Here is a Blockbuster Express code that is good through today July 30th “GT17A”. Go get a free movie.

Here are the 2 covers from GI Joe #158 to be released in September from IDW and writer Larry Hama.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village Forum is a very good game. It is full of logic puzzles of all sorts there are word puzzles and picture puzzles. It provides hours of entertainment. If the puzzles are to hard you can buy hints with picarats you earn throught the game. I would recommend if for 4th or 5th grade and up. Of course it is very fun for adults. I myself have put lots of hours into it. I would give this game a 9 of 10. The replay value is very low because the puzzles aren’t very much fun if you know the answer, but still very worth the investment.

Ancestry.com has an app out now called Tree To Go. It is a great little app that provides you access to your family tree, which you can create for free online. It downloads your tree from the server so you can view the tree even with airplane mode turned on (even though it does give you a few pop-ups telling you to check your connection). You cannot create a tree on the iPhone, though I doubt there would really be much need to do so. The only big flaw I do see is that you cannot use trees unless you are the “Owner”. It would make more sense if you had access to the ones you are and “Editor” of. The app does provide access to all the members of you tree and their photos. You can even add photos via the app. This feature would be very nice when visiting relatives you don’t see very often. I highly recommend this app for any genealogy buffs out there. Best of all it is free. I give it 8 out of 10.

Have a train birthday party. Here are a bunch of the things we did.

• We bought a train cake pan from Williams and Somona and proceeded to decorate each car with different icing and candies. We also got out a big sheet of craft paper and decorated train tracks. Then we just laid out all the decorated cars on the paper on the dinning room table. After the party it was pretty easy cleanup. This was also our sons first birthday so we needed the single cake for him as well to dig into, and these individual cakes are perfect for that.
• Another easy thing to do is to add train tracks to your front door.
• Of course we also have an LGB train set that is in our front garden, so we made sure that was up an running as well.
• There are lots of party favors you can hand out. Engineer hats are relatively inexpensive. You could also do train whistles or Thomas trains (though a bit pricey for most people).

Always remember though do what your kids like. It’s no fun if the kids hate it and they are not having fun, because at the end of the day you will be miserable too.