Month: August 2009

Join in on Labor Day Lunches to Promote Child Nutrition Act

Slow Food chapters in Denver, Boulder and other Colorado towns will host community potlucks Monday to promote passage of a Child Nutrition Act demanding healthy, nutritious foods in schools. The “Eat In” is part of Slow Food’s national day of action urging change in school lunch programs, including more funding, better quality food and nutritional education. Denver: Fairmont Dual Immersion Academy, 520 W. Third Ave., noon-3 p.m. youth farmers market. Bring a lunch and hear speakers from Denver Public Schools, Denver Urban Gardens and Operation Frontline. Boulder: Old Courthouse Lawn, 1325 Pearl Street on the mall, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Gardening activities, food by Culinary School of the Rockies students, local food activists and a bluegrass band. For more locations, go to slowf...

Beaver Creek: Tour de Colorado’s Best Front-Range Destination for Families

I chose my family’s final Tour de Colorado destination carefully. We had spent the summer visiting the very best that Colorado has to offer and I wanted to go out with a bang. Rest assured we had a bang-up vacation at Beaver Creek, my choice for best front-range destination for families. Competition in this category is steep with worthy competitors like Breckenridge and Copper Mountain. In the end, Beaver Creek’s intimate alpine village tucked away near Vail prevailed because it offered ice skating, miniature golf, a climbing wall and a bungee trampoline, not to mention some fantastic freebies. And with a tagline like “Not exactly roughing it” there were more than a few indulgences along the way. Beaver Creek Hiking Center I grew up hiking the Canadian Rockies and never once did I go...

The Circus comes to Denver and front rooms near you

In honor of Cirque du Soleil’s Denver presentation of Kooza, I thought a little circus fun, of the Cirque kind, was in order.  (Don’t get me started on the other kind of circus — I’m not much of a fan.) But, I LOVE Cirque – the costumes, the music, the athleticism and the hilarious clowns.  I emphasize the word — hilarious because usually I think clowns are terrifying.  Cirque’s are not.  (I still have tragic childhood memories of my mom performing in her mime troop.  Mime horror — might explain a few things?) Anyway, whether you bring your child or not — and I recommend you do, over age 4 — take the wonder of Cirque home to your own living room. Juggle I learned to juggle while working the front desk at a health club in college – squas...

Go Contigo Review

I cleaned out my purse again. The usual suspects where there…some things that I was expecting, and a few “Ah-Ha! That’s where that is!” occurred. But one thing I was not expecting was a slight damp feeling in the bottom of my summer shoulder accessory. It would seem that while trying to trim down the number of bags I sling on my back, I would do what many moms do in attempts to be efficient…I consolidated. When I jump out of the kid-mobile (aka minivan) I place a diaper, wipe, “boredom” toy for each child and their respective water containing cylinders in my bag purse. The problem therein lies when the purse is placed in a position other than upright or otherwise thrown around as many mom purses are, the “sippy cups” spill, drip, water your belongings. A few days after the “cle...

Our Bodies: Do We Rent, or Do We Own?

My Dad once told me that we are all TABs: Temporarily Able-Bodied. Being young and invincible, I dismissed his statement as a middle-aged mope. Years later, I finally see what he means. In February of 2007, my sister’s husband complained of numbness in the hands and feet. He got on to WebMD and self-diagnosed before he went to his doctor. The doctor said surely he didn’t have Guillain-Barre Syndrome — it was much too rare. Gino whipped out the WebMD printout and the doctor disappeared for a few moments. When he came back, he ordered Gino to get to the hospital — now. Over the next two weeks, Gino lost function of everything south of his eyeballs. In went a trache tube. In went a feeding tube. In went a catheter. In went two central lines. Lost was the ability to mov...

Mamas’ Weekly Event Round-up

I confess: I was a Cirque du Soleil virgin. Then I saw Kooza. Now I am a convert. The bendy girls (on what planet do they find beings with pipe cleaners where bones should be ?)—the feats—the daring! The disco juggling! And that thing—they call it the Wheel of Death. I call it “Give your audience a heart attack.” Kooza is worth the money, friends. And mostly kid-appropriate, with just a few adult-oriented jokes that the kids may not get anyway. The merchandising rivals anything you’d see at Disney, so be prepared for that. Cirque du Soleil runs well into September. Buy your tickets now. This Saturday is the SkirtChaser 5k. It’s too late to register online, but go to Outdoor Divas in Boulder or Cherry Creek to register in person, or register the day of the race. Write the Mile H...

Wise Stamps: Create an Email Signature with your Social Media Contacts and More!

I wanted to share a neat FireFox extension called WiseStamp. This fun extension allows you to create an email signature on any webmail service. On WiseStamp.com you can customize your email signature to include your IM, Social Media profiles, website links and more. You have a choice of creating a personal signature or a business signature. It is lots of fun! Get creative and create a WiseStamp email signature!

Enter Mile High Mamas’ Cutest Kid Picture Contest!

Got a cute kid? Be sure to enter our monthly contest! The winner will be featured on Mile High Mamas and also our weekly newsletter. Any Colorado-area mom may enter our Cutest Kid Picture Contest. Please, no professional photographs. We want to see your kids in everyday life. To upload your photo, go here. You will need to briefly register or login first. Enter away!

Not Starting Over; Starting Anew

Guest blogger Janalee Card Chmel is co-owner of MA! motherhood with attitude and is a Denver-based freelance writer. She was shocked at the age of 40 to find out she was pregnant. Follow her journey each month. Since finding out on May 27 that Dave and I were apparently meant to have THREE children and not the TWO I had assumed, I’ve often said, “We’re starting all over!” My girls will be 6 and 8 when this baby joins our family and I have focused on the fact that we are returning to diapers, breast feeding and long nights. We’ll be anchored to the house again by naps. Not to mention… * The transition to solids * Crawling * Walking * Once again removing all the breakable and unsafe objects from our home, which we finally felt looked “grown up” again * Teaching the ABCs and colors and number...

Going Abroad (And Not Crazy) With Your Kid

I hemmed and hawed over whether it was a good idea. We wanted to go to Ireland, sure, but Declan – at age 6.5 – was he really ready? At least, was he ready for the kind of trip *I* wanted to take, with museums and castles and history and all that crap? I’d been to Germany several times by the time I was Declan’s age, but that was to visit *family.* This was going to be a real, bona fide, run around the country like tourists VACATION. With whirling lights and whirling traffic (on the other side of the road, no less) and about a thousand miles of running around the Irish countryside. How would he handle it? Mostly, awesome. Sure, the first day in Dublin was heinous. We’d only one hour of sleep, after all. Who wouldn’t be heinous? And there were several bou...

If we build it, please don’t come

I had never attended a community forum until last week. It likely stems from the fact that I’m Canadian and nobody really cares what a foreigner has to say. Unless we end our sentences with a cute little “Eh.” But this time I was invested: It was the third and final meeting about a neighborhood park near my house. My city has a glorious thing called a land development code that requires developers to donate to a fund. Our neighborhood’s nest egg has $1.7 million and they plan to build a park on 15 acres of undeveloped land. The city planners had carefully implemented suggestions from the previous two meetings and overall, people seemed pleased. The park will consist of tennis courts, basketball, horseshoe, an inline skate park, a custom rock feature for climbing, pl...

Great Day: A Review of Milkshake’s Newest CD!

August 25th marks the release date for a new CD by Milkshake! It’s a great day, and so is their CD! Great Day by Milkshake is a fun CD with 12 songs. The music is upbeat; the lyrics are fun, and the entire band is so talented. The songs are catchy and varied, the perfect mix for a children’s CD. Personally, I don’t care too much for the more country-end of the spectrum, and some of the songs approach that side, but they’re done in a way that works well. Milkshake is new to us, but maybe you’ve seen them on PBS Kids, Noggin, and Discovery Kids. Great Day is their newest CD, and it does not disappoint! Claire loves it! Claire’s favorite song on the entire CD is a song called, “Statue of Me.” I can’t listen to this song and not hum along to the harmony. It’s a song about individuality, discov...

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