Labor Day is Monday, September 7th. So congratulations to everyone who has survived layoffs and job cuts in this recession, time to celebrate. For all you slackers, get to work! Just kidding. Labor Day is bitter sweet for me. It's a bummer since it marks the end of summer, but autumn is my favorite season and we get a long weekend! Hooray for long weekends! How do you plan celebrating Labor Day?

I was getting T. ready for bed the other night when she asked suddenly if I knew what an hypothesis was.

"Tell me," I said.

She paused for a minute, to recall the information, and said, "it's an idea you can test!" [more]

A few weeks ago I shared some tips for keeping your kids hydrated during the summer. In our family, the boys are more than willing to down a juice box or sugar-y drink wherever, whenever. But getting regular ole' water in them can sometimes be a challenge.

One idea that we've used fairly successfully with our boys is the use of "fancy-ing up" their water. A slice of lemon, lime, orange or even cucumber can sometimes make water a little more novel, but we don't always have fresh slices at our fingertips. [more]

It was only fitting that yesterday we came home from a morning of end-of-summer-like activities (meet-the-teacher event for L., and a work meeting for me) to find a package awaiting us. A dear family friend has a yearly tradition of sending us a "Christmas in July" package. This year we unwrapped the mysterious brown parcel to find this:

[more]

Watermelons are big. Yes, I am the master of the obvious.

Unless you are feeding a crowd, if you buy a watermelon, for let's say, the watermelon salsa I posted yesterday, you will probably have some leftover watermelon.

Need a super easy, almost effortless way to transform your extra watermelon into a yummy, frozen, fat free snack?

Take the extra watermelon and press it through a sieve to extract the watermelon "juice:" [more]