Father's Day Photo Canvas Giveaway!

Father's Day is coming up in June and a customized photo print makes the perfect heart-felt gift.

And UPrinting.com has some great rolled and stretched Canvas Printing options for your favorite photos!

If you want to blow up a photo to put on your wall, UPrinting.com lets you pick your own Poster Printing sizes! Check out their hundreds of design templates.

We don't have a decent family portrait yet. Trying to line up a photographer and get all three of us smiling at the same time is tough! But we're gonna try real hard so we can get a canvas poster for our house. I think the grandparents will be drooling over it, so we might have to get a few more.

And once all our stuff gets here from Mozambique, I'm thinking of getting some of our Kruger National Park animal photos posterized to complement the jungle theme of Esmé's room.

UPrinting.com is giving one 16x20 Gallery Wrapped Canvas Print to one lucky winner!

To enter, leave a comment on this post describing the photo you would use to print your prize if you won. Family portrait? Favorite kid shot? Something meaningful between you and dad?

For a second entry, post about this giveaway on your blog and leave a second comment with the link to your post.

This contest is limited to US & Canada shipping addresses only.

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen using random.org on Friday, June 5th, so get your comment in before then. If your email is not visible on your profile, make sure you leave your email in your comment so we can contact you if you are the winner.

Mission Sunday Stuff

We've got a bunch of stuff for you today! So let's turn on the numbering...

1. Remember the African Alphabet CD giveaway during Operation Love Zimbabwe in February? Well, we met musician Graeme Sacks (in a virtual way) through that giveaway, and he has since started his own blog, African ABC. Check out this post (with some great photos), Visiting a School in Albert Street, about their performance at a Zimbabwean refugee school.


2. This year the Riverbend Ranch Charity Carnival is supporting two African charities. Seeds in HIS Garden is a home and and school for 27 orphaned and abandoned children in Nairobi, Kenya. And Agape Children's Ministry is a ministry begun for the abandoned street boys in Kisumu, Kenya, which has grown to include dormitories, a primary school, and a vocational training school. So if you are into some good old fashioned family fun and live anywhere near Oakdale, California, check out the Riverbend Ranch Charity Carnival on June 13, 2009! And if you don't live in the area, you can support the carnival financially. Or better yet, look at what they are doing and considering starting something similar in your area!


3. Living in Mozambique, we whined occasionally about not having some "necessities." But we were constantly amazed by the ingenuity of the Mozambicans in resolving their problems. Check out this "Innovation" post and comments over at Coffeegirl Confessions for examples of ingenuity...


4. And congrats to the Coppedge family of Abiding in Africa on the arrival of baby Lucy Mae, in Uganda!

Books

Here's one of my favorite parts of my bedtime routine: reading books! Counting the Little Quacks...

Another step in my routine: jumping on the bed. No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed...

And of course, we always end the day by literally climbing the walls...

For more books, see PhotoHunt.

Aloha Friday

So we're taking it easy and asking a question today. A really easy question. Ready? Here it is:

If you cover your hands with hand sanitizer and rub it all over a dirty chair while waiting for your pizza at Dominos, is the chair now clean? Or are your hands now dirty?

Mommy and I are having another great debate, so please weigh in with us on this one... To keep it fair, I won't tell you which of us thinks what...

For more easy questions, see Kailani's post at An Island Life.

Thursday 13 - Gallery

I've been stealing Mommy's camera and working on my photography. Thought I'd show you thirteen of my latest pieces of art in this 25-month-old's online gallery...

#1 - I'm becoming more intentional in what I take photos of - not just clicking on the camera to see the flash... I like seeing the world through the camera lens! Like here I am watching what my toes look like straight...

#2 - ...and when I curl them.
#3 - I wanted a picture of Tweetie - but she's kind of high on top of the fridge. This is what she looks like from my level.

#4 - Speaking of which, did you ever realize how neat and uncluttered the lines of your house look at toddler level? I just love taking photos of straight lines and right angles. Like this one...

#5 - ...and this one.

#6 - Not all things are neat and uncluttered. Here's a fun angle of our computer desk and my wonderful stepladder, with a snippet self-portrait in the upper right corner.

#7 - Speaking of which (my new favorite phrase) - here's another self portrait for you.

#8 - One of the best tips in photography (and any art) is to focus on the things you love. Like my purple dress shoes.

#9 - Speaking of which, if I love my tiny shoes so much, imagine how much Pappa must love his BIG shoes. So I took a photo for him, too.
#10 - Speaking of which, here's Pappa trying to avoid my paparazzi techniques. But he just set me up for a brilliant photo, huh?

#11 - And I use my paparazzi techniques on Mommy, too. But she's a little more cooperative, giving me time to focus on the intricacies of her turtleneck sweater...
#12 - A shot of the walkway by our house.
#13 - And here I am trying to put a bullet through the things I hate - only camera shooting doesn't work the same as gun shooting, unfortunately. Yukky toothbrushing stuff... More Thursday 13 participants can be found here.

Thanks to Samulli for the Thursday 13 header.

WFMW - "C" Activity Trays

"C" school hasn't been as crazy as "B" school, though there has been lots of cool stuff to do! We have only 17 photos of our "C" trays today, though we shall more than make up for the shortage next week when we go through "C" adventures!

Here are the "C" things on our activity tray shelves that worked for this 25-month-old for the last two weeks...

Sensory Tub. For "C", we swapped out beans for corn - specifically popcorn. I love the feel of this stuff - it is nice and cool! Mommy hid a bunch of "C" objects in there for me to find, like little wood cats and candles. Plus there were some little circle cups in there for me to scoop and pour. Of course, hiding myself (at least my hands and feet) is always the most fun.

My 4-year-old buddy came to visit, and he wanted to cook the corn in the microwave, but Mommy wouldn't let us...

Scratch and Sniff. For "C" I had a cinnamon stick and sandpaper. I "wrote" with the cinnamon stick and then sniffed it - it smelled really good!

Candle. I have this lovely-smelling candle in a cat container! Perfect for lighting (with Mommy's help) and blowing out and singing "Happy Birthday!"

Counting. I got to count coins! There were 15 of them - 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of each denomination, and I was supposed to put the right number of coins in each cup.

I decided I'd rather put the coins in my purse, though. I learned how to use vending machines last week.

By the way, I am getting really good at counting. I can count the number of fingers someone is holding up. I've been working on holding up 2 and 3 fingers and can do those on demand request now. And if you ask me "how many?" of something, up to about 12, I can count and tell you. Though Mommy says sometimes I skip one at the beginning or add one to the end.

Color Clips. Mommy made some color cards by gluing construction paper to an index card, then covering with contact paper. Then she put them on a tray with two paper clips of each color to match the cards. I had to sort out the clips by color and then attach them to the right card.

Matching colors was a breeze. Mommy had to help a little with putting the clips on the cards, but I'm gettin' it!

Egg Tray. I had colored pom poms to put into each section of an egg tray. We didn't use tongs since Mommy couldn't find any small enough for this activity, but it was fun using my hands, too.

Though I had lots of arguments with Mommy over the names of the colors. How can three different pom poms of different colors all be "blue?" Colors can be so complicated.

Puzzle. I had a color circle wood puzzle to work on. It was kind of complicated since all the circles were the same size and I had to match by color only. And frankly, being a clothing fashionista, I think mixing colors is a good thing, so I didn't always match the colors.

Clock. I also had a clock puzzle that I had to put the numbers into. I did great on this. Mommy says she is amazed at how well I'm doing puzzles now.

Color Bottles. On our first "C" day, we made some color bottles by mixing water, a little bit of oil, and a few drops of food coloring in each bottle, then hot gluing the bottles closed. Then we put the bottles on my activity tray shelf. It was fun to watch the oil bubbles go up whenever we turned the bottles over - kind of like lava lamps.

Stickers. Stickers were really fun these weeks - candy and cupcakes! I made a few cards.

Coloring. I had my standard clipboard with crayons - only with "C" coloring pages these weeks. And of course a new mug - with cherries on it.

By the way, I have entirely stopped chewing crayons now that Mommy leaves them out for me all the time. Maybe if she leaves out candy all the time, the same thing will happen!

Play Doh. We just swapped out the cutters - for "C" we had clouds, candy canes, Cookie Monster, the letter C, and circles. I liked circles the best!

Rubber Stamping. Always fun. We swapped out the "B" stamps for "C" stamps and I made some more stamped strips, as well as stamping myself a lot.

And then I practiced cutting some of the strips. Only cutting is so much more fun now that I got new scissors for "D" week...

Magnets. We pulled out the picture frame magnets again and found "C" pictures in magazines to put in the frames. Let's see: cherry blossoms, Care Bears, cotton candy, cuckoo clock, and chickens. And for some added culture - an African cooking and a map of Cambodia.

Stacker Cups. I am an expert at these things, of course. I've had them since I turned one. It's fun to play with them, still, and make castles.

Calendar Matching. This is another activity I've had for a long time. Many calendars have thumbprint photos on the back page that match the photos inside. So Mommy lays out the big photos on the ground, and I take the little photos (which Mommy cut out for me) and match them up to the big photos. Piece of cake!

Chalk. Always a good thing for an artist like myself. I used my new chalkboard a lot. I also threw my chalk and broke it a lot. Now I have LOTS of pieces of chalk!

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If you have a post or link related to "C" Activities for toddlers, link up here!

Giveaway Stuff!

First of all - look what we got in the mail! This papercut card that we won in Celita's giveaway at Days Ease is absolutely gorgeous. She is very talented - I love looking through the papercuts on her blog.

Second, we need to announce the winners of our business card giveaway, who are each getting 500 business cards...

And (thanks to random.org), here they are:

1. Pamela (The Dust Will Wait)
2. Lissa (Saving Your Cents)

A big thanks to UPrinting.com for sponsoring this giveaway! Please check them out if you are looking for business cards to promote a business or organization. They offer easy, professional solutions to all your basic business card printing needs.

Wordless Wednesday - Bird Kisses

"I kiss you, birdie! Come sit here by me!" And Tweetie happily complies...

Organization

Esmé's Mommy here.

Scope creep - one of those scary things I always had to watch out for during my project management era. It seemed good - accommodating all the additional needs that popped up during the project - but it wrecked havoc on schedules and delayed the output of anything productive.

Blog creep - something I deal with constantly. I start out with specific blogging goals and timelines. I have a little extra time on my hand so I visit a few more blogs and write a few more posts. Before I know it, I'm getting upset with everyone who interrupts my precious blogging time. I'm constantly feeling overwhelmed by self-driven pressure to get out a few more posts, keep up with a few more blogs, follow up on a few more comments.

So then I cut back. Things look rather bare for a while. Then they fill out nicely. Soon things are overgrown again, and I've gotta get out the pruning shears once more.

I'm creepy in other areas, too...

• Diet.
• Housekeeping.
• Exercising.
• Cooking.
• Crafts.
• Facebooking.
• Coupon clipping.
• Clothes shopping.
• Budgeting.
• Reading.
• Some of these areas are more fun than others.

I used to feel guilty about it, but I've decided if God designed shrubs to go through this creeping process, then I should just relax and enjoy the benefits I get out of it. Like frequent opportunities to refocus and evaluate exactly what my priorities are. (Though my sympathies go out to all you balanced folk who have to deal with my cycles...)

So, yeah. Moving on. Confession time.

• I LOVE lists.
• I LOVE bullet points.
• I LOVE schedules.
• It is so freeing to write these down - to see them in front of me - to feel so organized.

That point in time of writing them down? That's the only point where I feel organized. From that point on, I'm constantly behind schedule. I am so not organized. I try - really hard in the beginning. Then I completely give up, until I desperately write it all up again and feel organized again for a second or two.

I've had a couple of comments lately about my organization skills, so I just thought I should get that out there in the open. I feel so much better now. Truth is freeing.

Moving on again. I wrote up a schedule last week. I already have an old detailed schedule sitting in my drawer, but it's been ages since I got through the first half of it. I don't think I've ever gotten all the way through it.

So I've learned (again) from that old schedule: Keep it simple. Here's the new schedule for your benefit:

• 7 a.m.: Mommy wakeup/personal time
• 8 a.m.: Esmé wakeup/breakfast prep, eat, cleanup
• 9 a.m.: clean house, start laundry, etc.
• 10 a.m.: morning "school"
• 11:30 a.m.: lunch prep, eat, cleanup
• 1 p.m.: outside time
• 2 p.m.: nap time/Mommy's computer time
• 4 p.m.: afternoon "school"
• 6 p.m.: supper prep, eat, cleanup
• 7 p.m.: free playtime
• 8 p.m.: Esmé bedtime routine
• 9 p.m.: Mommy/Pappa personal time
• 11 p.m.: Mommy bedtime

There are a dozen things wrong with this picture. Can you find them?

1. This assumes Esmé will sleep 13 hours. Her sleeping needs are about 10 hours. Trust me on this. I have tried. If I put her to bed an hour earlier, she wakes up on her own an hour earlier. If she naps an extra hour, she takes an extra hour to fall asleep. I FEEL CHEATED! (Though I just calculated that three extra hours per day equals 10 extra years of awake time over an 80 year period. Think of ALL she can DO with her life in that 10 years of extra time!) All you folks who religiously put your babies to bed at 7 p.m., how do you deal with it when they are wide awake at 4 a.m.???
2. Two hours of computer time? Oh, I had this nicely compartmentalized. 1/2 hour for blog posts, 1/2 hour to read other blogs, 1/2 hour for emails, and 1/2 hour for "school" research. Hah! I can't even get through my photos in a 1/2 hour, let alone blog about them. And one of those alphabet posts? Minimum 4 hours to get it up. You're welcome. (I didn't even mention that Esmé skipped her nap completely a couple times last week. I tried. I kept her in her room for an hour. I FEEL CHEATED!)
3. Errands? Grocery shopping? Tumbling and swimming classes? Music at the park? Not on the schedule. Oops!
4. One hour of house cleaning might be sufficient. If you don't have a 2-year-old tornado.
5. Bedtime routine? If you count the time it takes to get her to fall asleep (and don't even think of leaving the room until she's in a DEEP coma), it's considerably longer than 1 hour.

Let's stop there. So you can blame my schedule for why we skipped blogging last week. Time to abandon schedule. Until things are so hectic I have to write up another one for sanity's sake.

Seeing as I am so unorganized, how do we manage to do alphabet "school" each week?

1. (Let's turn that numbering thing on again. I love lists. Bullet points. Schedules.)
2. It's a matter of survival. If I don't have a plan of attack, I spend my day following the fudgsicle drop trail with a damp cloth and windex while Miss Esmé paints herself with watercolors and spatters toilet water around the bathroom with a duster, and then proceeds to cook herself an egg while feeding the cat and wiping her hands on fudgsicle-stained pants, which she then takes off and runs around naked with her step ladder, positioning it in front of the kitchen sink and proceeding to dump all the water collected in the dishes collected in the sink onto the floor, which mixes nicely with her watercolored feet to create footprints throughout the house where the fudgsicle drop trail has just been wiped up.
3. Actual "school" is nowhere near as organized as my plan and the blog post. I don't necessarily do everything for a specific theme on one day - I may mix and match things. I use the themes and categories (kitchen, science, physical activity, etc) as a prompt to give me ideas of things to do, rather than a strict pattern to follow.
4. And my "planning" is often on the fly. For instance, during "cat" theme day, I was having trouble thinking of anything to do for "science." As we were feeding the cat in the evening, I had a profound lightbulb moment - let's taste test the cat! So we fried up three types of cats Esmé dished in three types of cat food on a plate and lay down next to him to observe as he ate. That was one of our biggest successes of the day - no planning or prep time required.
5. The activity trays come in real handy. By setting out a bunch of activity trays at the beginning of the 2-week period, I've always got something onhand to grab when I can't think of anything specific to do, or when what I've planned isn't working out so well or keeping Esmé's attention.
6. I don't stress (not much anyway) when things don't go according to plan. You may have noticed there was no alphabet post last week. We're a week behind! So how on earth are we going to get through the alphabet in 52 weeks? Bummer...
7. I make lists. I've got lists of recommended books for each letter of the alphabet. I've got lists of ideas and websites. I've got shopping lists for each letter of the alphabet. I've got a list of all the types of activities I still need to come up with for each theme. When I feel overwhelmed by my lists, I just start a new list, which always makes me feel organized instead of overwhelmed.

It's all about staying sane and having fun.

(And if you

• have more than one kid, and
• you manage to get them all in bed by 7 p.m., and
• your daily schedule is on the wall instead of in a drawer, and
• your calendar is color-coded by kid, and
• you've written a blog post that includes photos of your neatly organized craft and school supplies, and
• you have a date night each week, and
• you shop with coupons, and
• you have a budget, and
• you update your budget with expenses on a weekly basis, and
• you have a weekly menu plan that you actually use, and
• you never feed your kids junk food, because
• your kids never help themselves to the cupboards or refrigerator, or even better,
• you don't have junk food in your kitchen

by all means, leave a comment with your organizational tips. And I'll post a LIST of all those organizational tips for ya'll. I can do lists.)

Blue Monday

A blue spot of sky - in Oregon! Yeah for summer on the way!

Not Me! Monday

I did so not eat eight nine homemade juice popsicles this weekend. And I did NOT spill drops of them all over the house.

And I did NOT get into the dental floss again and unravel it again. Cuz if it's a new pack, it wouldn't be "again," right?

I did NOT get into some weight loss pills and chew one up. After all, I hardly like eating food, let alone yucky pills. And I am at my ideal weight, anyways.

And while Mommy was panicking about the pills, I certainly did not climb up to the table and pour all the salt out of the salt shaker onto my wet doll, who I had dumped into my bath the previous evening.

On the subject of eating, I don't like broccoli. I am not into healthy stuff. So I certainly wouldn't eat ALL my broccoli for Mother's Day and then ask for seconds.

I love Chinese food. So I would never make my own concoction at Chi's. I'd eat what they served me. Who would want to make a magical soup from soy sauce, sugar, ice water, and black pepper when they could eat crispy fried eggplant in garlic sauce?

I did not try on seven outfits in one morning. I would only try on six at the most.

I did not climb up to the freezer and take out the fudgsicles for breakfast this morning.

And on the topic of fudgsicles, I did not put a fudgsicle into my bath water. I would want to eat it, right? Not melt it and make it look like logs in the bath...

And I did not take an egg out of the fridge for a midmorning snack and tell Mommy I needed to cook it. After all, Mommy would never let a two-year-old cook her own egg. That egg was not the best egg I have ever not eaten, if I don't say so myself...

I would never tap tap tap sticks together to make my neighbor horses think I had carrots for them. Cuz then they would be sad that there were no carrots, definitely not happy to get some attention from a cute lil girl...

Mommy would never let me drink and drive. So I'd never have an accident and splash my Odwalla red berry smoothie all over my face and give Mommy a heart attack by looking like I had a major nose bleed.

I would never write on the walls with a dry erase marker. So I would never have the opportunity to run my fingers through the wet paint touch-up while Mommy was cleaning the paint tools, right? So of course she wouldn't have to pour the paint out all over again and re-touch-up the paint touch-up and clean up all over again.

So what have you not been up to?

Mongolia Mission

Entertaining two cute lil' girls. Documenting the cute things they say. Cooking. Gardening. Field trips. Birthdays. Trips to the ER for stitches. Coffee breaks.

Sounds like the typical mommy blog, huh? But set it against the backdrop of Mongolia, and you have Michelle Abel's blog. Read about the challenges of assisting the Mongolian people through ADRA. Check it out and enjoy!

And while you're reading missionary blogs today, here's my sister's latest post after her bout with dengue fever in Cambodia...

Wishing you all a blessed week!

Plastic

For more plastic photos, see PhotoHunt.

Kids working it out on the swings...

What's the deal with HIM getting the nice chair and ME getting the PLASTIC chair?!

This plastic chair just doesn't suit me. If it's gonna be plastic, at least make it hot pink with Disney princesses on it!
So let's climb the ladder and survey the scene. Figure out our next steps, if you will...
He's standing on a swing! What's with that?! I wanna stand on the swing!
Now he's sitting on the swing! I wanna sit on the swing!
I'm on the swing now! Nah nah nah nah nah!
Not only can I swing, I can straddle this thing like a horse!
This is pretty interesting!

Where's he, though?

It'd be more fun to play together. Honest.

I'm kinda lonesome...

I want somebody to play with...

There are two swings, you say? Really? Who knew? Now we're talking!