This post brought to you by Walgreens. All opinions are 100% mine.

For the last year, Walgreen’s has been negotiating a new contract with Espress Scripts, Inc. (NASDAQ: ESRX), the pharmacy benefit manager for Tricare, an insurance provider for America’s military families. Those negotiations were unsuccessful, and the contract expired on Dec. 31. As a result, Walgreens is no longer part of Express Scripts’ pharmacy provider network as of Jan. 1, 2012. This includes all Walgreens pharmacies nationwide and Duane Reade pharmacies in the New York City area. You can read more about the situation here: Walgreens and Express Scripts

Those people who are covered by Tricare have found that their prescription costs have not gone down as a result of this contract expiring–and some have even found their prices to be more. Added to that, they have to drive further to find a participating pharmacy. Express Scripts itself has stated that their patients will not see any significant savings from excluding Walgreen’s from their network.

Express Scripts could offer substantial savings to its clients by promoting 90-day refills at retail pharmacies, but it conflicts with its own mail order 90-day prescription business that it profits from.

Walgreen’s wants to support and protect the troops, but since they are being excluded from Express Scripts contract, they are no longer able to fulfill prescriptions for military families. Many patients under an Express Scripts plan have used Walgreens pharmacies for years. In an effort to minimize their disruption and inconvenience, Walgreens unveiled a comprehensive national effort to make this transition as smooth as possible and is doing all it can to help patients continue to use Walgreens when possible, or take care of them as they are forced to leave Walgreens in order to use their in-network coverage.

Only patients with certain prescription insurance plans managed by Express Scripts will be affected by this. Check with your local Walgreens pharmacist to find out for sure if you’re impacted. You can check the back of your prescription insurance card – if it says Express Scripts, then you may be affected. If it doesn’t say Express Scripts, then they are not affected.

To minimize the disruption Walgreen’s is offering a special discount on annual membership for its Prescription Savings Club at Walgreens. An individual can join during a special January promotion for only $5, or $10 for a family membership, and receive savings on more than 8,000 brand name and all generic medications. More than 400 generics are available with a three-month supply for less than $1 a week. Regular annual membership is $20 for an individual and $35 for a family.

For more information check Walgreens on Twitter or Walgreens on Facebook

This post brought to you by Cafe Well. All opinions are 100% mine.

Cafe Well is a social network that offers corporate wellness programs that  WORK. It was created to provide a safe, secure and anonymous health care destination that connects you with other people who share your health care interests and needs. Café Well is the only destination that exists for one reason “health.” The community is there to address your needs, from chronic condition support like Celiac Disease, Diabetes or Arthritis to healthy lifestyle tips and challenges. CaféWell understands how hard the health care system is to navigate and makes it easy to get the health information you need, when and where you want it. That is why Cafe Well is available to everyone.

To get started you can…

• * Explore and join discussion groups to share experiences and get support
• * Connect with other community members with common health interests
• * Invite family and friends to join your own personal health network

On your Home page you can easily manage your activity and stay up to date on the latest news. You can start a private group for your friends and family to stay connected and work together on challenges, or join any of the existing groups for support and information.

 Race to the Moon is a corporate challenge , available only toforgot eligible Health of America members, that aims to get members more fit and active by walking or running through offering free wireless pedometers which tracks their steps and rewards them for milestones and total steps. This program actually works and gets their members more active!   Race to the Moon works to get people moving and keep them moving,  In just under a month, the program has participants who have walked over 50 MILLION steps, and average 2.5 million steps a day.

The company I worked for last summer had something similar to this–they provided every employee who wanted one a pedometer to wear. Each person was encouraged to keep a written record of the steps they took each day, and the ones with the most steps each week were rewarded in some small way. The Race To The Moon Challenge takes that idea a step further by using wireless pedometers to automatically record your steps. I think that is a great idea!

If I could create a challenge of my own, I would probably make it very easy and simple to follow, so that people could be successful and continue to get healthy as time goes on. Maybe I could make mine a “Eat Less for Success” weight loss program. What would your challenge be?

This giveaway is now closed. The winner has been notified by email. Thank you to everyone who entered.

Back in 1984, my (then) husband and I bought a brand new house. We lived in it for less than two months before we experienced one of those worst nightmare scenarios: a fire in the kitchen!

I had gone to the store down the street to pick up a gallon of milk. When I returned home, less that twenty minutes later, my son, who was eleven years old at the time and who was always playing pranks on me, met me at the front steps and said “MOM! the house is on fire!” I brushed him aside and opened the front door. As soon as I did, thick black smoke poured out of the house and down the steps! I was terrified, because I knew my daughters and my husband were still in there!

It turned out that my husband (not the one I am married to now) had put a pan of cooking oil on the stove, and walked downstairs to watch part of a basketball game while he “waited for it to heat up.” The game heated up as soon as he walked into the family room, and he quickly forgot about that pot of grease.

At the time all this happened, we did not have a fire extinguisher in the house. If we had had one, the damage caused by the fire might not have been as extensive as it was. I am here to tell you, IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE!

When Kidde asked me to review and recommend their fire safety products, I was more than glad to. I try to tell people at every opportunity to get a fire extinguisher in their home, and have a family evacuation plan so that when a fire happens, everyone in the home will know what to do and where to go. The small amount of money you will pay for a fire extinguisher, a smoke alarm, and an escape ladder will be nothing compared to the safety or your family!

It's smaller than my coffee maker

The Kitchen Fire Extinguisher they sent me is small, lightweight at only 3 lbs., and has instructions on how to use it printed right on the side of it. It comes with a bracket for hanging it on the wall, so you can put somewhere in easy reach. You should teach everyone in your family how to use it and when, and be sure to replace it when it expires, which is in 12 years.

Along with a Kitchen Fire Extinguisher, you should also have a smoke alarm in your home. A smoke alarm can wake you up if a fire starts in your home at night, and can save your life! Change the batteries when you set your clocks back and forth each spring and fall. An escape ladder for every room on second and third floors is also a good idea. Just be sure every member of your home knows where they are located, and how to use them. To find out how well your house is equipped for fire safety, take the survey here.

BUT IT: You can purchase a  Kidde Kitchen Fire Extinguisher at Home Depot for under $30.

WIN IT: One lucky reader will win a Kidde Kitchen Fire Extinguisher! To win, just leave a comment telling me when the last time your family had a fire drill for your home.

For extra entries, do any of the following. Leave a comment for each thing you do:

Follow Fabgrandma on Twitter

Tweet this giveaway once per day per twitter account: “ Kidde Fire SafetyProducts help protect your family. #win a kitchen fire extinguisher http://bit.ly/w0aSrQ  @fabgrandma #giveaway “

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This giveaway will end on January 3, 2012 at 11:59 pm EST.   One winner will receive (1) one Kidde Kitchen Fire Extinguisher. The winner will be selected using And The Winner Is…plugin.  Giveaway open to US mailing addresses only.  Winner will be notified by email, so please make sure you use a valid email address when entering. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to the notification of winning. If the winner does not respond in 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. You can enter once each day by tweeting about the giveaway one time each day per twitter account. Giveaway is open to residents of the United States and must be 18 years old or over. Prize is the responsibility of  and will be shipped to the winner by the sponsor. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery after the giveaway closes. I was provided Kidde Fire Safety Products as compensation for hosting this review and giveaway.

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This giveaway is now closed. The winner has been notified by email. Thank you to everyone who entered.
This is such a beautiful book!  I love the photography in it. CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? TOYLAND EXPRESS, the eighth title in the bestselling search-and-find series, follows the life of a toy train from the workshop to the attic, only to be rescued at a yard sale and brought to life once again in a new home. As readers search for more than 250 hidden objects, they will also notice how the train takes on various transformations along its journey.

About the author:

Walter Wick has opened millions of eyes to a world of treasures big and small in his award-winning, bestselling I SPY and CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? picture-puzzle books. Walter discovered his passion for building picture puzzles by accident. One day when cleaning out a drawer, he scattered odds and ends on a glass tabletop and photographed them. The photo appeared in a magazine and caught the eye of Jean Marzollo, editor of Scholastic’s Let’s Find Out. This photo inspired the first I SPY book, with riddles by Jean Marzollo, and led to their long collaboration.

In his more recent CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? series, Walter’s detailed photographs convey subtle hidden stories. Walter meticulously constructs 3-D sets for CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? in his Connecticut studio.

Watch a behind the scenes video of Walter Wick at work on Toyland Express:

BUY IT: You can purchase Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express: Picture Puzzles to Search and Solve at Amazon

WIN IT: One lucky reader will win a copy of Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express AND a $50 Visa Gift Card to help your child’s library grow! To enter, watch the video and then leave a comment about it.

For Extra Entries:

Like Walter Wick on Facebook

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Tweet about the giveaway (once per day per twitter account) ” #Win Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express + $50 Visa Gift Card http://bit.ly/uQuYVY @fabgrandma ”

This giveaway will end on January 2, 2012 at 11:59 pm EST.   One winner will receive a copy of Can You See What I See?: Toyland Express valued at $12.99 AND a $50 Visa Gift Card . The winner will be selected using And The Winner Is…plugin.  Giveaway open to US mailing addresses only.  Winner will be notified by email, so please make sure you use a valid email address when entering. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to the notification of winning. If the winner does not respond in 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. You can enter once each day by tweeting about the giveaway one time each day per twitter account. Giveaway is open to residents of the United States and must be 18 years old or over.  Prizing & Sample courtesy of Scholastic. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery after the giveaway closes.