Sweeping Under the Rug

A few things to take care of around here....

#1 - I have a few giveaway winners to announce! Uh, I'm a little delayed here but the winners of Purity: A Godly Woman's Adornment were selected by random.org and are as follows:

Brooke from The Bluestocking Guide
Linda Kish
Apple Blossom from 4 the Love of Books



Congratulations, ladies! You should all be receiving an e-mail from me shortly to collect mailing addresses.

#2 - We've been working our way through the book Practicing Hospitality over at Offering Hospitality. We just wrapped up that discussion today and if you have some time on your hands and are wanting to find out more about the book, GO HERE. (It'll take you to the last chapter discussion and you can follow any links you want from there!)

#3 - THIS IS IMPORTANT, ok!?!?!?


This past weekend we entered into that huge discount store that most people in the world love to hate and we bought a personal snow-cone maker for a measly $15. Growing up in South Texas, I have many, many fond memories of haunting the local snow cone stand with my friends after church on Wednesday nights. (Because it can be sweltering - even at night! - in S. Texas!) I envisioned Oregon warming up to some agreeable temperature that would make chewing on flavored ice a reasonable activity. Seventy degrees was good enough for me and so we had snow cones last night. BUT! I really wasn't interested in dripping high fructose corn syrup all over them so I looked on line and found this GranolaChic Perfect Snow-cone Syrup idea. We went the concentrated fruit juice route and it worked out SPLENDIDLY. Tasted nice and sweet and perfect! So. You can thank me later when your kids are enjoying a healthy-fied snow-cone. haha!

#4 - We took Bookworm2 on his first trip to the Zoo:

Goats were the highly favored animal of the day. If he'd been allowed to touch the polar bear, he'd have probably liked that more. But as it was, goats being the only available "up close and personal" creature- it had to do. (Fearless child.)

Bookworm1 got to (very, very cautiously and only after mommy did it first!) touch a fake fish. And he was happy.

Both children cried over the dinosaur display. We walked through it quickly, assuring them both that the dinos were - above all! - FAKE, and that they were roaring only because they wanted to play and have fun. Now, we might have convinced Bookworm1 that all of the dinos were happy but when they spit at you, it was kinda of hard to deter him from exhibiting any of his self-preservation instincts. Dinos who "spit" are NOT friendly, folks.
Still, we had a good time. =) That was the first time *I* had been to the zoo when it wasn't either cold, rainy or both. I discovered that the Zoo can provide a highly pleasurable experience for the family when the sun is shining and the little ones napped in the car on the way up. HURRAY for Zoo Day!

Ok, that's all for now. Really. Thank you for listening. Goodnight.