Reviews

I recently had the opportunity to have a fun Mom’s Night Out at the Country Inns & Suites By Carlson hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

Country Inns sponsored the location for a Graco event that I attended, and they invited the moms who attended the event to stay the night. Not only that, but we could bring our families.

I ended up having a great evening of networking and getting to know other Georgia moms. I even got to enjoy some delicious food — without a baby in my lap, because she was able to stay in the room with my husband.

People who know me personally know that it is extremely rare for me to go anywhere without my baby girl.

I even work with her in my arms most of the time.

But it was nice to have some time away by myself, and it was nice that after the event was over, instead of driving home at 9:00pm, I could simply take the elevator to the room to meet my family.

They enjoyed hanging out in the hotel room and checking out the hotel grounds during our stay. They loved the constant supply of delicious cookies that the hotel offered, too. 😉

Country Inns & Suites works hard to offer families the comforts and conveniences of home, as you can see from the pictures. This wasn’t our first visit to a Country Inns & Suites hotel. It’s one of our favorite hotels to stay at when we travel, because of the amazingly spacious rooms that they offer.

Before this visit, our entire family plus my sister, Sarah, stayed in a Country Inns suite when we went to the Bloggy Conference in Ohio this past September. The hotel where the conference was held could not accomodate our large family, let alone our family plus my sister.

I searched for another hotel in the area, and came across a nearby Country Inns & Suites that ended up giving us a two bedroom suite (two queen beds AND a king size bed), with a living room, kitchenette, sofa, two bathrooms, and plenty of space. It was a great room, and the price was more than reasonable for a room that size.

Another bonus is that we didn’t have to pay for parking, because Country Inns & Suites offers guest parking for free! This is kind of a big deal, because we’ve stayed elsewhere where we’ve had to pay to park at the hotel we were staying at. 🙁

Other things we enjoyed during our stay:

• The shower — the pressure was absolutely perfect.
• Exceptional customer service — always important, and seriously, their front desk could not have been more friendly and polite. We definitely felt welcomed.
• Coffee — that was not only free and at-the-ready, but also good.
• The cookies — these cookies were so good and readily available…I thought they needed a second mention. 🙂
• Hot breakfast — okay, so the kids didn’t necessarily take advantage of the ‘hot’ breakfast. They were thrilled to have a rare treat – fruit loops cereal.
• Free internet — this allowed me to actually get some work done after the kids went to bed, which was way too late because of the excitement of sleeping in a hotel.

Overall, we had a wonderful stay.

Have you stayed at a Country Inns & Suites in the past? What is the number one thing you consider when choosing a hotel to stay at?

Country Inns & Suites generously offered this free one-night stay in return for a blog post highlighting my experience. As I mentioned, though, this wasn’t our first experience at a Country Inns & Suites hotel. It was already one of our go-to hotels. All opinions are my own, and I hope you enjoyed this post.

Colder weather is here, and that means it’s time to put away the summer clothes in favor of some fun winter fashion. I had mentioned before that my children have been blessed in the past to have their grandparents, aunts, and uncles buy most of their clothes for birthdays, holidays, and ‘just because’ when we lived in Illinois. Now that we are in Georgia and family isn’t right around the corner, we are finding ourselves in a new position of having to buy the majority of our kids’ clothes. 🙂

Kid’s clothes for five kids can get pretty expensive, and I’m always on the lookout for ways to clothe my kids in a budget-friendly way. But I also want them to feel good about what they are wearing, and my children love clothes with characters on them. Angry Birds and Disney characters are big in our house right now.

I recently did some online shopping for clothes for two of my children, and I shopped from CookiesKids.com. When I visited the site, the first thing I wanted to see was what they has on sale and what kind of character clothing they had to choose from. I was pleasantly surprised to find extremely affordable prices on clothes and items that my kids would love.

I ended up buying an Angry Birds outfit for my 3 year old son, David. We told him ahead of time that it would be coming in the mail, so he was anticipating it. When it arrived, he took no time changing into it, and it’s definitely his new favorite outfit!

I also decided to get some new winter items for my baby girl, Elisabeth. She is growing quickly and learning to walk at almost 11 months old, so I decided to get her some new winter pajamas along with some adorable Minnie Mouse socks with grip to help keep her feet warm and stable on the hardwood floors.

These socks are just as adorable in person as they look and the quality is fantastic.

Her new pajamas are totally adorable, too. The ruffles are my favorite part. Baby girl has worn them several times already, but she puts them on at night when I’m not snapping pictures…so I didn’t get a picture of her wearing them.

Overall, I’m impressed with my online shopping experience at Cookie’s Kids. They not only offer cute kid’s fashion, but also affordable, budget-friendly prices. And I know I bought items with fun characters on them for my kids, but Cookie’s Kids is also a great place to shop for school uniforms, toys, and a plethora of other clothing styles.

If you sign up for the Cookie’s Kids email list, they frequently have promotions going on that help you save even more, and if you use the code: thesensiblemom between now and December 14, 2012, you can save 10% off your order – sitewide!

Let me know if you do some of your winter shopping at Cookie’s Kids and what you buy. I’d love to know! 🙂

Tip: While shopping, once you click on an article of clothing, be sure to look for the Alva Kids icon by the size option. From there you will be able to tell what size your child wears in that particular item. Very neat! Here is what the Alva Kids icon looks like: 

I created a Google+ Story of my Cookie’s Kids experience as well. You can see it here. There are lots more pictures!
Learn more about Cookie’s Kids

The Cookie’s Kids Story

In 1972, a young man named Cookie and his brother Marvin went into business together. They rented a 1600 square foot store in Jamaica, Queens, fixed it up, bought inventory, and opened a day after Thanksgiving with a full stock of holiday toys. The toys were a success and they put the extra money toward buying children’s clothing for the next season. When that did well, they bought more clothing. The business was on its way.

As the brothers Cookie, Marvin and Sonny, who had come in as a third partner in the business, began to open new stores in new locations, inventory expanded. Besides the latest fashions, our customers wanted shoes, toys, backpacks and accessories and we were prepared to deliver.
By the late 1990’s there were six superstores throughout the NYC area, and though they previously had different names, by that time they were all named Cookie’s Kids.

Also in the late ’90s came an important addition to Cookie’s Kids’ inventory: school uniforms. It was the steady success in uniform sales that paved the way for founding CookiesKids.com in 2007, which originally sold uniforms and soon after the entire Cookie’s Kids Inventory.

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and CookiesKids.com #CBias #SocialFabric #CookiesKids – All opinions are my own. 🙂

Did you know that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents keep a child rear-facing in their car seat until at least the age of two?

That’s right. Two years old! It sounds crazy, I know, but those are the guidelines as of 2011. It’s no longer on their one year birthday that you should turn the car seat around to forward-facing. The reason being is that children are more than five times safer when they are riding in a rear-facing car seat.

Five times. Wow! As a parent, that gets my attention.

But how in the world do you accomplish this? How is it possible to keep a child rear-facing until they’re two years old? Won’t staying in a rear-facing car seat drive your toddler crazy?

A new game-changing car seat is the answer to those questions.

The new Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat is the only infant car seat that provides rear-facing protection for children from birth to two years old. Is that amazing or what? There’s a car seat that allows you to keep your child rear-facing, as recommended by the AAP, and it has all of these additional benefits to make your life easier:

It includes a kickboard! This will save the backs of your seats from getting filthy dirty when your child puts his or her shoes up against them. The kickboard helps to keep your seats clean. 🙂

It has an 8-position base that you can adjust as your baby grows. By adding in this feature, the Graco Click Connect car seat allows you to easily make adjustments to the tilt of the seat to make it as comfortable as possible for your child. For example, the first position is ideal for infants, and the last position would be ideal for your older child to give them the most leg room possible.

It can be used for babies 4 lbs. to 40 lbs. in weight. No more buying multiple car seats for a full two years!

This next feature is one of my favorites! Gone are the days of messing with the straps of the car seat when you need to adjust them as your baby gets older. Or trying to figure out the right way to thread them through again to make the seat more comfortable for your child.

The Simple Safe Adjust harness system on the Graco Click Connect car seat allows you to adjust the harness and the headrest with just one hand! SO easy!

I had the opportunity to attend a fun party to learn all about the SnugRide Click Connect 40, and we’ve been using it for Elisabeth, our 10 month old baby girl.

I’m excited that having this car seat means that we can follow the AAP’s guidelines of keeping her rear-facing until she is two years old in order to keep her safe while riding in the car.

If you’re interested in checking out the Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat, at the moment, it is exclusively sold at Babies “R” Us.

What do you think of the new SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat? What do you think of the the new guidelines? Will you keep your child rear-facing until they’re two years old?

More about the SnugRide Click Connect 40

The Graco SnugRide® Click Connect™ 40 – the first and only newborn to two-year infant car seat that actually grows with your baby from four pounds all the way up to 40 pounds. The car seat is designed for a parent on the go. The infant car seat can be easily removed from the base and used as a carrier when the infant is small, providing portability and convenience so you can easily move your infant in and out of the car without disturbing them.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently made the recommendation to keep all children in rear-facing car seats until the age of 2. Graco set out to make this product so parents can keep infants rear facing longer while still keeping them comfortable.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Graco. I received a free Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 car seat in exchange for my review. I’m 99% sure my husband and I would have bought one anyway, though. All opinions are my own.