A couple of weeks ago I tweeted about making time each day to talk to your children. The idea was to ask them big wordly questions, not just about what they had played with their friends or what they had done at school. It was to encourage them to consider issues outside of their normal sphere of influence, to listen to your part of the conversation and to throw questions right back at you.

Last week I then came across a series of posts inspired by Ride The Waves of Life where Mummy Bloggers had interviewed their little ones. The answers were cute and funny and it was fascinating to see the world through a child’s eyes.

We did it. We made the life changing decision, quit our jobs, sold our house and moved lock, stock and barrel to Spain in search of a ‘better’ life. Everything is great. The sun shines, the countryside is beautiful, we are learning the lingo and our 8 year old is in a lovely little village school that only has six other children.

So what do we have to complain about, you ask? The price of the bestselling toys here in Spain is crazy. So as an expat how can you get your child’s favourite toys in Europe?

Here’s some fun reading we picked up from wandering the web …

With summer holidays coming up get yourselves some fresh air and teach your little one to fish. Try this blog post for some tips. –Lilsugar

Why didn’t I think of that? One father has taken a photo a day of his children since they were born 12 years ago and now has a great collection to give to them to look back on later in life. It is never too late though. Take advantage of our Freebie this week and get 40 photos printed FREE with Photobox. –Parentdish

Whilst surfing the web last week I came across this headline from the Los Angeles Times blog: “Five tips to keep your kids safe this summer”. I am always keen to read parenting tips that offer good advice so I read on. The tips were from the Toy Industry Association and as I read them I got more and more offended at what seemed like “teaching us to suck eggs” advice. ‘Supervise your children’, ‘put sun cream on them’ … oh please. So after a little rant to myself and with Child Safety Week approaching on the 22-28 June 2009, I decided to try and write some less insulting tips with a few of my own experiences thrown into the mix.

Here’s some fun reading we picked up from wandering the web …

Internet savvy kids can be dangerous to your wallet if you do not log out of websites as some unlucky parents found out when their 3 year old bought a $20,000 digger. –Stuff.co.nz

We all have children with messy rooms, right? But calling the police on them is taking things a bit too far! –Strollerderby

Here’s some fun reading we picked up from wandering the web …

It’s a shame we all don’t have unlimited budgets for decorating our childrens bedrooms! Check out how the celebrities do it in style. I especially like the Tigger one where the celebrity couple had the Pooh cartoonist come in to draw the mural. –Lilsugar

Here’s some fun reading we picked up from wandering the web this week …

Man Delivers Baby With YouTube’s Help – You should probably file this under Don’t Try This At Home, but sometimes one has no choice. Pressed for time, a British man delivered his wife’s baby with the help of instructions uploaded to YouTube. –Webpronews

Have you ever noticed how the price for toys on Amazon can change by the minute? How can you take advantage of this and save yourself some money in these credit crunch times? By planning ahead and monitoring trends. Amazon Marketplace enables you to buy new items from third-party sellers from the same page on which they sell the item new. In some cases these Marketplace sellers offer lower prices than Amazon themselves. However, often Amazon are out of stock of particular toys so they rely on their partners to fulfil any orders.

Knowing what to do with unwanted toys can be the biggest stumbling block when it comes to taking action to get rid of these house cluttering items. Children grow out of them or they did not like them in the first place, for whatever reason, every household has a pile of toys that no longer see the light of day. If every time you look at the ever growing mountain of abandoned toys you quickly walk by or close the door, take heart, finding a better home for them is easier than you think. So where do you start?