Deirdre, Author at JDaniel4s Mom

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog's FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

The Adventures of Driving to New York and Back

August 3, 2010 By Deirdre

I really dreaded the long car ride two weeks ago to New York from our house in South Carolina. While JDaniel and I looked forward to seeing my sister Kate’s family and going to a family wedding, the hours in the car were going to be a challenge. I drove the first leg of the trip from South Carolina to Virginia without any trouble. JDaniel read books, played on his toy computer, and listened to me sing The Digger Picks up Lots of Dirt and several other variations of the Wheels on the Bus with construction equipment as the featured vehicle. We made several stops along the way one for lunch and one for ice cream. We both needed to get out and move.

After spending the night at my friend Cheryl’s in Virginia, we headed north to New York. We made two stops then too. I let JDaniel run around the battlefield in Gettysburg. Seeing a toddler running around with a bag of fruit chews on a battlefield seemed like such an anachronism. I am pretty sure Lincoln’s troops didn’t carry fruit chews into battle. The battlefield run wore him out. He ended up taking a long morning nap. That meant I could cover a lot of ground before lunch and I won’t be singing the forklift version of the Wheels on the Bus for a few hours. He woke up just in time to eat lunch at McDonald’s and run around in their play area. He was in heaven fries and climbing tunnels. After lunch, we hooked up the DVD player my neighbors lent us and Thomas the Train provided the afternoon entertainment. I learned not to stop for gas right after you start a movie or you have to go through the whole process of starting it again.

Coming back from New York and going to Virginia was a breeze. There were tons of areas with road construction. Yes, that is a good thing. Traffic may slow down, but my two years old was thrilled at getting to see his favorite equipment in action. He loved getting back to my friend Cheryl’s house. She has a toy treasure box he was allowed to explore and a wonderful pool in her community he could play in after dinner. He really thought she was the best.

After three wonderful legs of the trip, you knew something might have to happen. Well, it did. I left my purse at Cheryl’s and didn’t realize I didn’t have it until I reached Harrisonburg, Virginia. Harrisonburg is about an hour in a half away from her house. It was thanks to JDaniel wanting to listen to his new music from Cheryl that I noticed it was missing before I was further away without my credit cards and cash. It would have been hard to fill up the gas tank without them. Thankfully she was home when we got back to her house and were able to get back on the road quickly after a brief lunch to try and make it home. Since it was much later than our original start time, I decided to take a different route home that was supposed to be faster. We ended up going through three rainstorms crossing the mountains of Virginia. There were several opportunities to see construction equipment. It wasn’t as much fun this time. After many hours of watching movies on the DVD player, JDaniel decided to become Harry Houdini and slip his arms out of his car seat straps. He couldn’t figure out how to get them back in and claimed it hurt to try and put them back. This doesn’t sound that bad, doesn’t it? Well, the toughest part of the trip still hadn’t occurred yet. Just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina Interstate 77 was completely shut down heading south due to three tractor-trailers jackknifing. It was a mess. We sat on the highway now a parking lot for 45 minutes before weaving our way through traffic to get gas. After filling up, we sat on the on-ramp with the overhead light on reading books until traffic started moving about twenty minutes later. By the time we started moving it was ten o’clock at night. JDaniel then fell asleep, the heavens opened up again and we started making our way home again.

It was wonderful to wake up at home. We loved visiting family and friends, but I think it will be a while until I take a road trip without my husband. Next time I am writing out a checklist of things not to forget. My purse will be at the top of the list.

Muffin Tin Monday- Breakfast with a Swap

August 2, 2010 By Deirdre

I am starting a month long series of Muffin Tin Monday breakfast tins today. This week’s breakfast features two animals we saw on our visit to my sister Kate’s house in New York. She took her two children, JDaniel and I to several farms as part of local farm tour event. One of the farms had cows. JDaniel speaks cow so he had a lot of fun there. Kate’s family has a dog named Justice. He really caught JDaniel’s attention.

Today’s breakfast consisted of whole grain animal shaped waffles with syrup between them. The second row contains mandarin oranges, raspberry yogurt and blueberries. While JDaniel likes syrup on his waffles, sometime he like fruit or yogurt on them. This tin gave him a number of option as to how he wanted to eat them.

Swap Items

JDaniel and I were sent a wonderful set of animal cookie cutters and a toucan chopsticks as part of the Muffin Tin Monday Swap. We swapped with Jasmine. She really sent us a wonderful package. I have displayed some of the cookie cutters she sent around JDaniel’s tin today. There are 50 total animal cookie cutters. (I think we will be using them a lot to create muffin tin meals! JDaniel loves the chopsticks that came in our swap. They are a bit of a challenge, but he is up for challenges. They come out for muffin tin meals and other everyday meals.

If you like this muffin tin meal, here are some more muffin tin meals:

Earth Day Muffin Tin Meal

Star Wars Muffin Tin Breakfast

Leaf Year Muffin Tin Snack

Muffin Tin Monday- Thanksgiving with Sweet Potato Casserole and More

You will find more muffin tin meal and food creations on my Food Creations board on Pinterest. Please take a moment and check them out.

Free Personalized Cards from Tiny Prints for Teachers

August 2, 2010 By Deirdre

I taught for twenty-one years. One of the reasons I think I went into teaching was because I had wonderful teachers. I remember most of them fondly. Each was amazing in their own way. The teacher that stands out most is my mom. I was never in her class per se. I was able to watch how she taught her students and cared for each of them as individuals when I visited her classroom. There was always a wonderful project they were doing that was based on books they were reading or places they were studying.

One thing she always did was start out the year by contacting the parents and children. Tiny Prints is offering free personalized cards for teachers to welcome students, thank parents, or award students for great work. If you are a classroom teacher as I was, you know the expenses of the school year are just starting. This is a great resource to have and it’s free.

Tiny Prints personalized greeting cards for teachers for FREE offer starts Monday, August 2nd and runs October 31, 2010. Teachers can access the cards at Teacher Greeting Cards and apply the code: Apple2010 at checkout.

Oh! There is going to be a Tiny Prints Teacher Greeting Card Twitter Party with the tag #makeitpersonal this Wednesday from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. ET/1:00 to 2:00 p.m. PT.

Disclaimer: Tiny Prints is randomly awarding five bloggers a $50 Visa card for letting you know about this opportunity. I would have mentioned it anyway.

Mice on Main Street And In My House

July 30, 2010 By Deirdre

Here in Greenville, S.C. we have a great mouse hunt on Main Street. Bronze mice are scattered up and down the street. Some are easy to find and others are quite difficult. I took my nephews down to search for them. We had a print out of clues that I found on the Mouse on Main website.

The mice are very popular and have even had a children’s book written about them called MICE ON MAIN: HOW NINE BRONZE MICE CAME TO LIVE ON MAIN STREET.

The link below is an affiliate link.

JDaniel is a little young to find most of the mice. I pointed one out to him when we were downtown for a Touch-a-Truck event. He thought mice statues were in his words silly.

I decided to have him decorate some mice with glitter glue and crayons. I would hide them around the house. He was given clues as to where I hid the mice. He had a blast.

Two Red Ys

July 29, 2010 By Deirdre

We were exploring downtown Greenville and came across this red sculpture. It is titled Untitled. When JDaniel and I stopped to look at it, I asked him what he thought it was. He replied “Ys”. It really does look like two ys stacked together.

This sculpture is sort of symbolic of conversations I have with JDaniel some days. They seem to be filled with a least two whys.

Here are a couple of examples:

Conversation One

JDaniel:“Why did we have to stop car?”
Me: “There is a red sign that says stop on it in front of the car”
JDaniel: “Why sign?”
Me: “There are a lot of cars on the road and if we didn’t stop we could hit one.”
JDaniel: “Mom, no cars here.”
Me: “The law says I have to stop anyway”

Conversation Two
Me: “What color is that car in the picture?”
JDaniel: “Orange car”
Me: “Close. What color is that red car in the picture?”
JDaniel: “Orange car”
Me: “Honey, that car is not orange. It is a red car.”
JDaniel: “Why?”
Me: “They decided to make it that color in the book.”
JDaniel: “Why?”

Visiting the Children’s Museum of the Upstate

July 28, 2010 By Deirdre

I mentioned two weeks ago that I splurged and went to The Children’s Musuem of the Upstate. At $12 for both JDaniel and I, the visit was a special treat.

Here are some pictures from our visit:

The water play area was really wet. I got wet when he discovered you could point the toys and other objects at mommy. I didn’t have smock like JDaniel did.

Filling the car tires and adding gas were really fun for JDaniel.

This crane was built for him. The whole construction area was greatly enjoyed.

Visiting Happy Cow Farm

July 27, 2010 By Deirdre

JDaniel loved walking over the store at Happy Cow to get ice cream. The peach ice cream we got was wonderful.

They liked checking out the cows. Each thought the cows were really smelly.

JDaniel and his friend Joe loved this game. I don’t think they were playing it right, but they had fun.

Visiting the baby cows was fun too.

The best time was taking turns getting on and off the tractor. Each wanted extended periods of time this wonderful machine.

Muffin Tin Monday- Create a Car

July 26, 2010 By Deirdre

JDaniel had a create a car lunch. There were two whole wheat bread cars along with a mozzarella cheese car. Ham was used for upholstering the car. Bananas were the car wheels. Carrots were the windshield wipers.

Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Soup- Revisiting K

July 22, 2010 By Deirdre

Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe today is called Alphabet Soup. She is having everyone in the meme point out a post that we loved. I really enjoyed writing about my sister Kate and her one special Easter egg in a post called just that Kate and One Special Egg.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

Reflecting on My Freshman Year of Blogging

July 21, 2010 By Deirdre

I have just come to the end of my freshman year of blogging. Much like my freshman year in I learned a lot. There were ups, downs, missteps, and glorious moments. I would like to share with you some of the things I learned this year. They may be things you learned, don’t care about, or are learning along with me.

I started out with a routine of the types of posts I would write each day of the week. That hasn’t changed much. I like the structure of my blog.
Hosting giveaways is a ton of fun and a lot of work. I started them to draw attention to my blog. Posting them many places each week takes at a lot of time. I didn’t intend and still don’t intend to be a giveaway blog per se. I totally admire the blogs that can do it. The number of giveaways and reviews is going to go down a bit. My plan is to add one or two a week.
Finding a niche of friends to visit, comment on, and get to know is really important. I have joined several blogging groups (Mom Blogger’s Club and Secret to Success is Support) and participate in Mom Loop on BlogFrog as one of five moderators.
Memes can be a great way to find new blogs to read, meet friends, and share with others that have similar interests. I am a part of several memes ( Muffin Tin Monday, Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe, Wordless Wednesday, and stART) I don’t do all these memes every week. In the future, I think I will be cutting back to Muffin Tin Monday and Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe. Not just because they comment back and they do with a vengeance. All the memes have people that comment back. I have just found a niche in these two memes.
I have read a million times that it is not about the number of followers, subscribers, or comments. It should be about writing great posts and building friendships. The truth is I can get a thrill out of the numbers. I can also be touched by one comment or e-mail about a post that can be just as thrilling. I am going to continue to comment on tons and be better about enjoying the blogging experience.
You don’t have to have exact goals or fit into a certain blogging mold. Some blogs do and have great success. I have an eclectic mommy blog that is growing and changing as I grow and change. I guess I am like a rising sophomore without a major.