While watching videos on YouTube about Disney World, with my children when I stumbled across a video that two parents made for young their children while they were on vacation in Disney World without them.  They were there for their anniversary and left their kids at home with a family member but to make it up to their children they went to all of the character greetings and filmed the characters saying “Hi” to their children.  To show what great parents they were they put it on You Tube.

My favorite part of their video was when Cinderella said “You left them at home?  How sad!” Then she looked in the camera and said, “I hope your parents bring you to Disney World next time they come.”

There are many vacations you can go on as a couple that are not much fun for young children. Here are a few things that are not easy to do with a 3 year old: White water rafting, mountain biking, hiking and primitive camping, surfing, canoeing, relaxing on a beach, going to a spa, touring old churches, hiking ruins, clothes shopping, or Vegas is another place that really is not made for young children.

Disney World is a perfect place to bring your 3 year old. This is a vacation that is designed to be the most magical place on earth for little kids.  There are kids standing in awe gazing at their favorite characters from movies around every corner, shows set up to dazzle them, rides set up for them to remember in visions the rest of their life.  It is not only fun for parents, but brings tears to your eyes and warms your heart when you see how much fun and magic your kids are experiencing.

I will never forget my 2.5 year old son “driving” a race car and yet not being able to see over the steering wheel, he was so proud!  Only at Disney!  I will also never forget my daughter in her Cinderella dress and glass slippers when the princesses came out to meet her during dinner at Cinderella’s Castle.  There are so many memories and wonderful experiences my children have made each time we bring them to Disney World.

Disney World is a place that children are everywhere.  You will not be able to be in your hotel room without hearing little feet running down the hallway excited to go to the pool.   Everywhere you go you will not be able to forget that this place is made for families, nor will you forget that you left your kids at home and made them miss out on this experience.

You want an adult vacation?  Go to an adult vacation and do adult things.

You want to go to Disney World, bring your young children.  It is fun for adults, but the Disney magic is made for children!

Many people have said to me you never stay home do you?  I will answer them not really, I am the anti-stay at home, stay at home mom.  I love bringing my kids many different places and letting them experience life.

-Don’t just read about doing things or watch them on tv, actually do things!!!

-Teach your children about life by giving them life experiences.

-Teach your children when to feel safe and when to feel leery of others by being around many different people.

-Teach your children how to solve problems by giving them real life opportunities to practice solving them.

-You can’t create life experiences if you never leave the house.

It is a whole lot easier to not leave the house, to not have to plan ahead, pack lunches, pack snacks, pack strollers, bundle up little kids, worry about melt downs, but that does not mean you should take the easy road and stay home.

Your kids will be healthier if you never bring them out of the house and expose them to germs from other sick kids with their sticky, dirty, germy hands touching everything that your kids will touch.  How will your childs immune system deal with the onslaught of germs once they reach school age if they have not already had every one of the normal childhood illnesses?

Your kids wont have to experience mean children if you never bring them places where mean children play.   How are they going to learn how to defend themselves and when it is important to stand up for themselves and others?   There will always be mean kids, mean teenagers and mean adults, give them the life experiences and talk to them about how to deal with mean people and stand up for themselves without being violent.

Your kids won’t know how fortunate they are if they dont see poor people. If you never bring them downtown and let them see the homeless people walking out of the shelter or staying warm in the skyways.  Let them appreciate their good fortune and see first hand how some people live, teach them kindness and empathy.

Your kids need to see that there are dangerous people in the world that they need to watch out for.  Teach them to appreciate that the police and fire departments are here, show them what a burnt down house looks like,  point out to them that bad people get caught and get arrested.

Your kids will not learn to stand up for themselves if they don’t see you standing up for yourself!  If we never leave the house we would not experience that not everyone in the world are honest or rule followers.  My children have witnessed me standing up for what I believe is right by me confronting others.

Let your kids experience unfairness when they have been standing in line to go across the lily pads at the pool and a rude kid cuts in front of them. Use that as  a learning experience to teach them to stand up for themselves in the future and to say I was here first.

Show your children which people you want them to avoid because they are scary or give you a bad feeling, let them learn to trust their instincts and know that not all people are good. Give your kids opportunities to be around strangers so you can teach them which strangers are not okay to talk to.

Let your kids learn about life by experiencing it first hand, bring your kids in as many places as you can, teach them how to live life around all different kinds of people not just people who you want to associate with. Give them the skills to live through life experiences, and the real world opportunities to practice those skills.

Despite being more work, more time, more germs, more mean kids, more frightening, I bring my kids out to experience the world!

You walk out to get the mail and a cute postcard shows up! It is an invitation from a friend of yours inviting you to come to her house for a party! No, not a birthday party or a party for the sake of having a party, it is a party for a product, jewelery, candles, spices, wine, Tupperware, makeup, cleaning supplies, stickers, books, shaky things, you name it there is a “party” for it. But is it really a party? No, it is a closed door sales opportunity for the person, (insert the key word here) Beauty, Candle, Culinary, Health, Paper “Consultant” who makes a commission on that product. Don’t even get me started on the loose usage of the term consultant.

It is a tough situation when you get one of these invites, you want to be around your friends, you don’t want to be the one who doesn’t show up in case something fun happens after the pitch is over and the checks are written, you don’t want to be the only person not in the pics posted on Facebook, you certainly don’t need any $30 cleaner, $200 costume jewelry, or to spend $20 dollars on a three dollar 3M cleaning microfiber cloth, but your friend invited you into their home, they shampooed their carpets, they gave you some great wine and some cocktail wienies so you feel like you need to buy something to make up for the cost of your attendance to their party. Why buy something? Because then they will get a percentage of the sales at their party to get free product from whatever wares the sales consultant is hawking that day.

Now after the drink in you has loosened your inhibitions and helped you to loosen your purse strings, you go up to write the check that you feel guilty to write, as a thank you to your friend who shared her hospitality with you and fed you, and gave you that drink. You scribble the total on line one, plus shipping and handling, and you get the face to face pressure from the sales consultant, “Do you want any information to be a consultant?” Um, no. “Do you want to help your friend, the hostess, out by booking your own party?” (so I can leech on your friends?) Um, no.

I was at a home party where the sales lady was visibly angry at me for not buying anything, her true nature came out when I handed her back the blank order form. I have been at home parties where the sales lady yelled at our group of friends at the “party” for not being quiet enough to listen to her pitch. Is that how a party is supposed to feel?

There are positive things about being a home based business sales person.. It gives opportunities to many women to be their own boss, set their own hours, be able to afford to stay home with their children in the daytime. It also allows women to be part of something they feel passionate about, I think people with extra funds should certainly help support these businesses.

Sometimes the product the sales person is pushing on you is something you do not need. Something that if you really want, you can get way cheaper at Target or online without paying the percentage to your hostess, the percentage to your sales consultant, the percentage to the person who hired your sales consultant, and the percentage to their area manager, and then the profit margin to the corporate headquarters. That is a lot of percentages to a lot of people in that company pyramid. Is that pyramid any different than a big corporation who sells me products from the store? Not much, but the bottom line is usually less painful to my bottom line.

Show me a more high pressure sales situation that you encounter buying everyday things. When I walk around the grocery store on free sample day, I don’t have to buy one of the special products unless I want to! There is no consultant at Cub, Target, Macy’s that is sitting in front of the deli counter, the checkout lane or by the front door expecting you to help them make their monthly quota, no friend who you feel obligated to help to make this party worth their while by helping them to complete their collection of furry handcuffs.

I have wonderful friends who will come out and say don’t feel like you have to buy anything I just want you to come to hang out, so I am grateful. If you don’t have a friend who tells you they don’t expect you to buy something and means it, then don’t feel that you are expected to go to their parties. I know I am not the only person in the world who feels this way. I am not saying I wont go to a home party anymore but I have decided I have no desire to be a hostess to put this unspoken pressure on my friends, I also needed to come to grips with my own feelings about home parties.

Why can’t we just have real parties with no reason, no sales consultant there to pressure you into buying goods that she is so jazzed up about her cheeks are going to hurt from smiling tomorrow? Why can’t we get together and just sit around, play a game, try out the appetizers that we all brought? I like those kind of parties best.

I have been thinking about Internet safety a lot lately. I have a Facebook account and wonder if putting information on the web could put my family at risk. I don’t publish posts like I am at the lake, or I am in Omaha! I will instead post location information when I return like, I just got back from Omaha! I continue to respond to friends posts and comment on photos when I am away and make general status updates, but wait until I return to post pictures or post a comment where I was or what I did there. Posting from my phone could mean I am standing in my driveway, or that my son is using my computer right now, not a definite sign that I am not home. Not posting my location information immediately is way easier said than done. We spent 10 days on vacation this spring, I wanted so badly to post a picture of the awesome places we were visiting, and show everyone the view I woke up to each morning, but I controlled myself and waited until I returned.

Now there is the phenomenon of Facebook Places and Foursquare, you are telling the world that you are not home, you are also telling people exactly where you are at that moment if they want to find you in public. What if you are somewhere alone with your children like at a park or walking out to a dark car and someone has it out for you. You are telling them that you have your home unoccupied and go ahead and break into my home when I am at the Twins Game for the next three hours.

I am also vigilant about not posting my children’s real names on Facebook and especially vigilant about posting my children’s names and close up photos of my children on my momlifestyle.com site because that is public. I would never want someone who does not speak with me personally to know my children’s names. I only post nicknames because I don’t want a stranger to be able to call my children over to their car by their real names when I am not around.

I also try to protect my children’s privacy rights by letting them introduce themselves to the cyber world when they are ready and old enough, not because it is convenient for me. I wonder about the safety of blog sites that show photographs and full names of their children. It does not seem very ethical to me to sell your children’s images and experiences for others to read, there are plenty of mom related sites that do make a profit from posting their children online. It would be incredibly easy for me to write daily articles if I told everyone stories of my children in addition to showing cute kid pics of my kids. If you notice most of my articles are about parenting topics that reference my experiences with my children but not specifically focused on my children and their information.

I may be going over the top with millions of blogs and public information out there about peoples children but I would rather play it on the safe side. I am not going to stop blogging because I love being able to express my opinions on my web page and get feedback from others. But I will continue to keep my childrens names private and not tell people where we are on a moment by moment basis. I will continue to protect my children anyway possible including protecting their privacy on the Internet.