We ask a lot of questions around here.

Are rat skeletons really made of cartilage?

What's a dredge?

What's a towhead?

Can we find a picture of a....?

How do signs spin without twisting the wires and breaking them?

The kids and I look up a lot of stuff. Most of the time I do know the answers to their questions, or have a pretty good idea, but it's a whole lot more useful to have my son read an illustrated article about dredges than it is for me to try to explain my own vague understanding of them.

We look up vocabulary words, and recipes, and historical events. For the past couple of months, we've been using Swagbucks instead of Google, because they reward random searches with points that can be used towards Amazon gift cards. They sell AccuQuilt dies on Amazon, cheaper than I've found them anywhere else. So I got myself an isosceles triangle die by indulging my children's' curiosity.

How amazingly cool is that?! Maybe it's a stay at home mom thing, but having something I really want fall into my lap is more fun than going out and spending money on it, probably because there's zero guilt.

Swagbucks awards points for searching, participating in surveys, watching videos, and playing free games. They've got some word games that I think could be easily addictive. Right now, you can get thirty extra points when you register by using the code SBGames. If my printer wasn't broken, I'd be using some of of their printable coupons, too. I buy store brand just about everything, but they've got dollar off coupons for the brand of shampoo I buy and the Jello cups Quinn is using for his speech therapy homework.

Mostly, though, we use it for searching and I rack up enough points for a $5 Amazon gift card every two or three weeks. It says in the rules that if they detect "unnatural" search habits, you may be shown the rules page. I keep expecting it to pop up, but surprisingly it never has.

Who knew our search habits could be considered natural?