Now, more than ever, I’m finding that I need help keeping the family organized and running smoothly.  Between the kids daily activities, my work schedule and other family and extracurricular obligations, I constantly feel that I’m forgetting to do something or forgetting to take someone, somewhere.

I’ve been looking around for something to help keep our family organized and I found out about DoughMain, which is an online family organizer.  This online tool acts as a family organizer, chore tracker and allowance tracker but also offers tools that help teach children about earning money, saving money and spending money.

As someone who is required to be online most of the day because of my job, I find that using an online tool is more efficient and effective for me.  I can access our information from any computer and don’t have to wait until I get home to look at a calendar or chart.  As I’ve been using DoughMain, here are my thoughts on tools they offer.

Family Calendar: The family calendar offers the functionality to keep track of everyone’s schedules and appointments.  It is color-coded so that you can easily identify each family member and their schedule.  You have the capability to sync the calendar with other platforms and can can manage it from your smartphone.

Chore Tracker: My children are at the age now where they need to be helping out around the house.  We haven’t been really strict on chores, but now that we’ve moved into a bigger house with more square footage, it’s too much for me and my husband to do on our own.  We’ve starting assigning the children chores, but hadn’t been keeping track of who did or didn’t do what.  The Chore Tracker makes it easy to keep track of what needs to be done, assigning the chore to a specific person and also allows you the capability to assign an allowance and/or Dough Points,  for each chore done.  You can assign your child a profile and allow them to access their profile to check off completed tasks.  Once they’ve completed a chore, you will be notified and have the option to approve it, if it was done right.  Only one of my children is allowed computer time, so I login with their profile and check off completed chores for approval.

Allowance and Dough Points Tracker: There are two ways to reward for completing tasks on the chore chart.  When your children complete chores, they are awarded the amount of Dough Points you specify.  You can also specify a certain dollar amount that will be awarded every week for completing chores.  At this point, we are only awarding $5 per week allowance per child, but they can use their Dough Points for special privileges such as 30 minutes of TV time, a sleepover, pizza outing, etc.  This will allow you to keep an accurate account of what they’ve earned and will allow them to see that when they help out, they earn special privileges.

DoughMain also features online games that teach basic money lessons and how to manage a business. TheFunVault.com is a Flash game portal aimed at children five and up that teaches basic money lessons. SandDollarCity.com is a multi-player virtual world where children ages eight to 12 learn how to manage the families candy shop. As we all know, technology plays a huge role in our lives and as our children get older, it will in theirs too. I think that learning games, while still offering a fun component, is the best way for children to learn.

If you are looking for a way to get your family organized, I recommend trying out DoughMain.  It’s a free service that offers you the convenience of keeping your schedule, chore charts and allowance tracker all in one place.  If you are going to sign up for the service, in the reference code section, please type in the word “mommy.”

Giveaway:

One (1) winner will receive a $100 Visa Gift Card!

How to Enter:

Simply leave me a comment below letting me know what feature on DoughMain do you think your family could benefit the most from!

Extra Entries Available:

After you have completed the first entry, you are eligible for additional entries. Make sure you leave a separate comment for EACH entry. Each counts as one extra entry unless noted otherwise.

• Subscribe to Simply Being Mommy by reader or email.
• Add Simply Being Mommy (Crystal Reagan) on Google+.
• Join the Simply Being Mommy Community.
• “Like” Simply Being Mommy and DoughMain on Facebook.
• Follow Simply Being Mommy and DoughMain on Twitter AND Tweet about the giveaway. Leave the URL to the Tweet in your comment. You can tweet once a day, but remember to leave the URL to each tweet. You must have at least 50 followers for this extra entry. You can tweet ” Enter to win a $100 Visa Gift Card from @simplybeingmom and @DoughMainBuzz http://bit.ly/KJVPTh #giveaway “
• Create an account on DoughMain and use the reference code “mommy.”

This giveaway will end on June 5th at 11:59 PM Central time. Winner will be chosen via a random number generator. Giveaway is open to US entries. The winner must contact me in 48 hours to claim their prize. Good luck to everyone!

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. I received compensation for my time in trying out the service and facilitating this post.

The discovery of fire was one of the most monumental events in the history of the world. From before the idea of a kitchen was ever thought of, there was a fire pit. Long before there were any microwave ovens there was the open flame. Mankind has been charring, searing, roasting, and grilling everything imaginable for as long as we can document. I say why not carry on that tradition? Why let one of the oldest pastimes in known history fade in popularity? I say that we rekindle the “fire” and passion for cooking outdoors whenever possible.

Growing up I was always under the assumption that the woman of the house did all of the preparation and cooking of the meals.

WAIT!

Hold on there.

I know that some of you pulled out the “ole” comment that goes something like “pppbbbbssshhh (noise made by a woman puffing her lips out, air fiercely rushing out, and accentuated by the rolling of the eyes away from the offending male) I can’t believe he just made that typical male comment.”

Your right and I did, simply because it is all I was shown while growing up!

The males in my family went out and worked the 9 to 5 while the females stayed home to have the meal ready for her family to gather around the table. My mom, my grandmother, and my great grandmother spent countless hours in the kitchen creating meals that would hopefully bring the family all together in hopes of sharing just a little bit of extra time with each other. Looking back now, I value that. Heck, the only time in my family that the males cooked was during a couple of holidays where it was appropriate to cook outside. Even then though the ladies were inside preparing all of the sides and desserts.

These days duties and tasks in the home are now being shared more and roles are even being outright reversed. I am a husband that does dishes, vacuums, does laundry, and I do bathrooms! My wife works a day job plus she can mow the yard like no other. This even spills over into the kitchen….or should I say into all of the areas of cooking.

I truly love preparing dinner for the family. I really enjoy the times that I can walk outside and get all of the kids involved in the process of starting dinner. I usually get one to help turn the gas on below, then another to turn the gas up top on, and then another to push the starter button on the grill (if you weren’t keeping count that’s three lil’ grillers). One watches the temperature on the dial, another helps me inside with getting everything together to throw it all on the grill, and I even from time to time have an official door opener for trips inside and out.

One of the best things though is my wife’s time to not worry. She knows that I am in charge of getting everything ready so that she can take time out and do something for herself. There will not be any of this “I grill and she does every other dish to go with” type thing. These days you can throw just about anything on a grill and you come out looking like culinary big shot (okay maybe not ice cream).

The other things that are really special to me about grilling is that I don’t just fill the role of a man, but it’s the fact that I can step up and be “the man” that can give my wife a break and spend that precious time with my children. I now know why the women in my family never complained about putting dinner on the table each night. It’s because the way they felt…..I feel…when I know that the meal that I just cooked brought us together.

FIRE IT UP!

These are just some of the reasons why Grilling is my Happiness. Besides all of the tasty food, tell me what you love about grilling. One lucky readers who answers below will win a $25 Sears Gift Card! Giveaway ends on May 27th at 11:59 MST.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Sears. The opinions and text are all mine. Official Sweepstakes Rules.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Target. The opinions and text are all mine.

My husband is a trooper and you will never hear him complain with the constant sneezing, runny nose, dry eyes, etc. that he deals with every single day because of seasonal allergies.

Being the wife of a man who suffers from seasonal allergies is not fun!

Not only do I have to be careful about what I bring into our home, I have to make sure our home is always free from dust and allergens.  It’s definitely been a learning experience and I’ve learned what to do and what not to do to make sure my husband has the best chance of being able to deal with his allergies.

Working outside of the home, having a blog that requires full time hours and three adorable but needy children who require most of my time and attention — housework isn’t really at the top of my list.

Heck, who am I kidding?  Even if I wasn’t so busy, I don’t think housework would be a priority.

Through trial and elimination, we figured out what has helped him, what didn’t help him and what was a total waste of time.  Hopefully our experience will help you in dealing with seasonal allergies.

1. Get low-pollen houseplants. Since pollen is a source of allergens, if you must have plants inside the home, get low-pollen houseplants such as The Peace Lily and Swedish Ivy. Make sure you clean the foliage of any dust that may settle and avoid overwatering to discourage mold from forming in the soil.
2. Use non-toxic household cleaners. You can make a pretty powerful, non-toxic cleaner by using cheap, basic ingredients including baking soda and borax.  Sometimes the harsh ingredients in store-bought cleaners can be an allergic trigger.
3. Take a daily antihistamine.  My husband starts his day with a cup of coffee and a pill.  At the moment, he currently takes an over-the-counter medication that has been approved by his doctor.  As long as it’s working, he will keep taking it along with yearly checkups to his doctor.
4. Take care of the dust.  This requires lots of dusting and lots of vacuuming — two things I HATE doing.  I suggest using a vacuum with a HEPA filter and vacuuming often.  Particles are brought in on the bottom of shoes, blown in when doors are open, etc.  Because dust can be a allergic trigger, we don’t have many “collectibles” around the house that collect dust.  We keep things minimal, therefore making dusting a bit easier.
5. Stay hydrated. Drink lots of water to flush out your system and support the elimination of any foreign irritants in your system. Staying hydrated also thins out mucus and supports healthy sinus drainage. Try to avoid beverages that contain alcohol or caffeine as they are dehydrating.

Finding what works for your family will take time. At least it did for us anyway.  My husband wasn’t really keen on taking a daily pill, but once he started and saw how much it helped, he makes sure there is always some in the medicine cabinet.  It’s definitely a team effort, in which the whole family must help, because as shown above, it requires so much!

We’ve used it as a lesson on teaching the children to keep a clean house.  The oldest child helps us with vacuuming and the younger children help with the dusting.  It takes some of the load off of me, they earn a couple of bucks doing chores and my husband benefits from a nice, clean house.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

Visit WebMD’s “Mom’s Guide to Family Health” for more information on how you can keep your family healthy through allergy season.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been pretty scarce around the online world and I feel like I’ve been living a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.  You would think that my world had been turned upside down, but it’s nothing like that and I feel quite embarrassed at how poorly I’ve handled my current situation.

It all started when we decided to put our home on the market and look for a home in a neighborhood so the children could work more on their social skills and have friends that actually lived close enough so that they could have friends over to play.

No big deal, right?

Wrong!

Since we signed the listing agreement, my life has been a whirlwind of sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, wiping counter tops, dusting and picking up after the children to maintain a show ready home.

With three small children who really don’t do anything around here, it’s been hard.

And I can’t forget to mention that we received an offer on our home, just a few short weeks later.

We were so excited to receive that offer and our dreams of owning a home in a neighborhood was becoming more of a reality than a dream.

Then we were told that the buyers wanted us out of our home by March 9th.  “Are you kidding me” was all I could say when my realtor told me.  That barely gave us a month to find another home.  If you’ve ever purchased a home, you know that it isn’t something that can be done quickly.  We’d have to schedule times to go look at homes and if we were lucky enough to find a home we liked fairly quickly, we would have to start the whole mortgage process which could take weeks.

Stress, stress and more stress!

We were able to talk the buyers into giving us a few extra days but that means we close during the week, on the 13th.  And, they were only willing to give us a 48 hour lease buy back.  That means, we have to move during the week all while working and doing our normal daily activities.

Stress, stress and more stress!

We immediately started our home search and only found one home that fit all but one of our requirements.  It’s a new construction home in a neighborhood but it doesn’t have a fireplace.  But, it’s absolutely beautiful.  I love it, my husband loves it and the children love it.

The problem is that it was more than I wanted to spend.  I like to live well within my means and not overextend in any way.  The asking price was more than I felt comfortable with.  So, we made an offer, the builder countered and we countered back.  We’re still waiting to hear back from the builder all while the March 13th closing date is drawing near.  If they don’t accept our offer, we will be back to the drawing board which means we won’t have a home to move in to after we close on our current home.

I’ve been a complete mess.  My stomach is constantly in knots, my attitude sucks, and I’m in a constant state of panic!

If I’ve learned anything during this process, it’s that I don’t handle stress well, at all!

I love date nights and adore the time I have with hubby when it’s just the two us.

No one to interrupt our thoughts, no one that needs a refill in their sippy cup and no one that needs their butt wiped.

It’s date nights where my husband and I actually get a chance to talk.  A chance to reconnect after a long, stressful week.  A chance to be a couple and not just mommy and daddy.

Last Saturday night we decided that it was an Olive Garden kind of night, so we dropped the children off with my parents and we headed out.

We arrived at a terrible time and had a wait of 45-55 minutes.  There was no room inside of the restaurant, so we waited, patiently outside for a hour…in the cold.

After a hour, my body couldn’t handle the cold anymore and we decided we would go in and check on the status.  Come to find out they had paged our pager, but the pager wasn’t working…Not a nice start to our date but it gave us time to cuddle outside in the cold.

We were finally seated at a huge corner table.  We felt bad taking such a huge table, but it was kind of nice to have all that room and not have to share it with the kiddos.

Since we were absolutely starving, we ordered a pretty huge appetizer.  We couldn’t decide what we wanted so we just ordered the sampler that came with our choice of three different items.  We finally decided on the fried mozzarella, stuffed mushrooms and ravioli.

We should have stopped there as it was obviously a ton of food, but who wants to stop when the food tastes so good. So we went ahead and ordered two meals.

I know, I know. You’re thinking we’re pigs and honestly, I can’t blame you. We ate so much, but had such a great time!  The food was absolutely delicious and the waiter was phenomenal.  We never had an empty glass and he made sure we were completely taken care of.

We had a great night out and I can’t wait for our next date night!

A big thanks to the folks at Olive Garden for a great date night. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. I received a gift card in order to facilitate this post.

These three dudes totally keep me on my toes and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!

Those first few weeks after coming home with baby seem to be a blur.  Weeks or months in my case of sleepness nights and I felt like I was running on fumes. But just looking at my sweet little bundle of joy all wrapped up cozy and warm, gave me the motivation I needed to keep on going.

While my babies aren’t really “babies” anymore, when they were younger, the thing I looked forward to most was hearing them call me mama.  That moment was incredibly special for me with each of my children.  After hearing them call me mama, the thing I looked forward to most was them walking.  I loved watching them learning to use their little legs to get them where they wanted to go and seeing how excited that they figured it out.

With my first child, I kept track of all “firsts”, memories and developmental milestones in a baby book. With my second and third children, instead of using a baby book, I wrote down these special occasions into a spiral notebook. While I love my daughters baby book, it just isn’t as cute as I thought it was when I bought it. So my thinking with my other children was that I could create more of a scrapbook style book with all these important memories later on. Instead of a standard baby book with teddy bears and rattles, I could create a baby book with their pictures.

Philip AVENT now offers a free iPhone application, “My Baby & Me” that allows you to keep track of your baby’s health and growth, sleep patterns, diaper changes, and feeding schedule which can then be combined into a sharable movie of all your baby’s firsts.

How do you or did you keep track of all your baby’s milestones and memories?  Join the discussion on the Philips AVENT Mom Tribe and be entered to win one of four spout cups or a baby monitor.

I am a Philips AVENT Mom Ambassador for Mom Bloggers Club and will be compensated for my time sharing about my journey of motherhood.

I’m the world’s worst about getting family photos taken.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m constantly taking pictures of the children and Ryan, but since I’m the one always taking the pictures, I’m always left out of the photos.

However, this year, thanks to my friends over at Nautica, our family pictures turned out absolutely amazing.  With the help of my mother and a tripod, we were able to capture all of us, hand in hand.

I absolutely love these pictures.  I was always jealous seeing other family pictures taken in interesting places and I think my mom, my Canon camera and our tripod did a great job of capturing this shot.

On November 7th, Nautica launched the Holiday Well Wishes Photo Project and as part of this project, Nautica will donate $5,000 to Charity: Water to fund a project that will provide clean drinking water for a community in a developing nation. Charity: Water uses 100% of the public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. To join the Holiday “Well” Wishes Photo Project and show support, you can upload a photo of your family wearing Nautica to the Nautica Facebook wall and share how your family gives back during the holidays.

As a special offer to my readers, Nautica is extending a 30% off coupon code good until November 14th.  When you shop at Nautica.com, use code BLOG30 to save 30% off your apparel purchase.

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. I received media samples in order to facilitate this review.

Does being a hero mean you have to have a special superpower or possess a talent or ability that no one else has?

No. Not in my eyes.

To me, being a hero is someone who always stands up for what is right. Someone who thinks about others before themselves.  Someone who tries to lead by example.  Someone who loves no matter what the cost.

That’s a hero to me.

That’s my mom.

Although growing up, I never thought I’d call her a hero.  She was my mom, the one who disciplined, who said “no” more times than the number of hairs on my head.  She kept me out of harms way and taught me how to be a respectable adult.  She raised me to always be honest and caring.  She made sure I had the best life possible and gave me all the tools to succeed.

She was and still is my hero.

Maybe you know a heroic mom or maybe you see one when you look in the mirror. Share your story and be entered for a chance to win $2,500 cash from Allstate. Plus four runner-ups will receive a $100 Visa Gift Card. *The five finalists will be chosen from the Entries receiving the most votes.  

As a mom, one of the most important things you can do is purchase life insurance to protect your families future. Allstate has been helping to do just that with a range of life insurance products for over 50 years. If you’d like to get a quote, please visit allstate.com/life.

Disclosure: This is post is Sponsored by Allstate. The opinions expressed here are strictly my own. Official Contest Rules

Being able to become pregnant and carry a child is truly a miracle.  A miracle that I had the opportunity to experience three times.  My pregnancies were easy and even enjoyable and if given the opportunity, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I’ve been featured on the ABC News page for my participation in the Million Moms Challenge, with my post The Waiting Game.

I hope you’ll join me in joining the Million Moms Challenge and by simply leaving a comment on the ABC News page, you will be entered to win an exclusive Million Moms Challenge Gift Pack, which includes an all-expenses-paid trip to a conference on mothers hosted by the UN Foundation in DC (Jan/Feb 2012), an iPad2, a custom-made Million Moms Challenge pendant and $50 donation in your name to Global Giving.

Please raise your hand and say you’ll help this call to make healthy pregnancies, safe births, and children who survive and thrive a basic right around the world.