Frugal Family Tree: Tsukihoshi Kids Shoes Review and Giveaway

Finding the right shoes for kids can be rough. Things are too tight, too loose, too big, too small, it feels weird or they just agree with what you say then when you get home it turns out the shoes don't fit at all. But?that's?normal when it comes to kids and shoes. For them its harder to know if a shoe fits right so us as parents have to start out by giving them good choices when it comes to the brands we have them select from.

Plus they need to look cool not only to me but to my kid. My son at 3 is staring to get an?opinion?on what he wants in the way of shoe and clothing color, I think its so cute! I have done a lot of?research?on kids shoes for fit,?durability, light weight and colors?available. One shoe company that is at the top of my list is Tsukihoshi.

Tsukihoshi is a Japanese brand that has been around 1873. These shoes have proper arch support, flex at the toes of the foot allowing for running and jumping in comfort, barefoot like comfort (great for little developing feet)
light weight, easy on and off, and two great?features?that I LOVE an anti bacterial removable insoles and the best of all they are MACHINE WASHABLE!!! How awesome is that!!

I really do love these shoes and so does my son. He picked out the orange ones, he loves orange. Even my husband who is picky about style loves them. I was impressed by that! They are so easy to put on my son can do it himself. It has a?Velcro?top and fake laces. So they look cool and not like a typical no lace shoe.

My son was running so fast all over the mall yelling "Super Cool" and showing people his shoes I had to put him back into his stroller! He has a several other pairs of shoes but since he got these he insists on wearing his orange shoes. I love how great they fit his feet! They are a true to size fit and sizes range from Baby to Toddler to Youth.

I even saw that many celebrities kids are wearing Tsukihoshi too. Tori Spelling, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sandra Bullock, Adam Sandler, Julie Roberts, Jack Black, John Stewart and so many more celeb parents buy these shoes for?their?kids. ?They come in several styles for boys and girls including a mary jane one that is so cute.

You can find Tsukihoshi (when you say it the T is silent) at Nordstrom, online and other high end kids shoes retailers. A great investment in the foot health of your little ones!

Here are some other fun?styles?I like:

For the Girls:




GIVEAWAY
For our Valentine's Day event we are hosting a giveaway for one pair of shoes from Tsukihoshi for the little Valentine in your life. Winner's Choice of style.

Enter in the Rafflecopter form:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

?*Limited to US residents 18 years old and above. Giveaway starts Feb 6, ?2013 and ends on Feb 15, 2013 at 12:01 am EST. Winner will be emailed and has 72 hours to respond before another winner is selected. I was not paid for this giveaway or post. The opinions on this item are 100% mine and may vary from others. The sponsor is responsible for providing the prize. I was sent a product to review for this post.

Source: http://www.frugalfamilytree.com/2013/02/tsukihoshi-kids-shoes-review-and.html

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Video: Can the Rally Last?

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JC Penney sues to block bondholders from declaring default

(Reuters) - J.C. Penney Co Inc filed a lawsuit on Monday asking a Delaware judge to declare that it is not in a default of its bond agreements, protecting nearly $3 billion of debt from being due in the coming months.

The lawsuit was filed after J.C. Penney received a letter earlier on Monday from the Brown Rudnick law, firm which said the retailer had breached a covenant of a bond indenture agreement by granting a lien on its inventory, according to the complaint filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

The indenture agreement related to $326 million of outstanding bonds that mature in 2037, although the letter said that J.C. Penney could be in default on all of its $2.9 billion bond debt, according to the lawsuit.

The letter also said bondholders believed that J.C. Penney's debt could be declared payable in less than three months, according to the lawsuit.

The letter said Brown Rudnick represented investors who hold more than half of the outstanding bonds due in 2037, according the complaint, which seeks to be heard on an expedited basis.

"We believe this notice of default is invalid, completely without merit and is intended to create self-interested trading opportunities in the market, and we will therefore vigorously defend the interests of J.C. Penney and all of our constituencies," J.C. Penney Chief Financial Officer Ken Hannah said in a statement.

In the complaint, J.C. Penney noted that the demand from Brown Rudnick came as the company is investing significantly to update its stores.

J.C. Penney has been struggling with plunging sales for almost a year as Chief Executive Ron Johnson has tried to eliminate most discounts while also transforming each of its 700 largest stores into a collection of 100 shops for brands like Levi's and PVH Corp's Izod band.

Customers balked at the new pricing and the retailer has backtracked on some of its pricing policy.

The stock was down more than 50 percent in the past 12 months.

The case is JC Penney Company Inc v U.S. Bank National Association, Delaware Court of Chancery, No. 8276.

(Reporting By Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/j-c-penney-sues-block-bondholders-declaring-default-224053854--finance.html

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54 countries aided CIA rendition program, report finds

By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

As many as 54 nations aided the United States in rendition and detention operations that swept up more than 130 people as part of the Central Intelligence Agency?s global counterterrorism efforts, according to a report released Tuesday by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights advocacy group.

The report, titled ?Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition,? is the most complete account yet of the covert and extra-legal detention of suspects at undisclosed locations, or ?black sites,? in the post-9/11 era. Relying on information provided by human rights groups, public records and court cases, the report details the harsh treatment some suspects faced.

?The United States prides itself on being a leader in the field of human rights, and now we have courts around the world saying that the United States is a torturer,? Amrit Singh, who authored the report, told NBC News. ?Those kinds of findings really undermine the United States? ability to advocate for human rights around the world.?

Public debate over the use of torture as a counterterrorism tactic was reignited recently with the release of the movie ?Zero Dark Thirty." Critics of the film say it incorrectly portrays the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics in the pursuit and killing of Osama bin Laden, but filmmakers say the torture scenes depict just one part of the decade-long hunt for the terrorist mastermind.

The use of renditions appears to have reached its apogee after the September 11 attacks, when President Bush expanded the program to include indefinite periods of detention in third-party countries, according to the report. While the Obama administration has taken measures to impose more oversight on the process, renditions appear to continue, according to the report.

President Obama issued an executive order 2009 that directed that the CIA close its secret detention facilities in order to ?promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals? held by the United States. But the order specified that the closures did not apply to facilities used to hold terror suspects ?on a short-term, transitory basis.? A task force established by the order produced recommendations in 2009 that would allow rendition to continue, but with measures to prevent ?the transfer of individuals to face torture.?

Due to continued secrecy over the CIA?s extraction and detention of suspects, estimates on the total number of detainees have been imprecise. ?The catalog of 136 people identified in the new report as detained or transferred by the CIA is the largest such list to be compiled to date. The report notes that the total number of people subject to rendition, detention, or interrogation will not be known until the countries involved release that information.

Italian court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Countries assisting the United States included Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Kingdom. Some of the countries hosted facilities used by the CIA on their soil, according to the report, while others provided intelligence or aided in the capture, transport, or detention of individuals.

?The 54 governments basically enabled these operations,? Singh said. ?Without the participation of these governments, the programs would not have been possible.?

The practice may have long-term ramifications for the United States, as foreign governments react to emerging information about the secretive practice, Singh said. On February 1, for example, an Italian court sentenced a former CIA chief and two other American officials in absentia to prison sentences for the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in 2003.

The report also includes details on the brutal conditions faced by some suspects, including Maher Arar, a Canadian and Syrian citizen. Arar was held in Jordan and Syria between 2002 and 2003 after being detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In Syria, he was imprisoned in a cell three feet wide, threatened with electric shocks, and beaten with cables, according to the report.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Singh also cited the case of Khalid El-Masri, 49, who said he had been detained by the CIA in Afghanistan after being extradited from Macedonia. His case is unique, Singh said, because his claims of mistreatment have been affirmed by a court. While a 2006 lawsuit El-Masri brought in federal court against the U.S. government was dismissed, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in December that El-Masri?s rights had been violated.

Europe court:German was victim of CIA extraordinary rendition program

A 6,000-page review of CIA detention practices was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in December. Initiated in 2009 by a 14-1 vote of the committee, the report is a ?comprehensive review? of the detention and interrogation of CIA prisoners, committee chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein said in a statement. The report, which remains classified, ?uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight,? Feinstein said.

The committee is expected to vote again in February on whether or not to declassify portions of the report following comment from the White House and CIA.

Among those urging for the declassification of the report is Senator John McCain, who in December said it is his hope that "all Americans can see the record for themselves, which I believe will finally close this painful chapter for our country. ... Our enemies may act without conscience, but we do not.?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16853156-report-pulls-back-veil-on-cias-rendition-program?lite

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NASA's Curiosity Rover Hammers Into 1st Mars Rock

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pounded into a Red Planet rock with its drill for the first time, bringing the 1-ton robot a big step closer to initiating its first full-bore drilling operations.

The Curiosity rover?hammered the rock using the arm-mounted drill's percussive action over the weekend, completing another test along the path toward spinning the bit and biting into rock for the first time.

"We tapped this rock on Mars with our drill. Keep it classy everyone," Curiosity flight director Bobak Ferdowsi ? who gained fame as "Mohawk Guy" during the rover's nail-biting landing on the night of Aug. 5, 2012 ? wrote in a Twitter post Sunday (Feb. 3), sharing a photo of the pounded rock.

Curiosity's drill can bore 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) into Martian rock, deeper than any rover has been able to go before. Using the drill and its associated systems is a complex operation, so the mission team has been building up slowly to the first drilling activity on the Red Planet.

Last week, Curiosity performed some "pre-load" tests, pressing down on a rock with its drill in several different places to see if the amount of force applied matches predictions.

The six-wheeled robot has also been carefully evaluating its target rock, which is part of an outcrop the mission team has named "John Klein," after a former Curiosity deputy project manager who died in 2011.

Curiosity's main goal is to determine if its Gale Crater landing site?could ever have supported microbial life. Along with the rover's 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the drill is viewed as key in this quest, as it allows Curiosity to dig deep into Martian rocks for potential signs of past habitability.?

The mission team wants to test the drill out on a target with scientific value, and John Klein seems to qualify. The outcrop shows many signs of past exposure to liquid water, including light-colored mineral veins that were apparently deposited by flowing water long ago.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall?or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook?and?Google+.?

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-hammers-1st-mars-rock-192003957.html

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@julianrobertson Twitter Account - Business Insider

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Divorce-Proof Marriage: 10 Reasons I'm Sure We'll Never Split

By Amber Doty for YourTango.com

By now, you've probably heard the widely-touted statistic that the divorce rate in the U.S. is 50 percent. According to the Pew Research Center, though, the rate of divorce is on the decline (along with the rate of marriage). This success is likely due, in large part, to the fact that people are waiting longer than ever to walk down the aisle.

While I agree that stability is certainly important, I don't buy into the idea that age is a deciding factor in whether a marriage ends in divorce. It's not the case at all with my marriage.

My husband and I met and began dating when I was a teenager and were married in our early twenties. More than eight years later, I am as confident as I was on our wedding day that our marriage will last a lifetime. In fact, I would go so far to say our union is divorce-proof. Here are 10 reasons why.

1. We wanted a marriage, not a wedding. Recently, I had coffee with a friend going through a divorce after only two years of marriage. When I asked what happened, she replied without pause, "I wanted a wedding, not a marriage." She went on to explain that, after years of dating, getting married seemed like the next logical step in their relationship and the timing was right for them to fund the wedding of her dreams. From seating arrangements to color schemes and everything in between, there are many decisions to be made while planning a walk down the aisle. It can be easy to lose sight of the ultimate goal: to begin a lifelong relationship with the person you love. But the hard part isn't in saying "I do," it's in choosing to say it again and again for the rest of your life. For my husband and me, the focus was always on the morning after (and every other morning after that) instead of the "big day."

2. We didn't wait until after the wedding to tackle important issues. It can be awkward when you're dating to discuss things like the number and timing of children, personal approaches to finances, where you see yourself living down the road, or what religion your family will practice, but knowing the answers to these questions before you marry can mean the difference between a rocky start and a smooth transition into your new lives together. Everyone has their dealbreakers, but identifying ours before we gathered 100 of our closest friends and family members to pledge our lives together for all eternity cut down on surprises after they had all gone home. I am always shocked by the number of marriages that end in divorce because a couple never bothered to discuss their ideas for the future.

3. We put each other and our marriage first. Our children come second. I?ve written about it before here on YourTango. I love my children, but I am in love with my husband and prioritizing our relationship is good for our family as a whole.

4. When it comes to our relationship, our in-laws are outlawed. Mother-in-laws are at the center of many a sitcom and romantic comedy shenanigan -- and for good reason. They're notorious for causing marital strife both on-screen and off. That's why my husband and I have made it clear that while I can't control his mother's opinion on my cooking and he will never escape my mom's incessant nagging on the upkeep of our yard, their thoughts on our relationship are unwelcome. When we need advice or just to vent, we seek out the listening ear of a friend, not a family member.

5. Our bedroom is a child-free zone. Nothing kills the mood faster than reaching under the sheets mid-romp to dislodge an uncomfortable object that turns out to be a half-empty sippy cup.

6. We use our past to our advantage, not our detriment. My husband and I both come from divorced families, a fact that many studies agree puts couples at greater risk for divorce themselves. But history doesn't have to repeat itself. We talk openly, both together and with therapists, about what went wrong in our parents' marriages and how it affected our lives and our perception of matrimony.

7. We maintain common interests. One of the very first conversations my husband and I shared was a discussion of a book we had both recently read. It's dorky, but we're suckers for a good horror novel. While the differences in our personalities and our day-to-day are vast (he works long hours in law enforcement; I work from home as a freelance writer), we share reading material and talk about it regularly. A book club for two may not be the foundation on which our marriage is built, but it is a reminder of why we got together in the first place beyond the roles we have assumed since our relationship began.

8. We practice emotional self-regulation. In an article highlighting the skills every person should master before getting married, YourTango expert, Dr. Susan Heitler, emphasizes the importance of learning to control your emotions. You can remove nails driven into a board, but you can't undo the holes they create. The same is true for words said in the heat of the moment. Taking time to cool down instead of entering into a shouting match has been the difference between a marital spat and a major blow-up.

9. We give each other space. When I step out for a much needed day away from the house, I am confident my phone will not ring unless there is an emergency. Likewise, when he arrives home from work, I give him time to relax before handing off the childcare responsibilities. A little independence and time to ourselves is as vital to the health of our marriage as fostering a common bond.

10. We split the parenting duties equally. Nothing breeds resentment faster in a marriage than feeling like you are solely responsible for the diaper changing and late-night feedings. Since the day our first child was born my husband and I have adopted a 50/50 approach to parenting. "You get this one. I got the last one," is a frequently uttered phrase in our home. We also share the burden that being a parent can place on a career. There is no expectation that, as the woman, I will shoulder the responsibility of taking a day off when our children are ill. Nothing makes me feel more supported and secure in our relationship than knowing my husband and I are partners in parenthood.

Are you confident your marriage is divorce-proof? How do you maintain a healthy relationship with your spouse?

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Affection: Does He Care?

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/26/divorce-proof-marriage_n_2281150.html

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