Reward Yourself

As an at home parent it is sometimes hard to find ways to bring in money. I do a little on the side to pay for child support for my daughter but just don't have the time to really do a part-time job. To do a little extra I take part in a few different reward programs that will give me some extra cash to spend.

Disclaimer: In this post I will be including links that will give me credit or cash for referring. I would appreciate it if you want to try out a service or app that you would use my link or code but I fully understand if you don't want to. The point of this post is to highlight different options out there that I find fruitful. 

I try to stay away from the "do this and be entered into a contest" type of rewards simply because the odds just are not good enough to justify my time. I like to actually see some "points" that I know will eventually get me a gift card or some item I find useful.

Here are some sites and Apps that give me some real money to spend:

I really like Ibotta. For any parent that does the majority of the shopping this app really delivers. Before you plan your shopping list look on ibotta and see what deals they have and plan to buy the one they list. Once you buy them and get home just scan the items listed, do a couple small tasks that take no more than 20 seconds, scan the receipt with your phone camera and hit submit. So far after only casually (casually meaning only buy stuff I need) using it for about 6 months I have made $20. They have many great stores and they are always expanding. Recently they started offering different restaurants and other non grocery places. 

Receipt Hog

This is a new one for me. It works differently then ibotta but holds to the same idea of scanning receipts. I took the same receipt I scanned in for ibotta and it rewarded me with 15 coins. Eventually those coins will add up and I will have enough to get cash or an Amazon card. I will update this with more thought once I have used it more.

This one is my favorite. I know what you are saying: "Really? Bing...Nobody likes Bing." You would be right of course...Nothing beats Google but the rewards are worth it. I have used it for about 9 months and have made over $100 dollars in Tango Cards (Which can be traded into Amazon cards with no fee.) I really stand behind this and if you really don't like using Bing then just pop in for 10 minutes everyday and click around until you get all your points for the day. 

And here are the ones I use that will earn points based on stuff I already buy:

My Coke Rewards

I have been using My Coke Rewards for a long time. Pretty much since they first started them. When I first started I was delivering newspapers full time so when trash day came and people recycled their coke boxes with the codes still on them I profited. In the first year, I had earned a nice tote back I still use as a diaper bag, a $50 Adidas gift card, an Adidas workout shirt and a bunch of free 12 packs of coke. No adays we try not to drink much pop and I don't deliver a full paper route on trash days so the points trickle in here or there. I keep it up because I know eventually I will get something. I have to be careful because if I don't enter in a code every 90 days I will lose all my points.

Just like My Coke Rewards but featuring every product from Kellogg's. Go through your cabinet and fridge I am willing to bet you have a ton of Kellogg's products that have codes on them. These I have been saving up and have over 8000 points right now. I love this one because a couple times a year they do double points days. I will save up all my points and cash them in on that day. Of course, like Coke I have to enter one in every once in a while to keep the points.

This one of my favorites. Not only do you get codes from any Disney movie you buy but you also can get points from movie tickets and music CDs. I haven't cashed in anything yest but having been casually using it for a long time I have enough to get some decent BluRays. And if you have any movies sitting around with the codes unused then you might want to so this oon because until the end of March they have special deal: Input 3 codes and get a free BluRay combo set. We choose Cars.

Why I Do This

I want to share this with everyone. Not for the awesome praise I received from my aunt but to highlight why I am involved with At-Home Dads groups and why I write my blog. Honestly, this is why I do what I do.

"I will also take this time to share with you how proud I am of the dad you have become. I have to admit when your mom told me you were quitting your job to stay at home with the kids. I was like What!!! He is a man and father he needs to support his family. I did not understand nor did I want to. But now looking back I have to admit that was probably one of the best choices you could have made. You have grown so much as a father and a person since you have become a stay at home dad. You have 2 maybe 3 more years to be a stay at home daddy before Ben heads off to school, than I want you to get out and get a job: ) lol. You are building fond memories with your children and they will always be thankful for your roll as a father who took care of his kids and wife in a way that no other man can say he did. I now find myself defending stay at home father's instead of thinking of them as just being lazy. By watching you i have changed the way I think in so many ways myself. I am proud of you."

Her comment reflects what all At-Home Dads are trying to highlight that it is OK for a dad to stay home for his family. Yes, I will eventually get a job and hopefully a decent cereer but she is right these memoires will last for ever and I know I will look back on them fondly. And hopefully, so will my kids.

Also...As an at home parent it's nice to get this kind of praise.

It's That Time of Year Again: Disney On Ice Giveaway.

The month of March is full of thing people look forward to. For College students it's Saint Patrick's Day and Mardi Gras. For the Polish it's Fat Tuesday while Sports nuts have March Madness. For my wife it's all about the Shamrock Shake at McDonalds but for me it's Disney on Ice here in Metro Detroit. I have attended at least two Disney on Ice performances in the past with my daughter who is now 11. The past couple years I haven't had the chance to go but now that my kids are all 3 and up I think I can trust to take them without pulling out the hair I wish I had.

I have never kept it a secret about my love for figure skating. Ever since I was a kid I was fascinated by the sport. I used to follow it religiously in high school but now a days I only pay attention every 4 years; during the Winter Olympics. These yearly shows allow me to enjoy a sport I don't normally get to see live. Combine that with the fact it is Disney and kid friendly, meaning they don't have to like figure skating to enjoy the show, then you have a fun time to be had. 

On March 19th thru the 21st, Disney and FELD Entertainment will be bringing the Disney on Ice: Let's Celebrate show to the Palace of Auburn Hills right near me. It sounds like it will be fun with a number if our household favorite characters performing. Here is the description: 

"It’s one colossal party on ice, with all your favorite Disney friends! Join Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse as they celebrate a Very Merry Unbirthday Party with Alice and the Mad Hatter; Mardi Gras with Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen; a Royal Valentine’s Day Ball with the Disney Princesses; a Hawaiian luau with Lilo & Stitch; a winter wonderland with Woody, Jessie and Buzz Lightyear; a Halloween haunt with the Disney Villains and more in a magical medley of holidays, celebrations and festivals from around the globe. Come join the party when this spectacular ice show visits your hometown!" 

As a special promotion to my readers Disney on Ice is offering a discount on tickets.

Used the Code: 18MOM to get tickets for only $18!!

Just use this link to make your purchase and to see if you have any shows near you!

http://www.ticketmaster.com/venueartist/65562/1349262

Disclaimer: Valid on the $26 and $20 price levels only.  Not valid with any other offer or discount.  Must purchase via ticketmaster.com.  Limit of 8 tickets per order.  

Please thank them over at:

Facebook: Disney On Ice

Twitter: @DisneyOnIce

Now for the fun part!!!! The great people in charge of Disney on Ice, FELD Entertainment are going to give one of you lucky readers a set of 4 tickets to see Disney on Ice at the Palace of Auburn Hills with your family!!!

How do you win you may ask? Well...Fill out the form below.

Also if you do not want to like the pages that is required or use your Facebook account just leave a comment with your name and email and I will add you to the list

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: FELD Entertainment is providing my family with tickets in exchange for this post.

Don't Shame the Girl, Shame the Parents

We have all seen it before. Some young girl wants to be famous and gets a music video made. It becomes viral for being terrible and the internet blows up. People start laughing and pointing at the young girl and in some cases even threatening the child. We first really saw it with Rebecca Black and her song "Friday" but now we have hit new low with "Shush Up" by Alison Gold.

In the video we see this 11 year old dancing around sexually in tight little outfits, being put on death row and even a few really creepy parts where she is upset about her adult boyfriend being locked up...Or something. I don't know I had to keep looking away out of fear the FBI would be knocking down my door for looking at this.

It is very easy to see this and go right for the girl but if you look deeper into what this is all about we should not be mad at her. This gem was created by Patrice Wilson of ARK Music Factory. What this guy does is charge a fee to write, produce and record a video for anyone that is willing to pay $2,000 to $4,000. Mind you, they get no rights to the song or video therefore Patrice Wilson is the one profiting from this garbage. In this case, much like the "Friday" video, we are seeing the parents paying for this man to do this for their child. 

What are these parents thinking! It is our job to protect our children and make sure they aren't presented in a way that will put them in danger. This video is a not only over-sexualizing a child but it is putting her in a position to be drooled over by pedophiles and ridiculed by the rest of the sane population. How can you protect you kids if you are paying someone to make something like this. I understand the girl probably is asking for this to be done but this is where you have to step in and say, "No" or "If you want but it has to be appropriate for your age." If they still want to make a video like this why must it be posted to Youtube? Can't you produce a song and video without releasing it to the public to mock.

To the parents of Alison Gold I say this: Take a good look at this video. See how the world is seeing your daughter in this video. Is that what you really want for her? I can't believe any parent would. I have an 11 year old the thought of her doing this make me taste vomit at the back of my throat. If you don't do something now and learn to tell them, "No." I guarantee you that you will regret it later if you don't.

Update: It would seem the video was taken down. Be happy you didn't get to see it.

Enjoy The Silence

Here I am sitting at my computer, the sun is bright and the 13 inches of snow outside my door is shining in every window. The only sound to be heard is the TV playing an episode of Octanauts and the occasional laugh and happy noises of a fidgeting 2 year old. My 3 oldest are not home because school is finally back in session. We had great Christmas break that wasn't to crazy and the weekend after January 1st we were all ready for school to start. Liam was ready to start his Violin lessons again, Jude wanted to see his friends again and Gabi was looking forward to having here holiday party that got set aside when school was canceled on the Friday before break. Then it started to snow; and snow and snow and snow. We looked at maps showing what areas in Michigan were going to get the most snow and found our house; right on the inner edge of the giant red dot showing what area would get 12+ inches of snow. I knew right then school would have to be canceled. Everything was going good until the Monday night. At the time, around 9:30pm, we had around 8 inches and the cable and internet went out. I thought, "OK. It should be back on in the morning and we will be fine." It wasn't back on in the morning. In fact it didn't come back on until 1pmWednesday. Tuesday was rough because the kids didn't want to watch any of the DVDs we had and just wanted to toss the toys around instead of actually play with them. By Wednesday they lost all interest in TV, until the cable came back later on, unfortunately they had already been terrible monsters fighting and screaming at every chance. But I managed to pull though, I got the house cleaned, laundry done and even had all the toys sorted and put away before Silva even got home. This, of course, means that now the house is mostly clean. In fact I feel like I don't know what to do. I'm trying to avoid things that will suck up all my time and make it go by fast but all I want to do is sleep. But it would be wrong of me to nap while my 2 year old is running around...Right? I guess I might as well just enjoy the silence..

I Knew You Before You Even Existed

I love music. There are many different genres and I can honestly say that I like something in every one of them. There are some I don't like as much as others, such there are still some rap songs that I do enjoy. Of all the many artists out there, I feel you can group them all into 4 different categories: Those that make music for the sake of music, those that make music for the sake of poetry, those that make music for the sake of money and those that make music for the sake of emotion. The first two are both great reasons. If you do it for music you pay attention to the sound and the movement of the sound. If you do it for poetry, the words are more important and you look to the music later. The third is not a good one at all and you only care about producing something that will be huge, so you lip sync or over modulate your voice and pay others to write your songs. The final is the rarest and most powerful of the 4. The 4th mixes the best of the first two. You look for the best sound you can to create a feeling that will make some one tear up. Then you look to the words and give it all the attention to complement the sound you created.

I have mentioned in a few of my posts on here about a group called M83 that has blown me away recently. This group creates emotion like it comes natural to them. Most of the time my listening to them has caused tears. The trailer for the movie "Cloud Atlas," which made me cry featured one of their songs. The movie "Oblivion" used them to score the entire film, which made me cry. In my post on my blog about the 18th Annual At-Home Dads Convention, I mention how the album caused me to tear up while thinking about my kids. That was with no visual influence. Just the words and music created an emotional connection to me that cause me to break down.

Now on to my real reason for bringing them up again. I have been listening to their most recent album a lot and their first track simply titled, "Intro", has a line that I have misinterpreted. I thought it said, "We KNEW you before you even existed", but it actually says, "We WERE you before you even existed". Before I even knew what the real words were I thought a lot about that phrase, "We knew you before we even existed". As a father of four kids I immediately thought about my kids. Actually, as a father I think about my kids with just about anything, but this time it made sense to me.

I never met my daughter until she was 18 months and didn't know she was mine until she was 2. One could imagine that it would be hard for an 18 year old to understand that this kid is a part of him, but for me it was right. When I looked into my Gabi's eyes I just knew I knew her before. I felt like I had always known her. It was as if I knew here before. Before she even existed. Since then there have been doubts about whether or not I am actually her father and I myself even question it. I never had a test done but something tells me that no test will give me an answer because I still knew her before. She has always been mine and I have always know we were destined to be together as a father and daughter. In 2007, my oldest son was born. When I saw him I knew I had known him forever. Before he existed. I knew who he was. It all clicked to me. The emotions I fear to show before he was born all came out. I saw us in him. I saw my wife, I saw myself and I knew that he was us. We were him. We came together to create him. His emotions, his love, his anger, his fear, his looks, his touch, his every being was us. We were him. Even now that he is 6 I still see us.

When a parent first sees their child they look at that little bundle of poop, pee & need and feel emotions because they actually feel like they always have known them. For a new dad, they see someone that makes sense. Someone that has always been there and will always be there. For a mother, it is more profound, that child has spend the past 9 months inside them so, in a way, they do know them. They know their sleeping schedule, their temperament and their emotion, all based on how they were acting in the womb. As parents, we are naturally bred to love our children. We knew them before they even existed.

"We didn't need a story, we didn't need a real world

We just had to keep walking

And we became the stories, we became the places

We were the lights, the deserts, the faraway worlds

We were you before you even existed"

Now that's poetry any parent can understand.

Guest Post: Dave Taylor: "SPORTS? WELL, I DO HAVE A SON..."

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Today is the day where everyone watches football and it reminds me that I don't like football and that my kids are copying me in this dislike. The issue is I want them to like sports. I don't want them to grow up never finding out for themselves whether they like it or not. I have decided to try and get into it to try to get them to make their own decisions. Here is a special guest post from Dave Taylor at GoFatherhood.com about a different kid of football. Enjoy!

I don't know what kind of crossed DNA we had when he was conceived, but neither my ex nor I are particularly into sports, either playing or watching, yet my 13yo son is quite the athlete and fan. Truth is, I'm just not hugely competitive and as someone born in England, most American sports leave me bored to tears with the incessant ad breaks and 150 person teams full of specialists who can kick, run, pass, block or do the end-zone dance, but little else. How that's a sport escapes me.

But I also realize that when I was growing up, my Dad was not into any sports at all, even though he was quite a decent soccer player in London when he was in his teens and early twenties. Then the war showed up, he played against top-league professionals, pressure to earn money arose, and, well, he rapidly lost interest in sports.

That was his decision. But mine? Whether or not I'm an avid fan, I want my son -- and my daughters! -- to have the option of being into sports by exposing him to as many different teams as possible. Heck, he's quite the young athlete himself, alternating between basketball and lacrosse depending on the season. What teams does he support? Basically whatever the adults around him support. So that means the British Premier League soccer team the Tottenham Hotspurs because of my support of the team and the Broncos and Chiefs (confusingly!) because of us being in Colorado and his Mom having been born in Kansas City.

I've been to lots of live sports and they can be quite fun. I was particularly surprised by a Colorado Avalanche game that my son and I attended a while back that was way more fun than I expected! Baseball is more hit and miss and while I enjoy the "great American pastime" I always go to games prepared to be bored for at least one stretch of the game. And a no-hitter? Yaaawwwwnnn.

But I've always been a big fan of soccer, especially World Cup soccer, and even more so in the last 5-10 years or so. I don't know that I'd say I'm rabid or even avid, but I have a Spurs sweatshirt and team case for my iPhone. When they play and it's broadcast, I get up early to watch the matches, including when they get a real drubbing as they did last weekend from Manchester City. Yech. Does that make me fanatical?

My son definitely enjoys watching soccer matches with me, and when we can, I'll take him to a sports bar to get the social, audience experience. And he's clearly more of a sports fan than I am, happy to turn on a basketball, football, baseball or lacrosse game too. It's the least I can do, raising a boy.  And the fact that my daughters enjoy an occasional sporting event? That's just a lovely bonus.

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Dave Taylor blogs about being a single father at GoFatherhood.com and can be found on all major social media. Start by looking for him at @DaveTaylor on Twitter.