

Through Saturday. See some of Denver’s loveliest houses decked out for the holidays at the 34th annual L’Esprit Home Tour. Presented by the Central City Opera Guild, the tour takes guests through seven houses in the Hilltop neighborhood, all professionally decorated for Christmas and Hanukkah. Before and after the tours, visit the L’Esprit Boutique and shop for gifts. Kids are welcome, but keep in mind that strollers aren’t allowed in the homes. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and Saturday. Meet at the gymnasium of Graland Country Day School, 30 Birch St., Denver. Advance tickets are $18, available by calling the CCO at 303-292-6700 or at King Soopers locations. Tickets are $20 at the door; admission is free for kids under 12. For more information, visit centralcityopera.org.

Kathleen St. John

It’s not every day a stay-at-home mom like me gets on the news, so it was quite exciting.  As soon as the segment came on I screamed for the whole household to come watch. Did I mention my first-born Jack was also around when Fox 31 was about to make me famous?  He came running downstairs, hoping to see himself.  I was hoping to see me.   When it was all over, one of us was happy, and one of us in a Darth Vader tee shirt was not.  My words were his only comfort.

“But Jack, at least MOMMY was on the news.  Isn’t that exciting?  You could see me clearly and even if it was only from behind, everyone has to know that was ME!”

Jack said, “That doesn’t help me feel better mom.”  And off he went pouting to his room.

Even though I felt like a celebrity that night, I cooked dinner and helped with homework as any normal mom would. I had to cut up about 40 pounds of carrots, shuck 8 bags of corn, and wash 124 potatoes.  And all that food was the reason we (well, mostly me) were on the news.

The 5^th grade class at our beloved school takes an annual field trip each fall to Miller Farms.  The farm is east of I-25, very close to Platteville.  You might be as happy as I was to discover that Platteville is a real place, and not a fake place the news people talk about whenever tornados touch down in our state.

The very first thing we got to do on the farm was load up on open trailers and go into the fields to pick vegetables.  The first crop we picked was corn, then potatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, and pumpkins.  The nice people at Miller Farms gave the kids as many bags as they could carry and let them go nuts!  Jack brought me a 20 pound bag of white onions—which was a little overwhelming as I hate to cook, and when I do use onion, it’s only the red kind.  It’s not that I’m not biased or anything.  The white ones just seem so big and smelly.

After our time in the field, we headed to lunch, or “dinner” as the farmers like to call it.  All of us were hot, dehydrated, and windblown as we sat down in the shade to eat.  I regretted my choices for lunch that day, as I’d worked up quite a sweat in the fields (one small bag of Doritos, and a Fiber One bar).  Anyway, after lunch, the kids were free to roam.  There was a HUGE hay bale tower to climb, a corn maze, animals to visit, a jumpy trampoline thing, and a tractor train to ride.

I watched Jack and his friends run crazy on the farm, and relished the moments he was in my view as I sat under a canopy visiting with other moms.  He came by every so often to tell me he was thirsty or bored, and all seemed right with the world.

Before I know it, I’ll be taking him on field trips to visit colleges, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today I will celebrate the crops, the wild independence of a 10 year-old-boy, and a mom who is slowly learning to release her grip.

Be a farmer for a day!  Check out Miller Farms Fall Festival—opened daily thru November from 9 am to 6 pm.  Also in the month of October, they have Haunted Hayrides—check it out at www.millerfarms.net