Hey y’all, I’m a website! ? Hopefully, you know me already and know what a goofball I can be. People have asked me for years to start a blog and offer tech and lifestyle advice, and I tried to do it once, but flaked out after 3 or 4 posts. This time, things are different, I am different.

The bottom line is this: I am a consumer. I have a pretty busy life but probably no busier than most of you. When I find things that make life more efficient, more pleasant, and more fun, I get interested. I test the waters for you…and then I give you my personal opinion and tell you about my experience. There is something within me that just absolutely loves when someone says I helped them out, or I changed their life. Now, they may be exaggerating a bit when they say that, but if I can find something that makes life easier for you, I’m going to exploit the heck out of it…in a good way!

Let’s start with a really good one that I discovered back in August for my little boys: the gizmo gadget! The GG is from Verizon, and is a mobile phone with a watch band. It is intended for kids, and has amazing capabilities. Both my boys got them at the end of the summer when they went back to school to 1st and 3rd grades. I don’t want either of them to have iPhones yet. No need. But I felt weird not being able to get in touch with them after a summer of constant contact. Then one evening I saw a news story about a little boy who was kidnapped while walking to a friend’s house. The kidnapper drove this little boy to a strange area and when the car slowed down enough, this brace little boy jumped out of the car and ran as fast as he could away from the kidnapper. He was able to call his dad from his gizmo gadget and his dad could track him with the gps function and rescue him. My husband and I looked at each other and I said, “get 2 of those tomorrow”.

Well, actually, I was the one that ended up getting them, and they are just fantastic. They have an app that you download onto your phone called gizmo hub. From there you are able to set up your child’s device with phone numbers they are allowed to call and receive calls from. You can also set up sound profiles (my kids gizmo’s automatically silence themselves during the hours of school and church).

Only people set up as “guardians” are allowed to text your child, so for my kids, it’s just me and my husband. Their grandparents love to be able to call them on it occasionally. It does not have internet or voicemail. It has activity tracking, and it even sends me a notification when their step goal is reached.

Right now in my area, Verizon is the only provider. Once you purchase the device, it is only $5 a month per device if you are already a Verizon customer. I am sure the price has come down on them and I have heard Groupon has some refurbished ones for sale as well, but we paid about $125 each for the gizmo gadgets, and got $25 rebate gift cards to Toys R Us for each device as well.

You have to charge the gizmo every 2-3 days, it’s water resistant, and pretty durable.

We were at Disney world last weekend and it was truly a game changer for my peace of mind. The boys never got separated from us, but I knew I could contact them if they did. Sometimes they forget to wear them to school, which is fine, but if there is a last minute change with carpool, it’s really nice that I can send them a quick message to say “Look for my car in the carpool line instead of the babysitter”, etc.

Hope this helps: I know a few of you will be getting these for your kids this year for Christmas, and finally it’s a gift that is good for the kids AND for the parents!