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You Can Catch Me There – April 10, 2011

Posted on April 10, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Spring may officially be here in the Capital District. As the weather warms up, I hope to be able to spend more time with my family outdoors. In addition to writing here, I have also been busy contributing to other places.

Since my last update, I have written two new posts on The Disney Driven Life:

Early Learning With Bear in the Big Blue House – Learning, growing, and teaching with Bear in the Big Blue House DVDs from Disney.
Disney Inspiration for National Poetry Month – April is National Poetry month. Stop by to learn about acrostic poems and read one from me, along with a hidden one by

NDM183

I have also been working on more articles for the KidsFunPlaza magazine. The April issue should be out in the Capital District within the week. You can check out the March Digital Issue here:

I have also had some new blog posts on the KidsFunPlaza blog:

My recent posts on KidsFunPlaza:

Some of the latest posts from my KidsFunPlaza colleagues:

Please stop by A Disney Driven Life and KidsFunPlaza to say hello to everyone else that writes there as well.

Categories:
bloggy friends DisneyDrivenLife Educational EduMICKation looking back me moments My Other Projects

Facebook The Final Frontier

Posted on April 8, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Several years ago, I started working on a Facebook page for my blog. For some reason, I never pushed the publish button. At the time, I was more focused on other ends of the Social Media spectrum. The reality is that not everyone likes Twitter. A lot of people prefer to use Facebook. By not pushing that button and setting up the Facebook page, I was only hurting myself.

While at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration, one of the guest speakers was Matt Jacobson.

Jacobson is the head of market development for Facebook. While listening to everything that he told us, I knew that I was going to have to go home and finish working on my Facebook page. One of Jacobson’s biggest points that hit home is separating your personal and professional Facebook identities. He showed us an example using Mark Zuckerberg’s two profiles. He also talked about Building your brand on Facebook.

Yes, I knew it was time to get to work on Facebook. There was a need not only to publish a public page for The Angel Forever, but to have my own personal profile for family and friends.

Later in the day, Chris Brogan took the stage.

One of the many items that Chris talked about was using different forms of social media as outposts to get people to your blog or home base. Yes, I was utilizing Twitter in many ways, but Facebook was something that I foolishly ignored for too long. I will be sharing more from DisneySMMoms in the upcoming weeks – there is a lot to process.

While home with a sick kiddo this week, I finally tweaked my Facebook page for this blog. Over on the left, I even put a way to head there if you would like to.

See, I even took time to get a button for the side of my blog like the one above. It is a work in progress, but so is everything else in life.

This week my question to you is:

Do you have a Facebook page for your blog? Any input on whether having one or not having one has made a difference from your experience. If you do have a Facebook page, I would love to know so I can stop by visit and say hello.

If you feel a little bit of love in your heart, I would love for you to like The Angel Forever on Facebook as well. Thanks so much!

Disclosure: Although we paid for our own trip to Disney World, we were given an incredible deal thanks to Disney. The sweet conference fee included 3 nights at the Grand Floridian, several meals for the entire family, 7 day park hoppers for everyone, conference/meals for me and some other items to take home. Also note that Disney never asked us to blog about this event. As a long time Disney fan, it is my pleasure to share my experiences from the event.

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #146

Categories:
Aloha Friday Blogging Conference Conference DisneySMMoms looking back me moments photos

Hello UBP11

Posted on April 4, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Welcome to all who have traveled from the 5 Minutes For Mom Ultimate Blog Party 2011! I am a bit behind in joining this year. There has been a lot going on in recent weeks. Some of you may recall that I am familiar with the UBP. Last year, I was the grand prize winner of the Toshiba Laptop. It all seemed like a dream at the time.

Why?

Well, the night that they randomly selected winners, I had gone to bed early. I was not feeling well. Then, suddenly, my cell phone started going crazy. Tweets with mentions of my name were coming in one after the other. Half asleep, I noticed I was being congratulated, but I did not know why. Then I saw the #UBP10 at the end. Sure enough, I was the winner. Thank you again to Susan and Janice from Five Minutes for Mom for doing this fun event. I am not just saying that since I won last year.

At the end of the UBP last year, I wrote about people that I met and blogs that I loved. One of those was Kelly’s Lucky You. Little did I know that I would meet Kelly at DisneySMMoms a few weeks ago and participate in the Wild African Trek with her.

Please say hello to my family. Here we are with Minnie Mouse after our recent adventure to Disney Social Media Moms Celebration.

So who is The Angel Forever? Here is a little bit about me:

I started blogging in February 2007 while I was pregnant with my youngest son.
For almost four years, I have been at home with my boys. Although I love this special time with them, I do miss teaching.
My blog webmaster is also my hubby. You may know TechyDad from his blog or Twitter. This June we will celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. The two of us had our honeymoon at Walt Disney World for 10 magical days.
I am a HUGE fan of all things Disney – check out my category list on the left and you will see what I mean. Still processing all things from our recent trip there for the conference.
It was only a year ago that I came out of my bloggy shell. Before this I was pretty anonymous, never said where I lived, and was happy with that. Now thanks to recent opportunities, I am reinventing my online self.
The teacher in me loves to read books and share what we read. Most weeks I have a Tuesday Tales segment where I share some of our recent reads.
In addition to writing on TheAngelForever, I cover Education on The Disney Driven Life (I am NDM183 and proud of it) and am a columnist/blogger for KidsFunPlaza.

I love meeting new people in real life and online – so please explore and leave some comments, link up to your UBP blog below, and I promise to stop over to say hello and get to meet you. You can also catch me on Twitter and ~~I am still working on my Facebook fan page~~ I just finished/published my Facebook page.

Enjoy the 2011 Ultimate Blog Party and see you around!

Categories:
Blog Hop Disney DisneyDrivenLife DisneySMMoms fun looking back me moments photos TechyDad

Figuring Out The Answers

Posted on April 1, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Yesterday, I wrote a post called Are You a Good Enough Mother? At the start, I asked:

Have you ever had one of those moments where you doubt yourself, wonder what is happening, and question whether you are a good enough mother/parent/adult/human?

I explained that I am working on taking the words of Rene Syler, aka the head GEM/Good Enough Mother to task.

Now, thanks to Rene and some Rene-isms (also listed in my post yesterday), I have a lot of things on my mind, planned for my blog, and more importantly ideas for my life. The first is to be able to accept that nobody is perfect and know that being a good enough mother is awesome. Oh and thanks to a comment from Rene, I have another Rene-ism to add:

“You may not have all the answers, but you’re smart enough to figure it out.”

I know this statement from Rene is true, it’s just hard to sit by, be patient, and get those answers figured out – especially when your children are involved.

Today, my Aloha Friday question continues along with my quest to bring you along on my journey as I embrace my inner GEM and work on reinventing myself. The reality is that most of us do reinvent ourselves at least once in our lives. So my question to you:

If you had the chance to reinvent yourself right now, what would you want to do and why?

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #145

Categories:
Aloha Friday Blogging Conference Conference decisions DisneySMMoms me moments

Are You a Good Enough Mother?

Posted on March 31, 2011 10:00 am by TheAngelForever

Have you ever had one of those moments where you doubt yourself, wonder what is happening, and question whether you are a good enough mother/parent/adult/human?

Welcome to my current world.

As I hinted at the other day, TechyDad and I are in the process of making some tough decisions for our family. I have shed a lot of tears since we got back home from the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. Let’s just say that coming back from a week of magic, where you can forget about reality, is harsh.

Fortunately, I am trying to remember some wise words that I heard at the conference. I am working on embracing the philosophy of the The Good Enough Mother. This means accepting that nobody is perfect, being able to let go of things, allowing for me time, and realizing that I am not failing my children. We all make mistakes, learn from these mistakes (not failures), and grow thanks to them. Still being a TypeA personality, it is not easy to let go of my ways.

So who helped me to see the light? This beautiful, amazing, and truly inspirational woman that I am standing with below:

Meet Rene Syler – the head GEM. What is a GEM, read more about what it mean to be a Good Enough Mother on her website. Here is a little biography that was provided to us before the event at Disney:

Rene Syler has had the opportunity to interview famous faces, political personalities and countless authors during her four year position as one of the anchors of The Early Show at CBS. In March 2007, Rene’s first book Good Enough Mother: The Perfectly Imperfect Book of Parenting was published by Simon Spolight Entertainment. From that her website, www.goodenoughmother.com was born.

Rene came onto the stage at DisneySMMoms and stole my heart and many others in the audience. She spoke to me on so many levels. Almost two weeks after hearing her inspirational speech, my brain is still going a mile a minute – not a bad thing honestly. Rene’s words have helped me during the moments where I wanted to quit being an adult and return to my childhood. Seriously, recalling her words has brought a smile to my face when there were tears in my eyes.

My plan is to bring you along on my journey as I embrace my inner GEM and work on reinventing myself. I will continue to explore more lessons from Rene and channel her energy here on my blog.

For now, I would like to share some of my favorite Rene Syler-isms from her talk. I Tweeted about many of these during DisneySMMoms, but think they deserve to be seen again:

Being washed up is just another word for reinventing yourself. You can always reinvent yourself.
Just because you used your womb doesn’t mean that you don’t use your brain.
Real growth hurts. You cannot grow when you are comfortable, and you cannot be comfortable when you grow.
Follow your passion, because you can never go wrong.
It is okay to say to your kids, “Come here. Listen, Mommy need a break from you.” It’s good for you and for them.
When you spit fire the message is lost.
People who make you feel bad have no place in your life. Do not let people get you down about not being perfect.
You only have so much energy and do not need to waste your energy on negative people.
Anyone who says they are perfect is lying!

To read more about Rene’s talk, head over to Cutestkidever, where Christina live blogged.

One more thing, Rene is a big fan of Dancing With The Stars. She actually Tweets along with people using #dwts during the live shows. The other night, she mentioned that she would love to be on the show. Cindy, The Mom Maven, listened and started a Twitter campaign and wrote a blog post to let the powers that be know that Rene has our support. Please help us to get Rene Syler onto Dancing With The Stars – the world could learn so much while watching this amazing woman strut her stuff.

Rene is a one of a kind woman who can teach all of us so much. Thank you, Rene, for being you, for sharing with all of us your gift, and for Tweeting and supporting Social Media and Moms in general.