Christina, Author at A Mommy Story

Feb 4, 2015

American Idol Keeps Drawing Me Back In

Can you believe we’re on the 14th season of American Idol? It doesn’t seem possible that it’s been going on for that long, but the show started before either of my children were born. I admit I still watch a lot of TV, and Idol has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m usually not a big fan of reality TV shows, but make it a talent competition – especially a singing competition – and I’m interested.

We didn’t start watching American Idol until season three. (But I’m still a Kelly Clarkson fan.) Season three was the year of the infamous William Hung, with his terrible rendition of “She Bangs” that ensured he didn’t get any further. (Thank goodness.) But more importantly, that was also the season of Fantasia Barrino and Jennifer Hudson. I remember how impressed I was with the talent on display that season, and we watched every episode faithfully, cheering as Fantasia won the crown that year.

Beyond the talent, I loved the judges setup, too. You could count on Paula to say something nice to the performer, no matter how bad the performance. Randy was always the middle-man: you never knew which way he would go with his comments. And then there was Simon, the harsh voice of reality in the industry. I appreciated his blunt critiques and the high bar that was set to impress him. Most of the time, I agreed with him, too. I was hooked at that point.

When season four started, we watched all of the audition rounds and never missed an episode. It was difficult to not get caught up in the moving stories of the singers – for some, this was their one chance to get out of a bad situation and make a name for themselves. While I liked pop music, I was also a fan of rock, and this season gave me more variety with Constantine Maroulis and Bo Bice giving a rock edge to many of their performances. I will never forget Constantine’s performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” that season – that was the first song that I ever actively sought out to download onto my (new at the time) iPod.

Perhaps my favorite seasons, though, were seasons five and seven. Season five was the year that Taylor Hicks won American Idol, but I still remember it as the season of Chris Daughtry. I don’t think anyone heard his version of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” and had any doubt that he was a star. We were fans of his for a few reasons. He was an older contestant, working to raise a family, and we identified with him, having a daughter of our own at that point. When he was eliminated at the top four, we were stunned and furious. Thankfully, like so many other Idol alumni, that didn’t stop him, and we were thrilled to attend the first concert in Columbus a few years later for his band, Daughtry.

You will have to take my word for it that the backlit singer in the photo is Daughtry. 2010 iPhones weren’t great in concert settings.

But Chris Daughtry paved the way for David Cook in season seven. Another rock singer, I was stunned at his arrangement of Lionel Richie’s song, “Hello,” turning what always seemed to be a soft melody into a rock anthem. But I was even more impressed during Mariah Carey week, where each of the singers – even the guys – had to perform a Mariah Carey song. Of all of the contestants, I wondered how he’d be able to make a song work. Yet his original arrangement of “Always Be My Baby” is now probably my favorite song of his, and definitely my favorite arrangement ever of that song. (It remains in my iTunes playlists, along with a few of his other songs.) Never have I been so invested in a reality TV show as I was that season, jumping out of my seat and clapping when David Cook was announced as the winner.

The tagline of “Superstars Made Here” is truth in advertising: had it not been for American Idol, there are several great stars that we might never have had the chance to hear. No other show has produced this many top singers. Idol’s alumni have sold more than 60 million albums, have garnered more 250 million downloads and have been certified with 20 Platinum and 13 Gold records; and more than 70 Idol contestants have been on the Billboard charts with 440 songs attaining No.1 Billboard hit status. Idol contestants have conquered Broadway, television and film, and have won numerous awards and accolades, including American Country Music Awards, Country Music Awards, Grammy Awards and an Academy Award. Not bad for 13 completed seasons of a talent show!

The new season of American Idol is on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8/7c on FOX, and it’s already shaping up to be a solid season of talent, based off of the auditions I’ve seen so far. I was really impressed with the vocalists coming out of the Nashville auditions alone. Reality TV that focuses on the drama between contestants just isn’t for me. I prefer the focus to be on solid talent, and American Idol is the best at delivering that. (Other than Hollywood Week, which always has a little drama with it.) The show keeps drawing me back in because I love the chance to hear new, fantastic singers.

What about you – which singer was your favorite from past American Idol seasons? Will you be watching this season? Tell me in the comments to enter for a chance to win $100 VISA gift card.

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Filed Under: pop culture, sponsored ·

Jan 19, 2015

I’m My Own DIY Hero (With Help From the Internet)

By Christina ·

Despite our house being a fairly new house, we’ve had some issues with our furnace for the past few years. The problems have always been intermittent, but happen at the worst possible times. As in, the colder it is outside, the less likely it would be that the furnace would turn on.

During last year’s polar vortex, I nearly broke down and called in an HVAC specialist to fix our furnace when we woke up one morning to a 55 degree house. But that same morning the furnace then came on and warmed us back up to a comfortable 70 degrees, so I let it go. If I didn’t have to spend a fortune on a repair, I wasn’t going to. (Yes, I’m cheap.)

Part of the reason I refused to call someone in is that, unlike the furnace, our gas fireplace has worked reliably. So even on days when the furnace wouldn’t come on more than once a day, the gas fireplace could keep the living room tolerably warm on its own during the day. Honestly, during the winter our gas fireplace is on for the entire day most days. We’ve found that it actually saves us money to keep it on. If the fireplace could get us through the most temperamental days of the furnace, we’d be fine.

This year, though, the furnace had been ignoring the thermostat more than usual. I knew it wasn’t the thermostat causing the problem – we had that replaced just four years ago, and in those cases the furnace wasn’t even trying to activate. In this case, the furnace would give it a try, the burners would ignite, and then it would shut off a couple of seconds later. This would happen 3-4 times in a row, and then the furnace would give up and stop trying.

We have a problem here.

So I recently found myself in the position of needing to call someone for a repair, or figure it out on my own. Google to the rescue!

After some searching, the leading theory was that the flame sensor was dirty and needed cleaned or replaced. The flame sensor detects if the burners actually ignite. If the sensor can’t tell if the burners ignited, it’ll shut everything down instead of risking gas flowing freely without a controlled flame burning it.

That explained all of the symptoms, but how in the world could I clean the sensor? I read a few guides, but they just weren’t thorough enough for me to feel comfortable with what I was doing. So I turned to my next DIY helper: YouTube.

I can’t begin to say how thankful I am for the folks who post YouTube videos of how to fix stuff around the house. They saved us when we needed to replace a leaky part of our kitchen sink a few years ago, they helped us learn how to snake our our toilet when a certain little kid used too much toilet paper, and they have now helped me repair my furnace. After watching two videos about the process, I felt comfortable giving it a try. (With Aaron as my backup.)

So, if you’re ever wondering how to clean the flame sensor so your furnace will turn on and stay on, let me show you how to do it:

Step 1: Turn off the electricity to the furnace. Important step here when you’re inserting metal screwdrivers deep into your furnace.

Step 2: Remove the cover of your furnace and find the burners.

Step 3: Locate the flame sensor. It’s usually a thin metal rod sticking up in front of one of the burners.

Step 4: Figure out where the sensor is attached. It usually has a screw holding it in, requiring a screwdriver. Or, in our case, an itty-bitty socket wrench. Ours was attached above the burners, but yours might be attached underneath.

I circled ours – it attached from above the burners.

Step 5: Carefully remove the flame sensor after loosening the screw holding it. Don’t touch the metal part – the oils on your hands can damage it! See all that black and white stuff on the sensor? That soot is what was keeping it from sensing the flame properly.

It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s enough to keep the furnace from working.

Step 6: Gently clean the sensor. Videos and written guides recommended a very, very fine grain sandpaper, soft steel wool, paper, or anything that isn’t too rough. The best suggestion I saw was using a dollar bill – it’s just abrasive enough to clean the sensor without damaging it. I used a crisp bill to clean ours. You won’t be able to get all of the black scorch marks off of it, and that’s okay. You’re only concerned with getting any loose debris off of it.

It’s cleaner, even if it doesn’t look that different.

Step 7: Carefully put the flame sensor back in place and secure it with the screw. Basically, reverse everything you did to get it out.

Step 8: Flip the switch at the circuit breaker box to power on the furnace again. Leave the cover off (if your furnace allows it) so you can check if everything is working. If all goes well, the gas will begin to flow, the burners will ignite, and they’ll stay on this time. If it’s all working well, replace the cover, pat yourself on the back, and go enjoy a warm house.

A very happy sight.

If it doesn’t work, you might need to replace the sensor. I’m told this is a cheap part that you can find at any hardware store, and is nearly as easy to replace. In our case, cleaning it worked just fine.

Since cleaning it, we haven’t had any issues at all with the furnace. I’m still not very handy, but thanks to the internet I can do a great job at faking it some of the time!

Filed Under: domestic zero, home ·

Jan 13, 2015

My Best Moments of 2014

By Christina ·

Yeah, you may have already moved on into 2015, but I’m still looking back and reflecting on the previous year and all that happened. Despite some illnesses and injuries, 2014 had a lot of good moments for me, too. We went on some fantastic trips, had breakthroughs in overcoming challenges, and enjoyed spending time together as a family.

Here are some of the highlights of the last year, in chronological order (because I simply would have a hard time ranking them):

Snow day fun – We started the year with a polar vortex, which Cordy and Mira loved because it meant plenty of days off of school. Despite needing to still work while they were home for snow days, we managed to work in a little bit of fun, too, like performing the boiling water sublimation trick in below zero weather. It was the viral challenge of the winter, before the ice bucket challenge became the viral challenge of the summer.

We tried the boiling water trick, too. How often do we get this chance? #polarvortex #cold

A video posted by Christina McMenemy (@mommystory) on Jan 6, 2014 at 2:35pm PST

Castaway Bay – In early February, we were getting a little tired of the snow and cold, which was remedied by an overnight trip to Cedar Point’s Castaway Bay. It was close to zero outside, but 82 degrees inside. I like that Castaway Bay has no pool areas deeper than four feet, so I felt safe letting my kids play without needing to hover over them. It was also a fun experience to go into the outdoor portion of the hot tub – we were still toasty warm in the water, while our hair was frozen in the near-zero temperature with snow all around. Even though it was a short trip, it was just what we needed to recharge.

And Cordy grew more confident in the water.

Walt Disney World – Probably one of the highlights of the year for Cordy and Mira was traveling to Walt Disney World in March. I went for the Type-A Bootcamp, and brought the family along to have some fun as well. The one thing they wanted more than anything was to meet Anna and Elsa. I’ve still never written up the full experience, but let me tell you it was a four hour wait in line to see the famous sisters in the Norway pavilion of Epcot. (Thankfully they’ve since moved them to Magic Kingdom and have FastPasses available now.) Aaron earned all the dad points by waiting in line for us, while I kept the kids entertained with the Agent P game around the World Showcase. Despite the long wait and terrible sunburn that Aaron endured, even he agreed it was worth it when our two dopplegangers met their royal inspirations.

Anna, Anna, Elsa, and Elsa

It was also funny that during our wait, other tourists were coming up to us and asking if they could take pictures of Cordy and Mira. One super smart mom didn’t want to wait in the line for her toddler daughter, so she told her daughter that Cordy and Mira were the “official” young Anna and Elsa and had her daughter pose with them for a photo. I wanted to buy that mom a drink for her clever thinking. But really, she saved herself the need for a drink by avoiding that line.

Disneyland and Disney Social Media Moms Conference – As soon as we arrived home from our Walt Disney World trip, I had to quickly unpack and then repack to leave one week later for California to attend the Disney Social Media Moms conference at Disneyland. I received my invite for that conference after we had already booked our trip to Walt Disney World, so I wasn’t able to bring the entire family with me. But my brother-in-law and sister-in-law came along with me instead, and gave me a chance to spend more time with family members that I don’t see often enough.

The entire conference was fantastic! I still have posts in draft that I want to finish, telling more of what I learned there. As a true Disney geek, I loved learning more about the parks, the company, and how hard they work to go above and beyond for their guests. Yes, Disney is a media giant that wants your money, like any other business, but the difference is that they really want to make sure that you walk away from the experience feeling that parting with your money was completely worth it. And some of their new social initiatives are gaining steam as they use their influence to make a difference and give back to communities. (More on that soon – I’m planning to take what I’ve learned from them to launch a virtual book drive for our school district in the next week or so.)

It was also at this conference where I found my love of running again, and completed a 2 mile fun run presented by runDisney. I also discovered I love wearing costumes to run races.

Mira’s birthday at Cedar Point – Mira’s birthday usually falls on Memorial Day weekend, and she often resents that her birthday is so close to a holiday. It makes it hard to throw a party that weekend, since many families already have plans for the three-day weekend. This year, we were invited to Cedar Point that weekend for a blogger event. I mentioned that we were making the trip a birthday event for Mira, and our super generous and thoughtful contact at Cedar Point arranged for a Dairy Queen birthday cake for her.

That’s a good kind of shocked look.

Ice cream cake combined with riding her favorite rides and coasters for two days equaled a very happy Mira. She still talks about how that was her best birthday yet. I have no idea how we’ll be able to top that this year!

BlogHer ’14 in San Jose – This was a solo trip for me to attend my ninth BlogHer conference. While it is a work trip, it’s also my annual chance to see some of my colleagues and blog friends in person. My very first BlogHer conference was in San Jose, so it was fun to return to where it all started this year.

With some of the people I met at my very first BlogHer!

Halloween – I enjoyed going out with the kids for trick-or-treat, but I also was thrilled to get a night off to go out to a citywide Halloween party without the kids. Aaron and I had a great time dressing up for Highball.

Merida and Captain America keeping High Street safe.

BlogHerPRO – In December, I went back to California (three times in one year – a new record!) to attend the BlogHerPRO conference. Only this time, I was asked to be a speaker. This was my first time being a speaker for a session, and while I was nervous being up in front of a small crowd, it wasn’t bad at all. I might even want to do it again in the future.

So what does 2015 hold for us? I’m not sure yet, but if it’s at least as good as 20014, I can’t wait to find out!

Filed Under: family time, local fun, memories, travel ·

Jan 2, 2015

2014: The Year of (mostly minor) Illness & Injury

By Christina ·

I’ve started looking back on the year that just ended, and while I have so many good memories of the year, and so many moments to be thankful for, I also quickly realized this wasn’t the best year for our health.

For starters, this was the year of the stomach virus for us. It started at the most magical place on Earth in March, when Mira fell ill with a gastrointestinal virus, three days into our Walt Disney World trip. Aaron caught it two days later, and Cordy caught it a day and a half later, on our drive back home. While it did keep the family from seeing Animal Kingdom, we still managed to visit the other parks, although Aaron’s visit to Hollywood Studios was only a half day.

No, Aaron wasn’t the one taking this picture – he was sick in bed that morning.

A couple of months later, Cordy again fell ill with some kind of stomach bug at the end of our Cedar Point trip. On the upside, at least she didn’t get sick until the end of the trip.

In September, we were excited to attend an annual picnic of a group of friends, many of whom we only get to see once or twice a year. After driving two hours to the picnic, Cordy immediately became sick, and we had to turn right back around and go home, missing the event entirely. She also missed nearly a week of school after that because she was so sick.

In December, it was Mira’s stomach that required us to leave our friends’ annual Christmas party – long before we were ready to leave – after she unexpectedly lost her dinner.

So…what have we learned? Much better and more frequent hand washing, that’s for certain. I’m not sure how the kids fell victim to so many stomach viruses in a single year, all during the worst possible times. As they’ve grown older, they’ve become much better about keeping their hands clean and keeping hands away from their face as much as possible. Mira still has a desire to touch everything around her, though, so I’m sure that was the cause of at least the Disney outbreak.

I’m hoping 2015 will bring us stronger immune systems and no illnesses poorly timed to traveling or important events.

Personally, 2014 was a year of too many injuries for me. I spent the first part of the year with a shoulder that wouldn’t move without intense pain due to a poorly placed flu shot that caused subacromial bursitis. I’ve never had a shoulder injury before this, so learning to get dressed and perform daily activities with a limited range of motion on the left side was frustrating. The injury improved with a cortisone shot and 6 weeks of physical therapy, but then flared up again over the summer.

So far my shoulder has been pain-free since my second cortisone shot in August, but I can’t say for certain that it won’t flare up again. I’m wishing for no shoulder pain in 2015.

If that wasn’t enough: I started running more in 2014, and just as I was getting into the groove and starting to LOVE running, something started to hurt on the outside edge of my foot. Since mid-October, I’ve been dealing with tendonitis that is stubborn to heal. (Or maybe I’m the one being stubborn, because I want to get back to running.) Two and a half more weeks in the boot, and then hopefully I’ll be allowed to start running again.

I cannot wait to get this thing off.

I want 2015 to be my best running year ever. I can’t wait to get back to training for the runDisney Enchanted 10k, and maybe even try for a longer distance later in 2015.

I’m not saying 2014 was terrible. These are mostly minor issues – very minor compared to some illnesses and injuries – and I’m thankful that we’re all still relatively healthy. I’d just like to be even more healthy in 2015.

Filed Under: Family, memories, plague ·

Dec 29, 2014

Christmas Recap

By Christina ·

I can’t believe Christmas is over already. This year seemed to go by faster than it usually does. I spent the two days before Christmas cleaning out house to prepare for visitors, and also repeatedly checking my list to make sure we had gifts for everyone. One of my grandmothers has to use a walker all the time now, so it was vital to make sure the house was free of any floor clutter that could hinder her movement or trip her. Or me, for that matter, since my right foot is still in a walking boot until mid-January for tendonitis. Cleaning and shopping both took about 4x as long as usual due to the boot slowing me down and wearing me out. No one prepares you for how heavy the boot is – it’s exhausting to drag it along with every step.

Then on Christmas Eve, after the kids were asleep (which was later than their normal bedtime), Aaron and I stayed up until 1am wrapping gifts for the kids. There were no big surprises like last year, when we had the big reveal that we were going to Walt Disney World. They already know we’re going this year, since they’ve been training for their own 1 mile Kids Race for the Princess Half Marathon Weekend. Still, there were a few items they were really hoping to get, and we didn’t disappoint.

Santa got all the credit for the cool gifts this year: Mira’s gift was Disney Infinity 2.0 (she wanted it primarily to play as Stitch), and Cordy’s gift was the Nightmare Express expansion pack for Skylanders Trap Team.

It was still a very Disney Christmas, though. They both received Disney t-shirts (Stitch for Mira, Big Hero 6 for Cordy), Mira got a Honey Lemon doll from Big Hero 6, both received Disney sticker books and Disney puzzles, and they both were given Disney gift cards to use at Walt Disney World.

On the other hand, it was a very running-based Christmas for Aaron and I. His gift was a medal holder rack so he can display the running medals he earns. (He also had an early Christmas gift of an iPad.) My gift was a Garmin Forerunner 620 GPS watch – basically the king of GPS watches. It can track your route and pace, set intervals for you, track your cadence, and provide feedback on how to improve your running. It can basically do everything except get you out the door to go run. I’m still waiting on that feature.

I’m looking forward to using the watch once I’m cleared to run again.

Cosmo enjoyed hanging out in his ugly Christmas sweater.

It was great to see family and Christmas Day was just perfect. We had a lovely meal, followed by games and then dessert. Once everyone had left, the four of us played a board game in the evening. I was utterly exhausted the next day, though, and spent most of this weekend wanting to sit on the couch and be lazy.

I’m off work for most of this week, which is great since the kids are still out of school, too. I’m looking forward to playing games and relaxing together, as well as hopefully boxing up a bunch of stuff we don’t need and sending it off to Goodwill before the new year.

I’m thankful for having this quiet time with family before we start 2015.

Filed Under: holidays ·

American Idol Keeps Drawing Me Back In

I’m My Own DIY Hero (With Help From the Internet)

My Best Moments of 2014

2014: The Year of (mostly minor) Illness & Injury

Christmas Recap

Hi, I’m Christina!

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