Thursday, April 19, 2012

Thing I'm Loving

I feel like I've written enough lately about things I'm not loving so let's bring it back around to the positive! Some things that have been making me smile lately:

1. Politeness from my kids. Especially Pacey. I'm hearing a lot of unprompted "yes please" and "no thank you" and even "excuse me." The best is when Pacey is polite to the dogs. So cute.

2. Angel Guards. Pacey moved into a big kid booster seat a couple of months ago but figured out almost immediately how to unbuckle the seatbelt. After a few hair-raising car rides I found these online and they work like a charm. Especially important because he also figured out how to undo the child-lock on the doors that prevent them from opening from the inside. I try to check it every time we go anywhere but I do occasionally forget. There was one AWFUL day where I heard wind rushing and thought the door was open (it was just the window). Now I don't have to worry so much anymore as I know he is securely belted in.

3. My local library's iPhone app. So awesome. I can search the catalog, place requests and even download new e-books to read. Love. Love, love love. Yes, still dorky.

4. King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour. I do a fair amount of baking, including whole wheat pizza dough at least once a week and often a loaf of bread a week. I bought this for the first time since I saw it on sale (it's not cheap) and was pleasantly surprised by the resulting baked goods. I'm not sure WHY it's premium, but both Chris and I noticed a difference in the pizza crusts I made with it. Probably worth stepping up to on a regular basis.

5. The mobile deposit app for my bank. This has been a serious time-saver. We use USAA for absolutely all of our banking needs, but the one downside of an otherwise AWESOME company is that they don't have actual banks where you can deposit checks. Before they started offering the mobile deposit option, I had to order prepaid deposit envelopes from them and send in all my checks. An inconvenience for sure. Now, I use the app to take a photograph of the front and back of my checks and it is deposited straight into my account and immediately available. And that's it. You just dispose of the checks, and your phone doesn't save any of the images so there aren't safety issues. This has been especially useful as Chris and I take advantage of flexible spending healthcare accounts. The company that administers it is amazingly prompt and we don't even have to submit claims, but I will sometimes get 5-6 checks at a time and it's so nice to be able to deposit them immediately.

6. Flavored sparkling water. I fell out of love with soda awhile ago, and since I'm an old lady I really can't drink caffeine after about noon. I drink a LOT of water as a result, which is great but sometimes gets boring. I'm not a fan of artificial sweeteners so lots of the flavored waters that are so popular right now just don't appeal. I started buying flavored sparkling water at Trader Joe's and absolutely love it. Totally refreshing and more interesting than plain old water.

I was going to write something about lovely spring weather, but today has been 45 degrees, gray and rainy. Perhaps I'll pick this back up next week.

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