When I was growing up in Virginia, we had fire drills in school. However, I do not remember ever having air raid drills, or lockdown drills, or tornado drills. It was fire drills, and that was it.

Here in Florida, we have all kinds of drills in the schools. This week all of the schools in the district had tornado drills, for example. Face-down on the floor, knees up under your chest, hands up covering the back of your next. It seemed oddly pointless since the drill happened while I was in a classroom with a full wall of windows.

Even so, we are training our kids to understand the right way to react in the face of a crisis – be it dangerous weather or gunfire on school grounds. It’s practical and it’s absolutely part of educating our children as they head into a society that seems to modernize at a quicker and quicker rate each year.

My title indicates I will be talking about free online games for kids, but after giving it some thought I realized the games in question are definitely not JUST for kids. MEGA Brands’ has a section of their website called Kids Zone and its positively hopping with completely free online games that pretty much anyone of any age will love.

Unlike so many websites on the internet that offer free games, MEGA Brands Kids Zone is safe, secure, and completely kid friendly. My daughter and my nephew have used the site several times and they generally sit together in one chair and take turns watching the other play games like Treasure of the Lord Pyrate. My nephew’s favorite is Shark Attack, where he has to dodge sharks in a pirate ship. My daughter usually chooses the Pyrates Navigation game (she is pretty awesome at mazes).

I’m more partial to a quest-style game, like Legends King Arthur. I like to take my time, think things out, and work toward a goal. And, more often than not, my daughter ends up on my lap coaching me as I play. I like that I do not have to worry that the content will get to a point where it is no longer appropriate for family play.

Believe me, a resource like the MEGA Kids Zone is invaluable when it comes to finding quality family entertainment that fits into a budget that’s taken a beating in our current economy. It’s free, it’s safe, and it’s fun. What more could I ask for?

It seems cliché to write about the weather on a personal blog, but at the same time the weather feels very relevant to live in Florida right about now. I have lived in Florida for a little over ten years now. Most of that time has been in the Tampa Bay area, save for a tad over three years when I lived in Gainesville. For the most part, I seem to remember that most winters we get a cold snap or two and if you add all of the really cold days together, it totals about two weeks.

This year has been very different. We’ve had hard freeze warnings over and over. Most mornings in the past three weeks when I have left for work/school at about 6:30 a.m., it’s uncomfortably cold. I have had to chip ice off of my windshields all too often this year. And the truth is, we just don’t keep ice scrapers in our glove boxes down here! Along the same lines, I have a woefully inappropriate wardrobe for this long stretch of cold. Thank goodness I found a pair of Birkenstock clogs in my closet. My poor feet were getting quite fed up with my insistence on wearing sandals every day.

We had the Superbowl here this past weekend and I felt a little bad for all of the people who made plans to be in town to see the game. I imagine many were expecting a little fun in the fun. Instead, it would have been quite acceptable if they had worn their northern coats and scarves. Don’t even think about the beaches, either. The air coming in from the water makes the temperature feel all the chillier.

And so yes, I am talking about the weather. And as mundane as that might seem to you, this extended period of very cold weather is big news here in Florida.

I was watching an episode of Eleventh Hour last night. I had saved it to my DVR and finally had some time to sit and catch up on shows. This particular episode featured a boy who had been cured of his cancer using stem cells that had been collected form his own cord blood and then stored. His sister needed the stem cells that had been stored for her and the obstacle was that they had been stolen.

It was a pretty good episode, but I had a hard time keeping my mind off of the situation surrounding the birth of my own daughter and how even though we had signed up with Cryo-Cell to have her cord blood stored, there was a communication mix-up at our hospital and they ended up donated instead, My sister and one of my best friends have their kids’ cord blood stored with Cryo-Cell, though.

That got me thinking about the new service being offered at Cryo-Cell (which is a local company here in my area, but they serve an international clientele) called C’elle. C’Elle offers another way to collect and store stem cells. In this case, the process captures the stem cells found naturally in menstrual blood.

You use a simple collection kit and by storing the blood, you have future access to cells that can be used to treat conditions like breast cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s. Plus, studies show that these cells may even come into play for wound-healing and anti-aging technology.

For example., there are scientists in Japan that have proven that that cells taken from menstrual blood can be cultivated and used like stem cells to repair damaged heart tissue. They published their findings in the medical journal Stem Cells. You probably already understand that they reason stem cells are so miraculous is because they can potentially become any cell in the body.

Right now you can Order C’elle Now and save $200 on their annual storage plan. It’s the beginning of a new year, as well as a new age of medical breakthroughs and milestones. Now is the time to look into C’elle and put a buffer of safety on your own future. Take a look at some of the C’Elle Testimonials to learn more about why this could be such an important decision for you.

Oh, man. I completely thought we were set for the halftime commercials being aired during the Superbowl tonight in 3D. I had a couple of pairs of the glasses we got when we saw Journey to the Center of the Earth in the theaters. My daughter and I had them, all set to see the commercials in 3D…and they did not work.

*sigh*

I guess that means I am out of luck for tomorrow night’s episode of Chuck, too.

I never bothered to pick up 3D glasses in the Supermarkets, because I thought the ones I already had would do the trick. What comes to mind is that age-old adage about the word ASSume.