Amazing Race AND Survivor premieres in one week? LOVIN’ IT! We had a yahoo-amazing-race-is-back party with Kristen tonight. It ended up being a put-the-kids-to-bed-and-get-them-up-to-go-the-bathroom-and-then-go-to-bed-again-about-400-times party. But still it was fun. The Pioneer Woman’s favorite salad ever made an appearance. So, that was worth it.

I’m excited about this season of Amazing Race so far. First of all the dating-but-we-are-really-mean-to-each-other couple got eliminated first. Hallelujah.

(do-you-love-when-i-do-this-every-other-sentence-or-what?)

When Phil introduced the couples I was getting excited because almost all of them seemed somewhat normal. (Minus the aforementioned dating couple, of course.) But my team is Mom & Deaf Son—Margie and Luke. Luke is deaf and does not read lips, he only uses sign language. So, he needs his mom to translate for him. He wants to show the world that deaf people are equal to hearing people.

You know I’m a fan of sign language. It all started when I read about Rachel Coleman and her daughter Leah—I know I’ve mentioned her a hundred times in my blog. In a nutshell, Rachel was in a band and realized her daughter Leah was deaf at 14 months old. Rachel says she put down her guitar and picked up sign language. She has produced over 30 quality DVD Sets teaching hearing kids to communicate with deaf kids.

One thing Rachel said that’s always stuck with me is (in the ohamanda paraphrase) that deaf kids can feel very isolated. And if hearing kids only knew three words in sign language: “friend”, “play” and “hello” “name” dang, I can’t remember. But the idea is, deaf kids are just the same as hearing kids. They just want to play. And a little bit of sign language can go a long way for a deaf kid. I just love that!

That’s one of the reasons I picked up the Baby Signing Time dvd’s— because of Rachel and Leah’s story. Not only did I want Lydia to be able to sign “more” and “milk”, I wanted her to know sign language to communicate with others. (I’ve already let Asa watch one of the dvd’s. Is that bad for a four month old?)

So, I say all that to say, I loved seeing Luke on the Amazing Race hoping to show the world that deaf people can do exactly the same as hearing people! And how cool and so beautifully ironic was it that they were first to the Pit Stop by LISTENING for the yodelers? LOVED IT.

So, BESIDES Margie & Luke, who was your pick?

Amazing Race: Deaf Contestant & Mom is a post from: ohamanda.com

So last night I stayed up and watched Heroes instead of 24. (Yes, feel free to gasp and throw rotten tomatoes at me.) It was the mid-season premiere. I missed Peter. Well, Hiro anyway. And maybe Sylar.

About two minutes in I said, “Did I miss something? Is this the second hour? What’s going on?” And by fourty-five minutes in I realized, “No. This is just the most insane show ever.” It’s like every season they just make up a brand new story for our Heroes to play out. Last season was actually about fourteen new stories. They have one more week before I jack Jack back up to number one on my Tivo’s Season Pass. (Well, number one under LOST, of course.)

Anywhooo…

I was thinking I totally need to watch the previous episodes online. Then, I remembered a post I saw at Kingdom First Mom the other day about free online entertainment and it reminded me of this super cool new-to-me site called Fancast. Have you heard of it?

OK. You can totally watch EVERY TV SHOW online. I scrolled through and found all my shows (LOST, 24, Hereoes, Biggest Loser) and some shows from stations that I don’t even have. Like for some unknown reason we don’t get The Food Network. (Don’t you think that should be like basic? Yeah, well tell it to DIRECTV!) So, hello! Fancast has every show of Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Emeril and my best bud Alton Brown!

AND! AND! Noggin! We don’t get Noggin! Fancast has a ton of Noggin shows. Also, shows and movies from Disney Channel (yes, even that big high school musical) and some old skool shows like The Smurfs. There are lots of times I’ve been somewhere with my computer and tried to find full-length shows for Lydia to watch and just didn’t know where to go. Now I do!

Not to mention Fancast has a boatload of free full-length movies to watch for free. There weren’t a ton I was interested in. But I did notice Rocky IV. And Yentl. I know, they totally don’t go together but I saw them both when I was a kid. So. Whatever.

(Parental Red Flag: Fancast does have free rated R movies on it.
So, I’m not sure it would be a great place to let your kids just totally hang out on by themselves…)

What I was really more interested in was just that all my TV shows could be in one place. I never remember which network has what show because my Tivo thinks for me. (By the way, when is Tivo going to start paying me commission?) And it’s kinda youtube-ish in that you can embed the shows, rate them, get recommendations, and even an RSS feed to your faves. Not to mention there are blogs about my favorite shows (yes, there’s a LOST blog. Great day in the morning!) and I love the fact that it’s a clean easy site to navigate. Clean sites make me happy.

They also have the ability to download entire seasons for a fee. But really, why would you do that when there are 45000 hours of free shows and movies to watch?

OK, end of commercial. Just thought you might want to abandon the dishes, or laundry or whatever it was you were working on to watch some more TV…just online at Fancast this time!

Free Online TV Shows & Movies at Fancast is a post from: ohamanda.com

I’ve got about 14 tabs open right now. Fourteen tabs devoted to LOST. Fourteen theories, recaps and ramblings about last night’s season 5 premiere. *sigh* I’m a happy woman.

If you want to get started on your own Lost-tab Party, here’s my recap at the Disney Blog. The mother of all recaps at ew.com. And Shannon’s recap that is filled with more links in the comments.

Enjoy!

Oh Lost, How I Love Thee. is a post from: ohamanda.com