Famous! That's me!

So I think I've talked about our love for Phil Vischer's new venture JellyTelly.com and its spin-off "What's in the Bible? With Buck Denver."

We love them.  A lot.  We haven't _quite_ camped out at the local bookstore to make sure we get ours on its release date, but we're really not far from it.

Well, a few weeks ago, they were asking for people to guest post on their blog.  I offered.  Then I never replied when their blog lady Melanie emailed me with possible dates.

Then I MET PHIL VISCHER at the MOPS convention in Orlando!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't believe me?

Ta-da!

(Now I have the "complete set" as I got a pic with Mike Nawrocki (Larry the Cucumber) at last year's MOPS convention)

Don't believe that he's Bob the Tomato?

Well he is.

Anyway, so after MOPS convention (at which I showed up to his talk 30 minutes early...because I'm a "bit" of a fan), I emailed Melanie again and asked if I could still write a guest blog.

She said, "Sure!  Have it to me by Monday!"

And here it is!

Guest Post

Today we're part of something big here at "Common Sense."  Jon Acuff of StuffChristiansLike.net is doing one of his (in)famous "scorecard" posts, but is letting lots of us, his readers, participate by posting individual scorecard items on our sites.  Click through to SCL to see the whole scorecard.  The key will be posted tomorrow on his site.

So, without further ado...

The “Is that contestant on American Idol a Christian? Scorecard”

33. The first time they see the huge crowds that they perform in front of they mention, “Imagine if we did a love offering in here?” = + 3 points 


To add up your score with over a 130 other ideas on this scorecard, visit stuffchristianslike.net.

And to buy his new book, click here (note, I'm now an Amazon Affiliate, so I'll get like $0.02 out of the deal too).

Creativity

So, as you all know, my son LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine (and all of his friends). Apparently the love of model trains is hereditary. VNB got it from his grandfather, and AJ got it from...well, both VNB and my mom (looks like it skips a generation here and there). One of VNB's first bonding moments with AJ was the week after AJ was born, sitting watching the trains run on the layout that VNB had made.

Ever since we got him a train table, he's had fun playing with the trains and making them run on the tracks, but things have changed recently. You see, initially, VNB would make a track for AJ, then AJ would play with it for a few days until it got destroyed (the number of days decreased dramatically once Joanna was mobile). Then, the fine motor skills developed a little and AJ started putting a couple of pieces of track together. It still took quite a while though before he made this:

(no, I don't know where his pants are or why he's posing like this - we'll say that he was attempting to climb onto his train table for the picture). No one helped him with it. Maybe he'd seen daddy do something similar....but this was all him.

So was this:


(that's our bed...not sure why the layout moved there except to be close to daddy's trains which live under the bed)

And this:


(notice the variation in height and the fact that there's actually a buffer at the far end. Not sure what would happen if the trains went the other way though - guess that's coming from all of the Thomas shows where someone almost falls off a cliff.)

And this:


(at Nana and Granddaddy's house - we didn't bring any of the ramps, so he couldn't make it elevated)

And this:


(notice Tidmouth sheds attaching to the splitter, which attaches to several other tracks, making a "yard" and including the airport/helipad)

But we knew that a) he was creative, and b) we had too much track when he did this:

It was a couple of days in the making, but he did every single piece by himself with no prompting from anyone. And that's saying something considering that Joanna is a master of destruction. After he completed that circuit and still had some track left over, he took a section apart and started extending it. If you know our house, at one point it went through the kitchen, in between the coffee table and "my" couch (the love seat), under the coffee table, over to the dining room table, around some chairs, then started heading back towards the playroom. It never quite made the circle, but that was ok because then it went from the kitchen, in between the coffee table and my couch, under VNB's couch, and under the dining room table. Then Joanna destroyed enough of it (and AJ got distracted enough) that it could all be put away. But it's started again from the train table, heading towards the dining room table.

I tell you what...I may be biased, but this kid is crazy creative and crazy smart to have figured out how to do all these things.

He's done others too when I couldn't find my camera. My favorite was the one that went from the train table to the piano bench (across open air) and BACK - and was a stable structure! Still not quite sure how he managed that one!

He's only just barely 3! Heaven help us learn how to harness that energy and creativity for good!

Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends and Family,

This year for Christmas, we decided that instead of more "stuff" for each of you who, like us, are insanely blessed, we'd use that money to bless someone who would otherwise not have anything by giving them an animal through Heifer, International.

Here's AJ to tell you which one we picked:

And here's Heifer's description of what a water buffalo will do for the family that is chosen:

Water Buffalo
Helping Hooves

A water buffalo can lead a hungry family out of poverty and give them a chance for a bright future filled with hope and free from hunger.

In poor Filipino villages, water buffalo from Heifer provide draft power for planting rice and potatoes, milk for protein and manure for fertilizer and fuel. A farmer can plant four times more rice with a buffalo than by hand.

Water buffalo haul heavy loads to the market, where the sale of extra produce brings in vital income for clothing, medicine and school. By renting their buffalo to neighbors, Heifer partner families can earn money for home improvements. And one day, those same neighbors might receive a water buffalo of their own as recipients pass on the gifts of animals and training.

Protein-rich milk, strength to till soil, manure to enrich the land ... so many benefits. And, in turn, water buffalo are happy just to graze on coarse grasses and other plants not suitable for harvesting.

My favorite thing about Heifer, International is that the gift is given with the stipulation that they then give _their_ first born female to another family, so this gift could potentially take not just a single family from poverty to being self-supporting, but an entire community!

We love you all and wish you the merriest of Christmases!

Glory to God in the highest and on Earth, peace, goodwill to men!

Meeting "Larry"

So the end of last week was an exciting time for me. I was at the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) convention with most of the rest of our steering team (and 4000 other women). Operation Christmas Child sponsors MOPS and VeggieTales' new Christmas DVD is about the joy of giving, so they're partnering with OCC too. Plus, Matthew West was scheduled to give a concert at one of the general sessions and he wrote (and sang) the song that goes over the closing credits for the new VeggieTales.

All of that combined together so that VeggieTales and OCC sponsored "VeggOut Nite" the first night of the MOPS convention at which they debuted their new DVD. Beforehand, a guy from OCC, Matthew West (Christian singer mentioned above), and Mike Nawrocki (co-creator of VeggieTales and the voice of "Larry the Cucumber") all got a chance to say a little something about their partnership and the new movie, then we watched the movie.

Afterwards, I got to "squee" a little bit as I asked Mike if I could get a picture:

I thanked him for making DVDs that don't make me crazy.

AJ, however is _FAR_ more impressed with THIS picture:

Have We Got A Show For You!

So AJ's new potty rewards system is that before he can watch a DVD, he has to sit on the potty for 5 minutes. I sit there with him and we read a book, but it has to be done before any new DVD can go in the DVD player.

First up this morning was "A Snoodle's Tale" from VeggieTales. I was feeding Joanna her breakfast as it was playing and she got her first bite right around the time the opening song was starting. Bob the Tomato was singing the words "if a squash can make you smile" just as her first bite was approaching her mouth and she was therefore rejoicing by smiling a big ol' smile and kicking her feet.

On the spoon approaching her mouth? Squash. I guess that means VeggieTales is the show for her. There are worse things.

Not at all related to that is the fact that I'd like to record for posterity that Joanna has been successfully pulling up for over a week now and has almost mastered the art of getting back down without hurting herself (almost). She can also occasionally move a step or so, but mostly she's stuck in a single spot once she's standing. Similarly, for the last week or so, AJ has actually been hopping (two feet off the ground). He can even jump off of things. Fortunately, he's not brave enough to jump off of much (yet). Mostly just curbs.

And not at all related to that is the fact that it's always amusing to look at my site counter stats because the visiting IPs usually fall into one of two categories: 1) friends/family - I can tell who you are for the most part by where your IP is located (hi new grad student in Wheaton, IL!) and 2) people who get to my site by searching for the combination of unisom and vitamin B-6 (anti-nausea OTC meds that I took while pregnant with Joanna).

Anyway, have any of you noticed (as I have, although I haven't checked to see exactly how accurate this is) that I always seem to start my posts with the word "So...?" I'm not sure what that means.

Odds and Ends

So my local grocery store (Giant) has occasionally been sending out these special coupons that triple coupons up to $.99. The latest round expired today and I had a (rare) opportunity to go to the grocery store sans kids, so we made good use of them. My favorite deal was the Ziplock containers I got. Regular price: $3.50. After two tripled $.75 off coupons, they were $1.25 each. That by itself was a great deal, but then when I scanned them at the check out, the Catalina machine printed out a coupon for $1.50 off your "next" order (as a "thank you" from Ziplock), which made them $.50 each. I'm a little proud of myself. :) If only they had been on sale too. That would have been the ultimate jackpot.

In "good"-ish news, we paid off our other car yesterday! We've been socking away the dough the past few months and had built up a decent "down payment" fund (and by "we," I mean my darling financial whiz of a husband). But then we realized how impossible it would be to sell our current place even for what we bought it for (making the "down payment" fund into the "closing costs" fund)...and given that even refinancing right now would cost us most of that fund...we began looking for other possible uses. The car payment was the clear winner since we have no other consumer debt (this just leaves us with student loans and mortgage - go us!). Adding to our decision was the phone call I had with my division directors and HR contact at work on Tuesday. They just don't have any work for me right now. They hope to really soon, but nothing right now. So they're moving me to "occasional" status which means that instead of being salaried, I only get paid for the hours I work. They'll (theoretically) move me back to salaried once they get work again that will fill my time. So, given less money coming in, even though it took most of our nest egg, we figured it would be a good idea to get rid of a payment if we could. And we could. So we did. And we're staying in our tiny little condo for the foreseeable future. But looking on the bright side, we just paid off our car! Woohoo! :)

And two rants:

Like it wasn't bad enough hearing the stupid commercials and PSA for the "great changeover" to DTV for like a year and a half (believe me, I wish I were exaggerating)...but now they decide to _extend_ the deadline to June?!!! Another FOUR WHOLE MONTHS? Please just shoot me now.

And finally, why can't websites just _tell_ you that your login ID is your email address? I mean seriously. Every single stinking website nowadays wants you to register and while I have the same login info for most, there is _NO_WAY_ for me to remember which websites actually use a login ID, and which use your email address instead (and don't get me started on trying to remember which ones require a number and/or uppercase letter...). I vote that the websites that use your email address change all of their "login ID"s to "email address"es. And state their password requirements next to the password box. It would save everyone a lot of "lost" passwords.

Thank you, and have a nice day!

Two From Galilee

For those of you who didn't get to see our musical this past weekend, here're a few highlights of what you missed. It's almost 10 minutes long, so be prepared. You get to see parts of VNB's big number (he's the one in the purple with the sword) about halfway through.

I'm the really fat one.

JellyTelly

We're big fans of Big Idea Productions around here (VeggieTales, 3-2-1 Penguins, LarryBoy), so it should come as no surprise that we were excited to hear about Phil Vischer's latest venture - JellyTelly.

He explains it better than I will, but basically, they're trying to create a Christian version of the online content that websites such as Disney and Nickelodeon. In the process, he hopes to help encourage young Christian filmmakers by providing them a platform on which to show their work. It's a subscription service, but they let you try the first month for free and the base price thereafter is only $3 a month (although at least the original plan was to let you pay more if you wanted to support the ministry). You can do the free first month without giving them any information other than your name and email address.

They just started airing content this past week and today was our first time watching it. They have a mixture of puppets, animation, and live action. There's catchy music (today there was a song about the book of Judges, listing all of the judges in order), and lots of good, Biblically-based information. But more importantly, except for one clip which was just too far above his head, AJ was completely riveted.

Anyway, they're not paying or giving me anything to write this, it's just a great new source of online Christian content that I hope succeeds! Check it out!

I'm Ba-aaack! (For today at least)

So why haven't I posted since March 14th or so? Well, it wasn't because Brutus and the other conspirators murdered me in the senate on the ides of March.

And at that time, it wasn't because I was pregnant and couldn't keep the secret.

I've just been...introspective? Withdrawn? I dunno. There was so much going on that I just didn't have it in me to talk about it all. I was too busy doing and living it all to write about it.

And I'm not necessarily saying that that's changed completely, but today Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer is giving away 20 sets of CDs and all I have to do to enter is link to this site: www.WOWonline.com. They're sponsoring the giveaway. And that's a LOT of really good CDs. So I guess my greediness overcame my laziness or whatever it was.

Just Had to Share

Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Giant Spider Attack!!!!

WAY too funny not to share. Click here for the full story. Make sure your sound is on.

My Alter Egos

Ok, so I was checking out Not the Queen's blog to thank her for her stain removal tips when I came across this meme (I have no idea what meme stands for...it's just one of those things that gets passed around from blog to blog, like the annoying forwarded emails, but without the annoying forwarded email!). So enjoy!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME (first pet & current car):
   Mara Escape
2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME (favorite ice cream flavor & favorite cookie):
   Butter Pecan Snickerdoodle (maybe this one works better for guys, but this just doesn't seem "Gangsta"-y)
3. YOUR "FLY GUY/GIRL" NAME (first initial of your first name & first three letters of your last name):
   M-Jon
4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME (favorite color & favorite animal):
   Red Koala
5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME (middle name & hospital where you were born):
   Ruth Loudon
6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME (first three letters of your last name & first two letters of your first name):
   Jonme (or Turme as my Star Wars Maiden Name)
7. SUPERHERO NAME ("The" & second favorite color & favorite drink):
   The Blue Caffeine-Free Coke (ummm....no?) How about "The Blue Earl Grey Tea?" (yeah...not so much)
8. NASCAR NAME (the first names of your grandfathers):
   Nelson Franklin or Franklin Nelson
9. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME (mother's and father's middle names):
   Lou Winford
10. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME (your 5th grade teacher's last name & a major city beginning with the same letter):
    Johnson um...Johnson City? Heh... I know! Johnson Juno! (Why do so many of my alter ego names seem to be masculine names?)
11. SPY NAME (your favorite season/holiday & flower):
    Winter Daffodil. Yeah, that's not spytacular at _all_. Winter Rose isn't really either.
12. CARTOON NAME (favorite fruit & article of clothing you're wearing right now & "ie" or "y"):
    Strawberry um.....Sweatsie? yeah...not so much, I think.
13. HIPPIE NAME (What you ate for breakfast & your favorite tree):
    Nothing Climbable. What? I haven't had breakfast yet and my favorite tree is one that I can climb! (Yes, I'm a responsible, married adult, with a small child, why do you ask?)
14. YOUR ROCK STAR TOUR NAME ("The" & your favorite hobby/craft & your favorite weather element & "Tour"):
    The Reading Thunderstorm Tour (boy, I'd shell out the dough to go to _that_ concert, let me tell you!)