I really hate how muchI have become a broken record, I say things without thinking and as soon as it is out of my mouth, I am tired of hearing it too.

We all do it. We repeat the same phrase over and over, and for some reason we expect the kids to respond. But they don't hear us - they hear the teacher's voice from Charlie Brown instead. Even I hear it when I'm talking sometimes.

Sometimes kids have something that we adults don't have: guts. They aren't always brought down by the what-ifs of a situation and go for it. (This is, of course, a downside of teens as well.)

These two high-schoolers from Toronto are a great example. They decided to send a weather balloon, camera, and a Lego minifigure holding a Canadian flag into the stratosphere just because they wanted to. And so they did and it actually worked. And they have an amazing video to show for it.

Yesterday, I wrote a general post on Facebook and why I am leaning toward allowing my son on to the site even though he is under the age limit of 13.

But Facebook is such a huge, huge topic that I felt like I missed some things about how to handle the site itself.

My son is almost 12, he is in Grade 6, and he tells me often that he is the only kid in his year that does not have a Facebook account.

He has one year to go to legally join the site, but we are leaning towards letting him lie and join a year early. It doesn't feel good but I do know that most of his friends have an account and I would rather that he joined while I still had some influence over him, than have him join without me knowing. Because that is what kids do.

If you don't believe me ask the Vice-Principal of your local middle school; they will tell you that all the grade sevens have an account, but many parents don't know it.

I struggle with getting the kids involved in giving back. They see and hear that other children are not as lucky as them. But I worry that it becomes just noise.

When it comes to kids giving back, it's not about the amount of money raised, or what the projects are; it is the sense of satisfaction and they get from doing it which will hopefully drive them to make giving a part of their lives.

Do you know what I found in my mailbox today?

C A Magazine. As in, the magazine for accountants. Even a cynic like me has to ask: what happened to all the holiday cards?

My daughter told my mother she wants a dollhouse for Chrismukkah. This is the first I have heard of it. So now I am trying to figure out which dollhouse will make us both happy.

Why both of us? Well, gift-giving has turned into list-making and gate-keeping in our house. It's not because we have strict political rules like no plastic, and no commercially-themed items (okay, we are a little against completely commercial items).

Have you ever been on a momdate? Or even more scary, a blind momdate?

If you were lucky enough to have kids at the exact time as all you friends than you maybe have escaped the momdate. But for the rest of us who were on different timelines than our friends, or who moved or who just grew out of our circle -- the momdate may have been the lifeline we needed to a new, and important relationship.

When I first heard that Disney was rebooting The Muppets, I didn't really give it a second thought. They were funny when I was kid, but the decades-old movies are a bit painful to watch these days and their goody-two-shoe optimism has had its day.

But then the trailers and the spoofs came out and it felt like the Muppets were in on the joke. Could this be a reboot of characters from my childhood without all the cynicism and sexed-up characters that plague all the other comebacks from my youth?

No presents please, just your presence is appreciated. It is my (belated) two year blogiversary. My second anniversary of blogging here at Embrace the Chaos was in October. But I have been so busy keeping up with the news and managing chaos that I haven’t had time to reflect on the goings-on here in my tiny corner of the Internet.

But I have learned some things along the way this year including: