June 8 & 9 | FREE or Low Cost Activities for the Whole Family

Click the links below for more information at the respective web sites.

Lowe's Build & Grow

• Saturday, June 8, 10 AM & Sunday, June 9, 2 PM | Monsters University Scarers: Bring your child to Lowe’s to build awesome Mike and Sulley Scarers inspired by Disney•Pixar’s upcoming release Monsters University!

Michael's

• Saturday, June 8, 10am - Noon, on the half hour | Kids Club: Fathers' Day Card - Let your kids explore their creativity while you shop! Only $2 per child reserves 30 minutes for your creative kid. Sessions starting every half hour from 10:30am - 11:30am. See a store associate to join the fun!

A.C. Moore

• Saturday, June 8, 1 - 3 PM | Buy & Decorate: Buy a Nicole Crafts Color a Mug & decorate with special Father's Day artwork FREE.

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Have You Ever Seen an White Squirrel?

I'm not found of critters. Squirrels have chewed through one too many cable lines to our house and bunnies think that my backyard is an all-you-can-eat buffet.

But one critter caught my eye the other morning as I was running--a white squirrel

I couldn't get too close, because (1) I didn't want to get caught trespassing in someone's yard and

(2) he went scurrying away.

Apparently, there are white squirrels and albino squirrels and neither one is a very common sight. I wasn't close enough to determine if he was an albino squirrel with red eyes, but with all of the grayish brown squirrels that inhabit our neighborhood, it was a funny sight to see a white one.

Have you ever seen a white squirrel?

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Summer Calendar | Summer Fun Guide 2013

Woo Hoo! It's June and it's time to plan our summer. My husband and I want the kids to have a fun and exciting summer, but we don't have a lot of extra funds this year, so we're looking for inexpensive fun and excitement.

To get started and to organize the activities that we have planned, I created a summer calendar as a visual of the kids. Every day during the summer, they wake up and ask, "what are we doing today?" and now our plans are posted on the refrigerator.

I printed blank calendar pages from CalendarLabs.com and decorated them with stickers and markers that we had in our craft closet. The calendars are now posted on the refrigerator and the good news is that there are still open days for us to plan more summer fun!

What big plans do you have this summer? Let us know in the comments.

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Grilled Taco Chicken Kabobs

It's summer and there's no time for fussy meals--we're heading to the pool after dinner.

Grilled Taco Chicken Kabobs are very easy to prepare and they go great with a garden salad and grilled corn. Also, if you have leftovers, they make a delicious filling for wraps.

Grilled Taco Chicken Kabobs

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons homemade taco seasoning or 1 store bought packet
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 large sweet bell pepper, cut into bite sized pieces
• 1 pineapple, cut into bite sized pieces
• 10 (10 inch) bamboo sticks

Instructions

1. Combine taco seasoning and olive oil. Pour over the chicken and marinate for 30 minutes.

2. Make kabobs: alternating pineapple, pepper, chicken onto the bamboo stick.

3. Grill 5 minutes. Flip and grill another 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Print recipe for Grilled Taco Chicken Kabobs.


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Summer Plans at Family Balance Sheet

June 1st! Can you believe it? Weren't we just talking about Frugal Holiday Fun? And now we're picking out bathing suits and stocking up on sunscreen.

While I'm looking forward to summer with my family, it does present a new set of challenges for us and I'm sure others as well.

• What will my kids do while I'm working from home or if I need to work at our business office?
• How can we encourage our soon-to-be second grader to keep up with her reading skills that she worked so hard on in first grade, but not feel like she's in summer school?
• What food can we eat that doesn't require the oven?
• And how can we have tons of {screen-free} summer fun for very little cash?

To answer some of those questions and make life a little easier around here, my summer posts will revolve around two themes: Easy Summer Food and my 2nd annual Summer Fun Guide.

I don't want to turn the oven on and I don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen--I just want to make (& eat) Easy Summer Food.


And I'll be looking for fun ideas that entertain and engage my family, but don't require a lot of cash and are guaranteed to make summer memories.


Personally, I'll take some online time off at some point over the summer to spend with my family relaxing at the beach. Also, in August, I'll increase my running mileage and start training for a fall half marathon.

Professionally, I'm heading to the Savvy Blogging Summit in June. It's my first overnight blogging conference and I can't wait to meet some blogging super stars that I have been following for years. I'm hoping that the summit will help me take FamilyBalanceSheet.org to the next level.

Family Balance Sheet is also getting a redesign over the summer. I'll start working with the designer this month and hopefully I'll have the redesign complete by the end of summer.

It's going to be busy around here, but I'm really excited about the summer of 2013!

What are your plans for the summer? Let us know in the comments.

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