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Photo by Monstera on Pexels​

Welcome to the 61st issue of Flanders Family Freebies, a weekly themed link list of resources designed by me, Jennifer Flanders, in hopes of helping you build a strong, happy, healthy home. Thank you for giving me a place in your inbox -- I deeply appreciate it!

St. Augustine, Wednesday, February 2, 2022

"Okay, Campers. Rise and shine!

And don't forget your booties 'cause it's cold out there...." At least, it's been cold. The weather's starting to warm a little now, which is as good a reason as any to celebrate, don't you think?

Our family is vacationing in the Sunshine State this week. On today's itinerary is a chocolate factory tour and some axe-throwing lessons.

Yesterday found us navigating a treetop obstacle course, which we all survived (something else to celebrate!) and playing several rounds of Marco Polo in our hotel's heated outdoor pool. (The water felt great until it was time to towel off and race, sopped and shivering, back to our room.)

​February's full of fun holidays and special occasions -- and we have some great resources and fresh ideas to help you make the most of them. Here's a small sample...

Free resources for you this month:

• Feb . 2 - Groundhog Day - That's today! So try your hand at our brand new Groundhog Day Word Scramble. It's trickier than you might expect.
• Feb. 3 - International Fake Mustache Day - Celebrate this quirky February holiday by taking our Mustache Trivia Quiz — and find out how much you know about lip hair.
• Feb. 6 - Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day - My dad used to feed me and my sister ice cream for breakfast routinely. Did you know it's been shown to boost brain power and aid in concentration?
• Feb. 7 - Send a Card to a Friend Day - Don’t have a card handy to send? Use one of our free printable greeting cards. I even included an envelope template.
• Feb. 14 - Valentine's Day - There is no shortage of Valentine printables on our website: cards, tracts, stickers, coloring pages — you name it. Browse through them all here: Free Resources for celebrating Valentine’s Day​
• Feb. 20 - National Muffin Day - We’ve posted recipes for blueberry muffins, raisin bran muffins, pecan pie muffins, and egg muffins — so take your pick!
• Feb. 21 - President's Day - We have many great printables for Presidents’ Day on our website, too, which you may download here: Presidents’ Day Printables​
• Feb. 23 - National Banana Bread Day - What better excuse do you need to bake a batch of our tasty, tried, and true banana nut loaves?

What we're reading this week:

Need an interesting book for World Read-Aloud Day (February 3)? Here's a great recommendation: My husband's been re-reading The Prodigy Project aloud to our family in the evenings this week. It's a real page turner, and the kids and I keep begging for "just one more chapter -- please?"

Doug wrote this novel himself way back in 2010. At the time, he marketed the story -- which centers on a bio-weapon being developed in China -- as something "torn from tomorrow's headlines." Twelve years later, we're amazed at how prophetic it proved to be, both on a global and personal scale.

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What we're eating this week:

While vacationing, we normally eat breakfast and dinner in our room and dine out at lunch time only. To that end, we packed several of the freezer meals we made last week to warm in our Instapot.

The restaurants we eat at are carefully chosen ahead of time. Best deal so far this trip? Gatusso's Grill in Gretna (on the outskirts of New Orleans). The food is delicious, they offer half-priced appetizers daily from 2-6pm, we earned 5 miles per dollar spent thanks to their participation in the AAdvantage Dining Program, and I got a $25 restaurant.com certificate to put towards our tab, as well.

[For more detailed tips on traveling on a budget, check out this post or this one or read my book, Pack Up & Leave.]

Progress on last week's goals:
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With lots of help from my children, we finished just about everything on last week's list before leaving town. That includes ✅making 12 freezer meals, ✅cleaning the house, ✅touching up paint, and ✅watching Make Over Your Evenings.

My goals for this week:

I have only two objectives this week:

1. Make great memories with our younger kids while enjoying a road trip to Florida (follow along on Instagram for a progress report)
2. Use travel time to clean up my computer desktop, cull my digital photos, and organize my Evernote files. I don't expect to finish the job this week, but every little bit of progress helps!

Another poll for you:

While my subscribers are somewhat evenly split between back, side, and stomach sleepers, it looks like the vast majority of us snore 😴. Readers' suggested remedies include mouth taping, weight loss, sleep studies, and nasal clips. As for falling to sleep fast, tips ranged from reading (or being read to) before bed to white-noise machines, bubble baths, and deep (7-4-7) breathing.

This week's question: Are you hoping for an early spring or still enjoying the snow and sub-zero temps? Whether Phil sees his shadow or not, I hope you have a happy Groundhog Day!