Maybe this would work!!

I don't know about you, but I'm not a good gift giver. Some people seem to know exactly what to give people; it just comes naturally. I am not a natural born gift giver. If I don't have a list from the intended gift recipient, I'm kind of at a loss. I'll just wing it. There are folks, however, that receiving just right the gift means a lot to. I must annoy them lots!!

With new technology comes new toys, and this is one that is practical and yet fun, even personalized to let the gift recipient know that you really were thinking of them specifically when you bought it.



Personalized flash drives

These look like they'd be a great graduation gift or father's day gift, the engraving is free, and they ship within 3 days, so even if you've procrastinated, you're good. Looks like this might work for a few folks on my list!!

Diggin' holes

My girls have been digging a hole in our yard. They rush out to work on it as soon as their chores and school are done, and they spend as much time as I'll let them digging, scooping, and smoothing. There is no logical reason for this hole. We are not planting anything there - the garden is a few feet to the left. We are not putting anything in the hole. It serves no purpose that I can determine. But they love this hole. It keeps them busy, and they'd much rather work on it than anything that I would like for them to do. I don't understand it!!

How many "holes" do I have in my life? Things I've invested time and energy into that really have no meaning and no purpose? Nothing wrong with them, but why do they capture my attention?

It's so easy to see it from the outside looking in, isn't it? Harder to see the silliness in yourself....

Possibilities

When I was in high school I took a class called "Communications" where we learned about and then worked with various communication media. The big highlight of the class was when your small group's turn came up to take the school's one camcorder home. I'm obviously dating myself, but it was big stuff then. We worked as a group of three or so students in filming and editing our own short, very short movie. Technology has come a long way, and it's amazing what my kids know how to do already that I never did. My ten year old can pick up the digital camera, click it over to video, snap up a quick video, and then upload it to our computer without any help from mom. Our family isn't by any means the most up to date in technology world, but what we do know is fun...







There are so many new possibilities out there for storing our memories, or for putting together stories that we'd like to tell. I came across a contest that's giving someone a chance to get some new technology to tell their own story on film.
HP Channelbee.com

Here's a quote from the HP website that can tell it better than me.

"HP is serious about developing your film making talent. So serious, in fact, that we are giving the lucky winner a stylish new HP Pavilion Elite m9255.uk PC with Phenom™X4 9500 Quad Core processor, plus top-of-the-range monitor for keeps. This high-spec, cutting edge package is the ultimate film-makers assistant, with the power and display you need to realise every cinematic vision.

With the m9255.uk PC, you're ready to cut, edit and store your entire portfolio of movies, music and photos securely in one place. Plus you get a digital/analogue TV tuner, infrared remote control and all the necessary AV inputs up-front.

Few filmmakers enter the industry so well-equipped. For more information on the m9255.uk and other cool products visit hp.com/uk"

Homeschool Co-op

So we had a meeting last night for our homeschooling co-op, and it was good, but my head is spinning. So many details to work out... But I think it really is important for my kiddos, so off we go.

A homeschooling co-op is a happy supplement to a homeschooling program. It can take many shapes and forms, but the essence of it is that parents pool together their resources to teach their kids together, in a limited way. For our group it's one day a week, from October through April, for anywhere from 1-4 classes. The main work of teaching is still at home, but it gives the kids a chance to rub shoulders with other kiddos (and the moms a chance to go out of their houses and visit too!) We break the kids down into rough age groups, and depending on what parents are willing to teach, we make up a schedule. Some classes that would be tricky at home (think public speaking :)) just work easier in this format.

Anyway, they are popping up all over the place, so check one out. They're not for everyone, but it's worth thinking and praying on. We have some information about ours on our group's website: http://www.glensfallsleah.freeservers.com/, and I plan to post some stuff on my website http://www.stayathomemama.info/ soon as well. Happy researching :).

Forgetful

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have an awful memory, for some things at least. And forgetting can get you in big trouble. There are things that you just NEED to remember. Not remembering them can have BAD consequences.

Today we celebrate Memorial Day, a day that was set aside in 1868 to honor those who died in the Civil War, as well as others who gave their lives to keep our country free. Do we really remember them though? Do we remember their sacrifice? Do we remember the cause they sacrificed for? What are the consequences of us not remembering well?

How's my heart?

Ok, so I definitely believe that God is perfectly able to do things in my life in a certain way to grab my attention, but still I am caught off guard when He so obviously seeks to grab my attention. Yesterday I had an interaction with someone that totally convicted me of the fact that I've been calloused towards her, that I haven't really been looking at her through God's eyes, as He sees her, but rather through my very cloudy, self seeking eyes. Yesterday I caught a glimpse of the real person inside of the tough face that everyone sees. I saw a broken hurting child that God made.

Now, people that know me think that I'm a pretty nice person. I mean, I'm a good, homeschooling, foster care providing, Christian, stay at home mom. You know what though? My heart is getting hard. I'm allowing parts of it to stay soft, but only the parts I want to be. The rest has been getting thick and calloused and ugly.

So, then I open up the Daily Bread little book today, not having done that for a long time, and guess what the title for May 23 is? "Heart Disease" The author references Zechariah 7:8-14, where the children of Israel are asking God if He wants them to do the traditional mourning and fasting, and God says, basically, you know what? Whatever you've been doing lately, you've been doing for yourself, so skip it. What I really desire, says God, is for you to have a soft heart. "Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other." So God tells them exactly what He wants, and they "refuse to pay attention... stopping up their ears." Yikes. Sounds a little too familiar to me!!! How many times have I felt prodded by God and plugged my ears?!? Ok, here's the scary part - so God says "When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen." Do I want that? Yikes!

Please God, help the lesson to stick this time. Please make my heart tender; make it like yours.

Follow up on "My Pants"

A few weeks back I wrote about the Dockers contest that's going on, and I was wondering how that's been going. Who has sent in clips? What kind of responses have they had from people sending in their own commericials for Dockers? It is a pretty neat opportunity. I mean, how often do regular folks get to go on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno? So, I got nosey and started looking... I found links to the Dockers contest and started watching videos. There are some high quality, professional looking ones, some that look a little less polished, and some that are just goofy. Here's a link to one that I think just looks very good (If it doesn't come up right, look for the one titled "Historically..."):



I'm not exactly sure what the folks at Dockers are looking for, but that looks just about ready to run as is.

What a very neat promotional idea. Let folks get all excited about the product by involving them directly in the promotion. I wonder if there has already been an increase in visitors to the Dockers website and store as folks do their "research."

The contest is still running, but entries need to be downloaded by May 29th, so the clock is ticking. If you have an idea for your own commercial, grab a friend and your video camera this weekend and get recording. Hey, the whole family might be together for a Memorial Day picnic. Do it then! I'll keep checking out the commercials. Maybe I'll see you there!

Steven Curtis Chapman Tragedy

I don't know if you've ever heard of Steven Curtis Chapman, but he is a Christian musician who has lived life in the spotlight with his family, and they have done it well. He has released more albums than you can count easily, won tons of awards, stayed committed to his wife and family, and just honored the God he sings about. He and his wife have become outspoken advocates of adoption in recent years, and actually were a large motivating force behind my husband and I choosing to foster and possibly adopt. The Chapmans have three biological children and then adopted three more. They also started a foundation, Shaohannah's Hope, that helps enable others to adopt.

http://www.stevencurtischapman.com/

Yesterday, May 21st, the Chapmans suffered a huge personal tragedy. One of their teenage sons was backing an SUV down the driveway and accidently struck and killed their youngest daughter, Maria, a 5 year old that the family had adopted from China as a baby. Wow.

If you pray, pray now for this family, for the brother who was driving, for all of them. Maria is fine. She is now in the arms of her heavenly Father, but the rest of the family has some grieving and some healing to do. Lift them up with your family as you sit down to eat your meals today, as you tuck your little ones in tonight. Lift them up...

Inside

I've heard this portion of Scripture so many times, but it was sweet encouragement again to me today.
Doing Bible lessons with the kiddos today and we read 1 Samuel 216:1-13, where Samuel goes to Jesse to look for the king to be among his sons. He starts with the oldest, tallest, handsomest one, of course, and God says no. He works his way down through all of the many brothers, no, no, no... Finally Samuel asks Jesse, in essence, "Is this all you've got?" Jesse says, kind of off hand, "Well, I've got this younger one, but I just kind of left him out in the field to take care of the sheep. I don't think you'd want him." Nice vote of confidence, Dad!! Of course it turns out that David, the youngest, the smallest, the least likely, is exactly who God has chosen.
God chooses the unlikely. God uses the unusable. That's great encouragement for a tired out, unlikely, unusable mom like me!

Cut-rate Homeschool Curriculum

It's that time of the homeschooling year again, time for doubting your sanity, waiting for test scores, doubting your kids' sanity :), and looking for curriculum at a good price to do it all over again next year!! A few of my favorites for low cost stuff are:

• Rainbow Resource - huge assortment of new curriulum and supporting material - http://www.rainbowresource.com/
  
• VegSource - a community of homeschoolers connect as part of this website, and there is a ebay type place to sell and buy curriculum (also some really good discussion boards) - http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/
  
• Home School Legal Defense Association's Curriculum Market - anyone can sell curriculum here and HSLDA members can buy or sell here - http://market.hslda.org/auction/xcAuction.asp

Let me know if you come arross any other good ones!!

A good night

I so often have to remind myself to celebrate the things I can, and not to dwell on the frustrating things. Looking back to yesterday, I have opportunity to practice. We had a rough day here, lots of crankiness and mischeviousness, but you know what, we had a good night. We made it through supper (a supper where nothing burnt!) without anyone getting hurt or being mean to anyone else. We actually talked and laughed and smiled. And some of us got baths, and everyone slept through the night. We had a good night!

Another scary movie?

Ok - so I seem to keep finding scary movies to talk about. I thought by the title of this one (Death Note) this was going to be another horror flick. This one, however, is not a horror movie, but a "supernatural action mystery manga". I don't know about you, but I didn't even know what a manga is - guess I'm showing my age! Soooo... I looked it up on Wikipedia. Turns out manga is a Japanese word for comics or print cartoons. Here's a little more from that site that I found interesting in trying to understand this media: "In Japan, manga are widely read by people of all ages, so that a broad range of subjects and topics occur in manga, including action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce, among others... Manga as a term outside of Japan refers specifically to comics originally published in Japan."

Ok, so now I know what manga is, so I went on to the website for this movie: DeathNote and checked it out. The plot is summarized as: "DEATH NOTE is based on the hit supernatural action-mystery manga, and follows the story of Light Yagami, an ace student who finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god named Ryuk. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals mysteriously begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective "L" to investigate, and he is soon hot on the trail of Light, who must now reevaluate his noble goal. Both Light and L believe themselves to be on the side of justice, and the two match wits as they attempt to prove which one of them is "good" and which one of them is "evil." " Interesting concept. I'm not sure I'd want to be able to have that kind of power. I think I'll stick with my un-supernatural abilities and leave the rest to Someone bigger than me. This movie is unrated, but the website for it lists at as comparable to an R-rated movie.



This movie is only playing in theatres for two days, May 20-21, so if it is something you want to see, you need to go to the website DeathNote and find the nearest theater quickly.

Homeschool crunch time

So it's mid-May, when I planned to be done with homeschooling, and I'm looking at my list of to-do's, and wondering if I will get to any of them, or how many of them. We have accomplished tons this year, and I know that, but it's so easy to get frustrated by looking at what we didn't do. We didn't finish this workbook, we didn't go on this field trip... You know what, it's a beautiful day, and we'll do what we can and then just go on, live life, enjoy the day, and call it good.

Come on over!

So I'm still really getting acclimated to the whole blogging thing, and really haven't poured too much of me into my blog, though I feel like I'm getting there slowly. I am definitely realizing, however, the power of this whole blogging community. It's like chatting over the backyard fence in days gone by, but it's a lot of fences, all connected. There is lots of information sharing, opinion giving, and networking.

SocialSpark.com

When I plugged into SocialSpark, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't sure who all was connected with them, or if it would be another "dead end" as far as an opportunity to do a little work from home. On the contrary, however, it's a vibrant community of bloggers and advertisers utilizing the internet and blogging in a very creative way. I've definitely caught the wave as it's beginning and growing, and I'm looking forward to seeing more advertisers climb aboard!!

As a mom, I'm noticing lots of other moms in blogger-land, and I think that advertisers in that niche are missing out if they're not connected to SocialSpark. Pampers, Huggies, Luvs, Johnson and Johnson - come on over!! Products for the family and home: Suave, Ivory, Lysol, Clorox, Palmolive, Tide, come on! Health care products - what a place to show the benefite of your product! Tylenol, Advil, Pediacare, Robitussin, come on!

Again, I'm not seeing lots of family stuff being advertised yet on SocialSpark, and I think the opportunities are huge. Technology and entertainment is taking advantage of this new marketplace, and it's fun to read up on that stuff, but I'm really hoping my day to day companies jump in on it!! I'd love to blog on you!

Traveling fun

Halfway through our return trip - 6 more hours with 3 small children, a dog, and a sick husband, all stuffed into a van with tons of stuff. We are barely holding it together, but it will soon be done. Arggghhh!!!

Yikes!!

Once upon a time I used to like scary movies, but now that I've entered mommyhood, they hold much less attraction for me. I have seen some promotional photos for the new movie, Frontier(s), but hadn't really paid them much attention. Then today I watched the trailer for Frontier(s). Yikes!! This looks terrifying - like make sure you go to the bathroom before the movie starts because you won't want to be walking down the dark aisle of the theater by yourself scary! The premise of the movie is scary in and of itself, and then it's taken even further by being uncut and unrated. Just from the trailer I honestly think that the weak of heart and stomach might have nightmares!!

Frontier(s) was developed quite some time ago, but because of disagreements about ratings, it's been hung up on release. The producers decided to release it fully uncut, so it's not showing at too many theaters. To the best of my understanding it's only at a handful of theaters - for folks in my area, we'd have to drive 2-3 hours to either Boston or New York City. It will only be in theaters for one week, and then will be released directly on DVD. I honestly don't know of anyone in my direct circle who will be making that trip. My husband is a fan of scary movies, but this one looks over the top intense. The promotional websites, http://www.frontiersunrated.com/ or Frontier(s) - Frontier(s) , even describe the movie as "sadistic gory and violent glory".

Horror Movie

Intense horror movie buffs will probably love this movie, as it certainly looks live up to being called an intense horror movie!

Sun isn't all bad

I try to be careful about sunscreen, especially with my kids, and now I hear that we need to be in the sun sometimes without sunscreen. I guess a lot of people, especially women, have vitamin D deficiencies, and they would be greatly helped by being in the sun without sunscreen for 5-15 minutes a day. I'm so confused!!

My pants!

Have you ever thought about a day in the life of your pants? The things they see, the things they do... Not only do they do all of the things that we do, but they get to go deep inside of the washing machine and dryer too. They see things we never do :).

My Levis' jeans have had a busy week. They drove from northeastern New York down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina with three small children and a dog. So that tired them out!! Now they are very sad because they are stuck in a suitcase and not being brought out - it's time for the shorts and swimsuit to take a turn!!

This is a bit of an unusual blog, but the reason for it is to share a really neat contest idea. Levis is running a promotion where you can make your own Dockers commercial about a day in your pants' life, and if it's chosen, it is shown on the Tonight Show! Check it out at http://www.nbc.com/Dockers.

Dockers contest

Levi has lots of neat new stuff to check out too at Dockers , the website for this specific Levi's line.

Another day, another chance...

I had an opportunity to chat with one of my kiddos today about second chances, and how I really do think that God causes the sun to set and rise each day as a reminder of the chance that each day has a fresh start and another chance. Second chances - we all need them...

A Greener Alternative

I found a very different and cool website today - www.eccobella.com . It features women's products for health and beauty, like Gluten Free Cosmetics, and is a woman founded company besides, which isn't crucial but is kind of fun, and probably helps keep them in touch with what their customers are looking for. Probably the neatest thing, I thought, on the site was a product line called "Health by Chocolate". Anybody who can link chocolate and health is a genius, I think!!! :)