For a long time, I’ve been keeping them on the hard drive of our home computer.  I have an external hard drive where occasionally I copy everything.  But what if there is a fire or flood in the house?  Both would be lost.   I needed a better solution.

One low budget idea that came to mind was to keep the external drive at a friend’s house.  That way it would be safe from a disaster at my house, but it would be a pain to keep it in sync with the latest pictures and videos.   A better idea would be to store them in the “cloud”, using a backup service to copy files to a hosted computer that is secure.  But all the online backup services I looked at were expensive, costing hundreds of dollars a year to maintain.

Enter CrashPlan.   (Disclosure: I received a free one year subscription to CrashPlan+ to write this review, but what I put in the review is completely my own).  CrashPlan has the features I’d expect from a backup service.  Install a client to your desktop, select which folders you want to backup, and it runs continuously in the background keeping your files in sync with the backup location.  But here’s where it gets interesting.  The backup location can be 1) Another folder like an external hard drive, 2) Another computer anywhere like a friend’s house, or 3) Online at CrashPlan’s computers.  The first two options are completely free.  If you don’t have a trustworthy friend you can pay a few dollars a month for option 3.

Your backed up files are available online, to download whenever you need.  You can even restore the files as they existed at any point in time, which is handy if you mistakenly overwrite a file, or if tiny fingers on the keyboard manage to delete a file.  There is even a free iPhone or Android app to let you access files remotely.

If you have lots of digital pictures and videos, you need a backup plan.  I suggest you take a look at CrashPlan.

You probably get pages of coupons with the weekend newspaper. How many coupons do you end up tossing away because your family doesn’t use the products?

What if there were an easy way to trade the coupons you don’t want, for more of the ones you do? What if it were absolutely free? Enter Coupon Whirl. A free online coupon exchange that makes it easy.

Coupon Whirl is SuburbanDaddy’s latest side project. I conceived it while watching an episode of TLC’s Extreme Couponing with SuburbanMommy. (Before you make fun and take away my man card for watching TLC, realize I have 4 kids and lost that card a very long time ago).

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

The classic toys and games, many of the same ones I played as a kid, are still great and kids love them.

Right now, the most popular game in my house is Hungry Hungry Hippos. It’s not very exciting by today’s standards but seems to work. Thing 3 keeps it in his bedroom and asks to play it all the time.

Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and Slip n Slide have all been hits in our house. What other classics are still popular?

But we realized we’ll have to do it sooner or later so yesterday we had a brand new, Carrier Infinity installed.  It’s the mac daddy of air conditioners home comfort technology.  It’s got a lot of whiz bang features like showing you the outside temperature on the thermostat and speaking of thermostat, it looks like an iPad hanging on the wall.

All that is nice, but last night I found out the feature that makes the hefty price tag worth it.  Apparently it does such a good job with its “home comfort technology”, that everyone in the house slept in until 6:30am!  At the same time.  You have to realize how amazing this is for us.  In the last 8 years, I don’t think we’ve ever slept that late.  We’ll see tomorrow if it was a fluke or the Carrier Infinity.

The Little Looster is a plastic stool that surrounds your toilet.  It is designed to help little ones climb up on the potty, and because of its unique wraparound shape, gives them a place to rest their legs while sitting.  Ingenious!

The stool is made out of sturdy plastic and was able to easily support my weight.  It is wide in the front and narrower along the sides, providing a nice fit along the toilet base.  And it’s slim enough not to interfere when adults use the toilet.

It arrived in a big shipping box, with bubble wrap, which was enough to get Thing 3’s curiosity way up.  I was hoping the excitement would be enough to get him to actually sit on the potty.  But he still refused, and I know enough not to push it with him.  Luckily, Thing 2 was more than happy to demonstrate how it works.

You can find out more about The Little Looster  at littlelooster.com.

I recently found a new website where you can do just that. ThredUP Kids is the way busy families conveniently exchange kids clothing online. ThredUP already lets you exchange adult clothing and the kids service is launching soon. You can sign up now.

Note: I did not receive any incentives to post this. I just think it’s a great idea.

KneeBouncers gives babies and toddlers the opportunity to play on the internet, without the use of a mouse. Loaded with games, little kids can make magic happen on the screen with any tap on the keyboard. All the keys do the same thing, so they can’t mess it up. Brilliant!

I especially like that the site was started by two dads. Reading their story, I know exactly where they are coming from. A third child that tries to keep up with their older siblings, gets frustrated, and causes trouble for everyone? Sounds a little familiar.

I will be trying KneeBouncers this weekend with Thing 3.  We’ll see how it goes.

We have found the perfect outlet for their energy in a $35 trampoline. Just add some friendly sibling competition, “Who can jump the most times without stopping?”, and you’ve got yourself 30 minutes of peace.

Talking Buzz Lightyear? check. Toy Story DVD? check. Toy Story book and pajamas? Check and check.

This picture is right after he woke up. He slept with all these items in his crib. And he will carry them around with him all day.

I applaud them for what they are trying to do. Packaged in colorful bags with silly names, Funky Monkey is attacking the age old problem of making healthy food appealing to kids. So, how did they stand up to the kid review panel of Thing 1 and Thing 2?

The packaging and marketing part worked. They couldn’t wait to try them. Even Thing 1, who won’t eat most fruits, tried the pineapple and mango. Even after I told him it was pineapple and mango fruits.

But the excitement faded after they had eaten a few. It’s no knock on Funky Monkey, but it’s just not easy to make freeze dried fruit taste as good as chocolate teddy bears or artificial fruit snacks.

Bottom line: The packaging is great so you might get a kid who won’t eat fruit to try some. But don’t expect miracles.

I still like my method to get kids to eat healthy food. Cover it with whipped cream.