It’s National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day!

Peanut Butter lovers unite – It’s National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day!  Wooohooo!  In my household, we LOVE Peanut Butter and it’s consumed most days!

Did you know….

* Peanuts are not actually nuts at all! They are legumes, like beans, peas and lentils.

* Americans eat 3 pounds of peanut butter per person every year. That’s about 700 million pounds, or enough to coat the floor of the Grand Canyon!

* Peanuts may be a favorite food, but we’ve found many uses for their shells too! You might find peanut shells in kitty litter, wallboard, fireplace logs, paper, animal feed and sometimes as fuel for power plants!

* Two peanut farmers have been elected President of the United States: Thomas Jefferson and Jimmy Carter.

* One acre of peanuts will make 30,000 peanut butter sandwiches.

Are you a Peanut Butter Lover?  What are some of your favorite ways to eat Peanut Butter?

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FEATURE FRIDAY – Women Entrepreneurs To Watch

Meet some great women entrepreneurs on this edition of Feature Friday!

ABBY Z. First is Abby Z. a soon-to-be-first-time mom who launched a successful plus-size clothing line Abby Z in 2004 and has branched out to design for women sizes 2-24 to show that a woman is sexy at every size. She is now partnered with HSN, her past showcase sold out and on February 9th she hopes to do it again! Through trials and tribulations, Abby Z. has been through it all and won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

POSEPRINTS.COM is a truly unique stationary company created and run by a mother daughter team Denise Foster and Jen Harland. Users are able to create like-caricature’s of themselves in minutes from the comfort of their own home in order to customize invitations, save-the-dates, thank you cards and more! These fun and fabulous cards are perfect for wedding and baby shower’s and birth announcements too!

FOUNDER OF CROSS CONDITIONING CROSS FIT COMPANY! Finally, LA-based celebrity trainer and fitness expert Joy DiPalma founded Core Conditioning CrossFit, the first program of it’s kind combining every aspect of training to focus on workouts as well as teaching healthy eating habits and setting nutritional goals. It’s the perfect program to get back in bikini shape or work off that baby weight! Her company has been doing amazing since she opened up her “doors” last year!

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Swine Flu Vaccine Recalled: 800,000 Doses For Kids Recalled

Story: Associated Press

ATLANTA — Hundreds of thousands of swine flu shots for children have been recalled because tests indicate the vaccine doses lost some strength, government health officials said Tuesday.

The shots, made by Sanofi Pasteur, were distributed across the country last month and most have already been used, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 800,000 pre-filled syringes that were recalled are for young children, ages 6 months to nearly 3 years.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a CDC flu expert, stressed that parents don’t need to do anything or to worry if their child got one – or even two – of the recalled shots. The vaccine is safe and effective, she said.

The issue is the vaccine’s strength. Tests done before the shots were shipped showed that the vaccines were strong enough. But tests done weeks later indicated the strength had fallen slightly below required levels.

Why the potency dropped isn’t clear. “That’s the $64,000 question,” said Len Lavenda, a Sanofi Pasteur spokesman.

Young children are supposed to get two doses, spaced about a month apart. Health officials don’t think children need to get vaccinated again, even if they got two doses from the recalled lots, said Schuchat.

Swine flu vaccine has been available since early October, and since then manufacturers have released about 95 million doses for distribution in the United States.

The recalled shots were made by Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of France-based Sanofi-Aventis Group. The vaccine all tested fine when it was shipped out earlier this fall. But last week, testing of one lot showed that the potency had fallen about 12 percent below the government standard, Lavenda said.

The company found three other lots with diminished strength. It notified government health officials and did a voluntary recall, asking doctors to return any unused doses. The vaccine has been in high demand and the company doesn’t expect to see much come back, Lavenda added.

Officials with the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the company all said they believe the strength of the recalled doses is still high enough to protect children against the virus. No potency problem has been detected in the same vaccine packaged in other types of syringes or vials, Lavenda said.

Experts have a theory that the problem is specific to the children’s pre-filled syringes. For some reason, the antigen – the key vaccine ingredient – may be sticking to the walls of those syringes, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for science and public health.

Another manufacturer, Novartis, in February recalled five lots of seasonal flu vaccine packed in pre-filled syringes under similar circumstances.

Sanofi Pasteur bills itself as the No. 1 manufacturer of flu vaccines in the world. It makes flu vaccine at sites in France and in Pennsylvania.

Swine flu was first identified in April. During the first seven months of the pandemic, it has sickened about 50 million Americans and killed about 10,000, according to CDC estimates.

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Tiger In The Rough

April 13, 1997…a day that I remember well.  It was the day that Tiger Woods stormed into the golf world with an unprecedented 12 shot victory at the Masters.   Everyone was fascinated with his long tee shots, his flashy smile, his boyish excitement and his masterful putts.  Now…he’s simply just a putz.

I have been captured by the Tiger Woods car crash scandal for the past week now.  I, like many, love Tiger.  He is the superstar of my generation.  He is the one that I can tell my kids, “I remember watching Tiger when…”  And now he has let me and the rest of his fans down.  I would probably feel better about the whole situation had he taken steroids or something.  At least then he would have only been cheating on a game, instead of his wife and children (the steroids thing would have still bothered me though probably).  Is he really that dumb to think that he was going to get away with something?  I mean, you were in a Vegas nightclub for crying out loud!

Some people say that they are happy because it brings him down to our level, that he’s human because he made a mistake…forgetting to pay the power bill is a mistake…cheating on your wife is a sin and nowhere near my level.  And now he’s trying to buy his marriage!  I guess that’s what you do if you have a billion dollars.  I remember the commercial with all the little kids that were saying, “I’m Tiger Woods”, what a great example this is for those kids.

Maybe Tiger and his wife can work things out, I’m not sure, it would take an awfully forgiving woman, but until then Tiger do us all a favor and keep your putts on the green and your putz in your pants.

- Brian

Brian is Kasey’s husband who has been an avid sports fan for many years.  He enjoys being a family man, watching sports on TV and spending time with family and friends.

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Letters To Santa Program Resumes

Thousands of children from all over the world almost didn’t get a return letter from Santa or his helpers this year thanks to the US Postal Service.

After a nearly 55 year tradition, where light posts are curved and striped like candy canes and streets have names such as Kris Kringle Drive and Santa Claus Lane, Postal Service officials announced that they were tightening rules in such programs nationwide after a postal worker in Maryland recognized a volunteer in the agency’s Operation Santa program as a registered sex offender.  The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child’s letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to make changes to the program.

Losing the Santa-letter cache would be a blow to the community of 2,100 people, who pride themselves on their Christmas ties. Huge tourist attractions here include an everything-Christmas store, Santa Claus House, and the post office, where visitors can get a hand-stamped postmark on their postcards and packages if they ask for it.  “It’s Grinchlike that the Postal Service never informed all the little elves before the fact,” he said. “They’ve been working on this for how long?”, said North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson.

Kids around the world can still send letters to Santa Claus. The Postal Service still runs the giant Operation Santa Program in which children around the world can have their letters to Santa answered, and the restrictions do not affect private organizations running their own letter efforts. But what would have changed is that the generically addressed letters to “Santa Claus, North Pole” that for years have been forwarded to volunteers in the Alaska town.

It was announced, amid an outcry,  that the Postal Service had reversed its decision and would allow the volunteers of North Pole to run the program

“We have now put protections in place,” said Mr. Potter. “We’re redacting the last name and address before we send any letters on,” Postmaster General John E. Potter explained.

The new system replaces those details with code readable only by post office computers.

“If people then want to give, they can send us the letter and whatever gift, and we will pass it on,” said Mr. Potter, who added that he was confident there would be no further problems.

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