My New Contest Obsession....Today it's Milk!

So I'm into the blogging give-a-ways. Today I've entered this contest at 5 Minutes for Mom to win $300 worth of Horizon Organic products...

Gotta love free milk. Here's hoping I win!

Adorable T-Shirts - Cute as a Bug!

Check out this great little cafepress store from Amy over at Crunchy Domestic Goddess.

So cute.

And you can enter her contest to win one of her adorable t-shirts. This one is my favorite...

I entered the contest and you can too.

Challenged

I have just joined the 30-Day Blog Challenge over at Casual Friday Everyday.

This is going to be a fun experiement. Looking back over my blog, I tend to go in spurts. Either I blog everyday for a while or I blog not at all! So...I'm going to try to consistently blog each and every day.

I make no promises for:
1. Length
2. interestingness
3. non-self-centeredness
4. my other blog

But...I'm game. It's like an Elul challenge, sort of. Maybe I can begin my journey towards teshuvah a little early by blogging about it. We'll see.

Exciting!

Maybe I'll try some of the other daily blog things that are out there that others participate in, like Best Shot Monday or Wordless Wednesday. Stay tuned!

(Hey, is there anyone really out there reading this????)

Mom is crazy!

Let it all hang out...
Originally uploaded by imabima.

Sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.

We were hanging out outside today, running a little bit through the sprinkler, when Sam demanded his clothes (including diaper) off! I guess I'm that mom -- the one who lets her kids run around the front yard naked.

And I think I'm in trouble. Sam does seem to prefer being clothing-free. This might have dangerous implications for the future as he learns to take off the clothes himself!

uh-oh....we're a fashion faux pas, I guess

So...I just saw this posting from Manolo's ShoeBlog, which informs me:

Manolo says, little baby children, such as the Violet Affleck seen above, may wear the Crocs. However, if you are the fully grown person you should avoid these ridiculous and childish rubber monstrosities.

“But Manolo,” cry the infantile, the misguided, and the willfully perverse, “the Crocs, they are so comfortable”.

Manolo answers, “so are the cardboard boxes filled with the combination of styrofoam packing peanuts and Vaseline.”

And just as the sensible person knows not to submerge their feets into such things, no matter how pleasant it may seem, so too does the sensible person know to avoid
the Crocs.”

Note the picture at the top....those crocs, second from left, are mine. I do love them. Guess this makes me a walking fashion faux pas...oh well. My kids sure are cute in their crocs, though.

What do you think???

Buy a CD for a great cause

A young lady studying for her Bat Mitzvah has undertaken a very cool project. She has created a cd of music -- her own piano playing and a little vocals, all written by this lovely teenager. Only one song was written by someone else -- Billy Joel! She contacted him and received permission to use his song Lullaby on her CD. Proceeds of the CD are going to the Susan G. Komen organization working for a cure for breast cancer.

Jessica's website describes her inspiration in detail and gives information on how to order the CD. It's a nice collection of music and a great cause.

Please pass this information on to others...she's already raised $1000 with sales of her CD. Let's help her out.

Role Models or Anti-Role Models?

Definitely, the sports world seems to be falling apart.

Let's see....the Yahoo Sports Headlines today:

- Michael Vick's (Atlanta Falcons football) dogfighting charges
- NBA match-fixing scandal
- two NHL stars arrested for disorderly conduct
- Michael Rasmussen removed from the Tour de France
- Baseball's steroids scandal
- New York Islanders re-sign Chris Simon, who was suspended for attacking another player

Hmm...I think it's time to find some new role models outside of the sporting world, that's for sure.

On the upside, I was impressed with Tiger Woods' decision to release photos of his new baby (so cute) without "selling" them to the press. And of course, I'm excited about the Chicago Cubs' current winning thing (and the Brewers, I am a Milwaukee girl at heart)...

but I can't really find a lot of role modeling for my own children in the sports world. I see so many kids wearing sports jerseys, t-shirts, hats, and thinking so much about the professional sporting world. In some ways this makes me so sad. There are so many other role models out there that we can introduce our children to. Perhaps it's time to stop idolizing these athletes....

On the other hand, it is possible that these scandals can serve for us another purpose. Maybe these folks (athletes and also actors such as Lindsay Lohan, arrested again with another DUI), provide us with the opportunity to see how NOT to act, provide us with anti-role models for our children. We can point out the wrongs in their behavior as an example to ourselves and our families how not to act. Or, as Julia Keller explained on May 15th in the Chicago Tribune, we can use their inflated salaries to remind us about what's really important:

Fat salaries worth every penny

Everybody reacts to the news of Roger Clemens' new salary the same way: First, there's the head tilt ("Did I hear that right?"). Next, there's the petulant extension of the lower lip ("It isn't fair -- what about all the starving kids in the world?").

If you're not a baseball fan, here's a recap: Clemens, 44, who retires and then returns about as often as most people brush their teeth, signed a contract with the New York Yankees last week. He'll get a reported $28 million for the rest of the season, or about $4.67 million a month, a number that seemed to stun even insanely enraptured baseball fans.

Don't firefighters perform a more important function? How about pre-school teachers?Isn't Clemens' compensation absurd? Or Oprah's? Or Katie Couric's?

There was a time I would've thought so. But not anymore. I've come to believe that we actually need the occasional jolt of a glaring disparity such as this. How else can we remind ourselves that in our hearts, we really do value preschool teachers over pitchers? Or firefighters over first basemen? Yankees owner George Steinbrenner doesn't -- clearly, he believes Clemens is worth the dough, while nuns and nurses aren't -- but we each get to set our own moral compass, even if ours is only theoretical.

C.S. Lewis used to wonder at people who claimed they don't believe in God because of all the evil in the world. His point: If there's no God, then where did we get these abstract concepts of good and evil, anyway? If there were no straight lines, we wouldn't know what to call a crooked one. Crooked compared with what?

We need Clemens' crazy paycheck to remind us of what we really revere. Our outrage is more dazzling than any fastball. Our anger puts us on the side of the angels -- and not just the ones who won the Series back in '02.

Wow...it's here, and I'm done.

I actually feel a little bit sad that I'm done reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's hard to believe that the series has drawn to a close. I definitely cried my way through the last 40 pages or so, pausing occasionally to wipe my nose and knowing that the book was almost at an end. Maybe I cried more because of the actual act of reading the end than at the ending itself (which wasn't all that sad, aside from the various deaths of major characters!).

Bottom line: I loved it.

As I type this, my husband is on page 152 and I am dying for him to finish so we can discuss it! I read as much as I could (about 500 pages!) last night and then finished the rest today. I am also waiting for him to finish so I can read it again. Yes, I am that dorky.

I love the Harry Potter phenomenon. I love that the rest of the world is just as excited as I am about books! For most of my life, I've been this excited for a new book to arrive. But now the whole world seems to share my joy at the book's arrival.

And no matter how sad I am that Harry is over...there's always something new! In fact, just this evening I got the email notice from the library that the newest book by Sheri Tepper is available for me and I know that Daniel Silva has a new novel coming out on Wednesday! So...the book world is far from over for me, of course. I am a Reader, and thus there is always more to be read.

There is also the additional excitement and knowledge that I will re-experience Potter when I share each book in turn with each of my children. Sharing the first book with my firstborn this summer has been such a treat. I am constantly enjoying the fun of remembering all my favorite childhood books in order to share them with my kids. Today I picked up used copies of Betsy-Tacy and The Boxcar Children, two of my favorites that I can't wait to read aloud to David.

Ah...the joy of the written word.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig...

It sure is nice to be home from camp. I do love going there, I love being there, but I also love going home again. There's something about returning to "civilization" and being in my nice clean house with my nice clean showers and my own bed.

That said, I know my children really seem to miss having all the people around all the time. I think all of them would have thrived on a kibbutz! But now we're home and it's just the five of us...

Ah....

Harry Potter Movie....

....was awesome.

Loved it.

Won't say more for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Can't wait for book 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me and the Girl and the Sling

Yael and I are having a good time at camp. She is accompanying me to most of my programming, snugly chillin' in her uv-protectant sling!

Yesterday, as she napped, one of the campers checked in with me: "Are you sure she can breathe in there, rabbi?" he asked me. Very sweet of him to be concerned! Yes...she breathes just fine!

Sling Give-A-Way

This is my first time doing something like this...I'm very excited to link into the rest of the blogging world. I read other blogs a LOT and I am very interested in the way other people live their lives and blog their lives....but I've never linked into soemthing like this before! So here goes....I'm very excited. Stick with me:

There’s a contest going on over at The Whole Family (a very nice blog that I got to through Amy at Crunchy Domestic Goddess) to win a solarveil (Sun Protection Fabric) sling.

So here I am...linking and entering the contest!

(I must admit that I have a solarveil sling and I am loving it, but I know exactly what I would do with another one if I won!)

Later...I will try to get a picture of me and Yael with the sling that she loves.

We made it to camp

Every year I am blessed to spend two weeks at summer camp, a Jewish camp in Wisconsin. See my other blog for posts about camp itself.

Getting here is, in itself, an undertaking.

We packed:

- 2 minivans

- 6 people

- 2 strollers

- 1 pack-n-play

- 6 shower towels

- 6 beach towels

- two computers

- one printer

- 2 boxes of easy mac from costco

- 3 boxes of snacks from costco

- clothes for 6 people

- swimsuits for 6 people

- 5 waterbottles (one of us is still breastfeeding)

- 3 sippy cups

- 3 bottles (just in case)

- 4 pillows

- 3 blankets

- 1 power strip

- 3 laundry baskets

- 1 baby monitor

- 2 squirt guns

- 2 boxes of toys

- 1 portable dvd player

- many books (including Harry Potter #1, which we have started reading with David!)

...and much much more.

It's almost too much to imagine. And it's only going to get worse before it gets better. Although next year we will only need one stroller, we are never going to be less people! At some point, though, in the future, the kids will be campers, which will be a completely different kind of packing and might involved nametags in all the clothes. We'll see about that.

Summer camp is one of those rituals that most of us don't engage in as adults. It is truly a blessing to be able to bring my family here and share this incredible experience with them!