Some felt sheep and a writing contest!

This very nice lady emailed me to tell me about her needle felting book and I want to help her promote it. She is having a writing contest - and all are welcome! lol!

View a sample of her new book here:



Info on the contest: http://www.kimchatel.com/Contest.html

Blessings!

Help us pick new lettering for our new logo...

We are redesigning all of our website- the new logo pieces are SO cute, our artist did a great job, but we are stuck on logo lettering and are asking for input. What number looks best to you?

Quizno's a better SUB?

As a busy homeschooling family we are out a lot and often need to grab a quick meal out if I am not totally on top of it in my kitchen before we leave (yes! we have days like that! I WISH I had my Bento hat on better!) one of our favorite places to eat has always been Subway because for the most part you can get a pretty healthy meal... I have to say after their current campaign, I am done. Karen from our list sent this along this morning and I was shocked. They have in one contest excluded over 2 million children!

To find out about their contest, visit this link http://www.subwayfr%20eshbuzz.com/%20kids/contest.%20aspx

The fine print for the contest reads:"Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted."

Comments can be made at: http://www.subway.%20com/Applications%20/CustService/%20frmCustomerServi%20ce.aspx

Now I realize that in many states homeschoolers are considered private schools and I also realize that their grand prize is intended for a school's fitness program, however their wording is not great and they could have easily come up with a suitable alternative for homeschooling families that could have included them.

So now we will be enjoying Quizno's a lot more... they taste better anyway.

Erik says somedays our house is like this...

It is silly in our house today. lol.

IronMan Jake comes in a solid 3rd!

He did great! The extra practicing this week and the hydration really paid off! He left the track today with a third place trophy and desire to do even better next week. We helped him come to the conclusion that he really isn't racing against folks in his class, he's racing himself, his best times and really just allowing himself to have fun. While they do race in classes against each other, they race for points and points determine his ranking in the district and on up so really, since all the kids get points, it is a race against himself. Once he understood more then I could tell he really felt like he was part of a team and had a lot of fun - the kids really impressed me, they would help each other when they fell, hype each other up and cheer for others in their same class. It was great to see. Jacob even made a friend today that is homeschooled so next week I'll have to find out who his mommy is! It was hot and we are all a little more red that I had anticipated we'd be but it was fun. Enjoy our pics. Blessings.

PS- I don't think we're the only tree huggers there this year!

Hammered, tired, but excited to have placed!

Do you see that big dog over there? I hope he stays there! He is big.

This man can read anywhere! lol.

This morning's BMX...IronMan Jake

I got up at 4:30am... had a delightful client at 5:30am and then I was off to the track by 6:30am with Jacob... he was groggy but excited for his first early morning practice. Endurance is the name of the game, we really need to work on this for him - but right now we are working with the heart that he is putting into it - he is determined to either be Olympic - it was made an official Olympic sport last year and then become a pro! lol.

This really is a sweet kid... on the way off the track we inadvertently separated a mama and baby bird (Idaho Killdeer http://www.fariesonline.com/backyardbirds/killdeer.php) and Jacob got all worried so he got out and hunted and we couldn't find the baby so we sat and listened - pretty soon a swarm of adult killdeer came to the field and were chirping loud hunting for the baby. Jacob was in awe of what he saw, all these birds coming to the aid of this baby.

Aren't they handsome?

Nothing huge happening here today... we did make yogurt and gyros - see our other blog - but I couldn't resist these handsome boys...

Ok so I'll miss the gnomes but I needed to change things up...

I still need to go back and put some of my fun stuff back on here - later this week.

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day... I sure did. I was lucky to have my mom come up from Utah and we played with Grandma... Samuel, who doesn't take fast to anyone was falling all over "Gammy" by the end of the first day. Yesterday my mom watched all four kids while Erik and I went out for a while... amazing, lol... it was a wonderful weekend. My mom and I have been reading "A New Earth" together and that has been fun since we have more in depth stuff to talk about.

I got up this morning, made breakfast for us all, mom was here, Erik's mom came over too, we had a great morning and then we went to church... afterward we came home, had a nice meal, we all curled up with a bowl of ice cream and a movie in our bed (where I still am, lol) I relaxed and tried to catch up on a little blog reading. So nice... enjoy some pictures from our weekend...



Samuel has this odd love...stress affair with R2... he gets all excited to see R2 and then stressed that he can't get R2 to do what Daddy can, lol... R2 is voice activated and Daddy is the only one that can make him behave!



My sweet hippie boy...



shh... don't tell Jacob that Dootie is cooking "jeep" for a snack!


Two of four kids in the same picture isn't bad, lol...these two are peas in a pod too...they look so much a like. You don't realize how much of YOU a child has until you pro-create with a different husband and then it can be "WOW... that is from me?" lol. These two are so much a like.


Well that is it for now... oh what did I "get" for Mother's Day? a cool writing pad for my desk, a hot wheels car of my favorite character from a movie I haven't seen, lol... the hippie bus from Cars... and a steeping tea cup for my morning tea.

Something we really enjoyed...

We are always listening to and watching things that uplift us and help us to move forward in our goals for our family - almost two years ago we watched the Secret and it just took our belief of creating our reality to the next step. I've been a long listener to Wayne Dyer and read his and Eckhart Tolle's books (LOVE "A New Earth" great book!)

Along the way we've also enjoyed James Arthur Ray - he's one of the guys from the Secret - I like that he's sure we create our reality, but he also gives us concrete ways to change our thinking. He's got a new book out that we just ordered and also watched his new movie... the trailer is below - we watched the movie last night and it was great. I just wanted to share.




One of the things that I love about him is that he doesn't just look at creating money, he believes that the heart of it all is having harmony in all areas of our life, spiritual, physical, mental, relational (he focuses on self!) and financial... enjoy!