February Giveaways!

http://everypreciousjoy.blogspot.com/2011/02/February-giveaways.html 
First, here are some awesome giveaways I have found! Check back frequently as I will be removing the ones that are over and adding new giveaway links as I can! Please click on a date to see a few select giveaways ending on that date. (If date is not clickable, I have not selected any giveaways to feature for that date yet.)

Giveaways By End Date:
February 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
March 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
_____________________

Linky Time!
••For more places to list your giveaways click HERE
_____________________
_____________________
Your turn! :) Linky up!
In the space that says Link Title, remember to include 3 things: YourBlogName - Giveaway Title [End date]. Does not have to be in that exact order but I do need all three in some order or another please. Link to the giveaway post specifically, not just to your blog in general.
PLEASE make sure you follow these easy instructions so it is easy for me to maintain and easy for people to view and use. Alot of people have not been doing this and it makes maintaining the list much harder and more time consuming for me. This is not an unreasonable request in the least: most giveaway linkups require this same format. You can use proper format and copy and paste it the same (proper) way to all the linkys you use. If this gets too hard for me to maintain due to people not doing this as I have asked, I will stop fixing them and have to instead delete any that I don't have the time to fix. So you see why it's not only courtesy but is also important to use the BlogName-GiveawayName[EndDate] format. (In any order. You can do End Date - Blog name - Giveaway or Giveaway - End date - Blog name or whatever as long as they are all in there.)
ALSO please note: I will immediately delete any entries that are innapropriate and further links from that blog may be deleted if I don't have time to screen them. A good way to look at it is if you wouldn't want your 13 year old daughter to have one or read the review in your words then DON'T LINK IT HERE. This is supposed to be a family friendly blog and when I've got people posting giveaways for ...um... 'romantic props' or something it is extremely embarrassing and upsetting to find that on my blog where my friends' innocent children could see it.
Your link WILL BE DELETED IF it links to a post that:
**Contains profanity, nudity, or inappropriate inuendo.
**Does not contain a blog giveaway.
**Endorses abortion, divorce, adultery, or things that are anti-God, anti-moral absolutes, anti-ten commandments, etc.
**Endorses a product/company that endorses abortion, divorce, adultery, or things that are anti-God, anti-moral absolutes, anti-Biblical commandments, etc.
**Is not appropriate for an innocent child to view.
This is what I believe in, and to allow links on my blog that go against that is something that I cannot do in good concience.


Entries will stay on the list until they expire (until the giveaway ends).
I will try to delete expired giveaways often to keep this list fresh and easy to view.
I will create a new list each month. This Linky list will run February 1st-28th. Check back March 1st for a new list.

~*~

2010 Rewind PART 3 ~December~

This year for Christmas we decided to do a few things differently. More on that in a minute...
December brought with it a few challenges including the whole family getting the flu and staying sick until a week before Christmas, and alot of unexpected expenses. It felt like we were under a spiritual attack of some sort. Just thing after thing happening. God saw us through and we were able to go up to our parents' for Christmas. We didn't get the kids any gifts though. We decided to do our family Christmas celebration at a later date because if we did it in December there would be no gifts, no feast, and more stress than peace. No time to reflect on the true meaning. Due to many more unforseen circumstances we still have not had our Christmas.
Back to what all we're changing this Christmas! ;) Firstly we had considered the idea of three items per kid before, in honor of the three gifts presented to Jesus. We had never actually implemented it before though as it's hard to do it the way we wanted to before they are a few years old. You'll see why... We want the three gifts to represent Jesus' 3 gifts. Check out THIS article for a better explanation, but basically Gold would be represented by something expensive in cost or in value to the child, Myrrh represented by something for the physical body, and Frankincense represented by something to feed the child's relationship with God. Before they are old enough to want anything in particular or to understand a physical object's spiritual meaning it's kind of difficult to fit their gifts into these categories. So we decided that it was hard enough fitting Bug's (age 2 years) gifts into those categories, we'll just do Babykins' 3 gifts without the representations. Anything that causes one to panic or stress out over a material item is not worth it. And trying to find baby gifts for those categories was going to be difficult enough to take the focus off of where it belongs. So our new gift rule is 3 gifts per kid, and they represent the 3 gifts of the magi for anyone OVER age 2.
Another thing we did differently is that last year we had our Christmas "late" also and we have decided to make it a permanent tradition to have our family Christmas in January instead. It just takes so many kinds of stress out of it and the less stress there is the better the focus stays where it belongs. We don't do Santa, I know I've mentioned it before, so there is no stress from the kids over which Christmas Santa will leave gifts for. Money is tight for about everyone I've ever met in December with all the friends and relatives to buy gifts for so waiting for our own takes a big bit of money stress out of the picture. We buy the relatives and friends gifts in December, then our own in January. It's nice to take advantage of after-Christmas sales and clearance too. More time to prepare is a plus too. Doesn't it sometimes seem like the end of the year is a runaway train? School starts and you have to shop for that and sort/switch the summer clothes for the winter clothes and then there's helloween to prepare for or prepare an alternative for or prepare to avoid depending on your perogative and before you can catch your breath you're making travel or meal plans for Thanksgiving and then you realize it's Black Friday and you have less than a month left to do all your gift shopping and you have umpteen people to buy for not to mention the food and the travel plans again and the packing and the laundry and the decorating and the tree and this and that and the other thing and by the time you get halfway through December you realize that you've just spent the past 4 months running around like a 2 year old who just drank a whole soda himself after eating all the cookies in the cookie jar. *gasps for air* After all that, seriously I have no idea how anyone can relax and ENJOY Christmas!! It's seriously awful. I have sensory issues- I get overloaded really easily and shut down. I can't handle it. I can't remember anything. I can't finish a project. It's really awful. So delaying the celebration until late January is a humongous blessing to us. There are other perks too like how much I LOVE having the tree up for 2 months, and how the late Christmas cards still get displayed for a while and how it puts something to look forward to in the first part of the year since we don't really do anything for New Year's except stay up late watching a movie until we can groggily say to each other, "Hey it's January! Time for bed. Good night... *snore*" and we don't romanticize Valentine's between children either. Enough run-on sentences for one day? Yes I thought so too. I shall refrain from it for the remainder of this post now! ;)

So after deciding this about our traditions it took the pressure off and we got gifts for the relatives, travelled to visit family, and had a pretty good time. Except that everyone forgot my birthday. But that's another pout. I mean post. *ahem*
It was wonderful as always to see our families. Especially my mom. Especially after having just lost Nana.
Chicklet got a sweater from my sister and Fuzzoodles from my husband's brother and his wife. Hubby's mom got her a Madame Alexander doll.
Bug got a shirt from my sister and some toy cars and a train bank from hubby's family.
Babykins got a lovely sweater from hubby's brother's wife and some onesies and pants from my MIL and and my sister got her a sweater and pants.
We had dinner at my sister's house which was nice except for her kids were sick so of course my kids woke up on my birthday, the 27th, throwing up. Again. Just got over being sick and now sick again. For my birthday. *sigh*
My hubby did the sweetest most romantic thing for my birthday though! He gave me this super mushy card and in it he had a flower made out of gift cards with a pipe cleaner stem. It was perfect. I cried! He's the best! ♥♥♥
And so ended our year, not too terribly eventfully, sick again, but still looking forward to our own "real" Christmas.

2010 Rewind PART 2 ~Thanksgiving and the Aftermath of Loss~

Warning: this post is a bit of a downer. With creepy dreams thrown in too. Mostly I just journalled this stuff to try to figure out later.

Thanksgiving, just a week after Nana went Home to Heaven, was weird. It was bittersweet for those of us missing her. In a good way it was nice because it brought us all together when it would otherwise have been a divided family affair spent each with out little respective families acrost the country. My mother's sisters came, one from the other end of the country and one from several hours away. We decided to forego Thanksgiving as usual with my husband's family in order to be with my family at this difficult time also. It was really nice to see everyone but it still felt empty. My mom and her sisters and brother decided to go ahead and have it at Nana's house- now my uncle's house. It had already been planned for Nana's and she had the meal planned out and groceries bought so they went ahead and had it there just as she would have wanted. But it was insanely difficult to visit and walk around Nana's home and know she was not there and I would never see her again this side of Heaven. I won't get a chance to tell her I love her again, or to ask her about her childhood again, or to see my kids grow up knowing and loving her and her calling them "fweetie" like she did me when I was little.

Not long after my grandpop's death last year I dreamt that I was in their house with Nana and I could see the spirit of my grandpop walking down the hall. I saw him several times walk down the hall and each time he got younger and younger until he was the grandpop I remember from when I was little. I told Nana in the dream, that he was waiting for her. She said through her tears, "I can't I just can't think of that now... not yet. I have to be where I'm at." I turned from Nana and walked down the hall again and then turned around to walk back to the kitchen, and there was grandpop walking toward me and he had something in his arms and he was beaming, just radiant, joy coming off him. I saw a tiny head of dark hair and he was smiling into the tiny face and I knew it was a baby girl. As he got closer I tried to look at the baby's face to see who she was but I did not recognize her. From the side she looked like my own daughter but when I saw her face I knew she was not. Grandpop walked through me and vanished. That was the last time I dreamt of him. I thought the baby might be Carrie- his daughter that was his secondborn after my uncle: she died when she was a newborn. The joy on his face as he looked at that baby in his arms was so overwhelming that it made me cry. I woke up sobbing but feeling comforted.
After Nana's passing I did not have such a comforting dream. First there was a plague of insects coming out from under the bed and pouring out of an old dirty dilapidated car and everything was in dark dingy colors like everything was old and dirty. I was strangely unconcerned about the insects. I thought we should do something about them, and I thought they were icky, but I would stomp them and go on about my day without being disrupted or deterred. Then the colors were back and I was running through the corridors of a hospital. It was like a maze and everything was this burnt orange color. I had to get to Nana to say goodbye. My husband was with me. We finally found her. The room was dark with a fuzzy candlelight quality. In the room was my grandpop's body on the bed, and Nana was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed but not too close, but she looked dead. When I got close to her, I saw that she was there but not registering anything. I knelt in front of her and started to cry. She suddenly focused on me for one second with crystal clarity. Her eyes lit up and she said lovingly with delight, "My little Jessie!" and then she died. Then both bodies were gone and one of my aunts looked at my mom, other aunt, and uncle, and said, "Okay well what now?" and everyone picked up their things to leave except Uncle Bob who stayed in his chair. I wanted to scream, "How can you just move on like that?! What do you do with the pain?!" but I held my tongue. Then I woke up.

2010 Rewind PART 1 ~Remembering Nana~

Firstly I want to thank you for the sympathetic comments regarding the passing of my Nana. It hurts so much but I have such wonderful amazing memories of her...

When I was a child, I spent at least one night a week at my Nana's house. Mom's mom was the best Nana ever. I remember her calling me sweetie but she would say it kind of in baby talk so it sounded like "fweetie" and no matter how rotten I was, when Mom came to pick me up, Nana always gushed about what an angel I was. My Nana was a spunky grandmother. She was tiny, she came up to about my eyes and I'm 5' 5" so she was little. She had the figure of a young woman who had never had children, despite having given birth to 5 of them. I remember the one time I purposely disobeyed her. I only willfully rebelled against her this one time. I stuck my tongue out at her because she told me I couldn't do or have something I wanted. She told me if I stuck my tongue out at her again she would cut it off. Now if you knew what a tiny little sweet woman my Nana was, you would laugh at the very idea. I was about 10 at the time and at first I didn't believe she would do it so, being a child with a sin nature I decided to test her. I stuck my tongue out again. Lickety-split she came around the corner with a pair of scissors! She held them in front of my lips and told me she was ready just go right on ahead and stick it out again so she could cut it off. I became convinced she was really going to do it and started to cry and apologize and beg her to please not cut off my tongue. Afterward I realized that cutting my tongue off would be the last thing my Nana ever would have done... but somehow even though I knew she wouldn't really, I respected her more for having scared me straight. I don't recall ever defying her before or after that.
I remember Nana would always let me mash hash marks in the tops of her molasses cookies when we would bake together. There were a few things that Nana made that were just better than everyone else's in the whole world, no matter if they used the exact same recipe! No matter how hard she tried, Mom never could get her spaghetti or molasses cookies to quite be as tasty as Nana's were, even though she used the same recipe.
I remember once Nana told me a story about not talking to strangers. She said when she was a little girl she was playing outside and a stranger drove up and told her he was going down the street to the candy store and would she like to ride along? She said she had to ask her mother first. He tried to convince her that the candy store was not very far away and it would only take a few minutes. She repeated that she had to ask her mother so he said Okay and she ran inside to ask her mom. Her mom ran back outside with her to see who this suspicious fellow was but he was gone without a trace, a pretty sure indicator that he would have done something horrible had my Nana, little Dorothy, not done the right thing and asked her mama's permission.
I remember going for bike rides with Nana. I remember she would tell me I should eat the crust on my sandwiches because crust makes your hair curly. I remember she kept toothbrushes for us at her house and every time we'd arrive for a visit she would have the toothbrushes boiled and sealed up in saran wrap. I remember she would get No More Tangles spray for my ever long hair and my sister's too, to get out the tangles. First she would lay a towel on the kitchen counter and lay us each on it with our head over the sink and she would use the sprayer to wash out hair so gently. It always felt so good. I wish I could ask her how to get my own daughter to stop being afraid of having her hair washed.
I remember the books she had at her house for us. It was a treat to read them. Some of my favorites were there. "Are You My Mother?" and "The Story Of Ferdinand," and some others. I remember how she would play a game of Parcheesi with me before bed. She would always pin her hair in curls with bobby pins and cover them with a bandana before going to sleep. Every night for as far back as I can remember she always did this.
She used to sew my sister and I each a new dress (and buy my brother a nice new church outfit) for every Christmas and every Easter. I think I was 13 when her arthritis became so bad she couldn't do it anymore. I still have some of those wonderful special dresses she made for me. I would wear them everywhere, constantly, until they were so much too small they looked more like a shirt than a dress. Sweet twirly dresses with full skirts and lacy collars... Wonderful dresses from Daisy Kingdom patterns that were every little girl's fantasy.
She always saved her change for us kids and when we came to visit she would get down the change jar and divide it up between the three of us.
Every Christmas and Easter she would give us special treats. Just a few but she would put them in little baggies or packets of saran wrap and it might just be 10 jelly beans and 3 malted eggs but it was so much more because it was overflowing with love. There was always an orange at Christmas. She had a bunch of Christmas stockings she would put a handfull of candy and an orange and some nuts in each one and everyone got one each Christmas.
She always bought our shoes too. Every time we needed shoes Mom would trace our footprints and mail them to Nana, who would take them into the shoe store and find the perfect shoes.
And she never forgot our birthdays. Even mine 2 days after Christmas which so many people forgot or ignored, Nana never ever forgot me. Nana and Grandpop gave us $1 for every year old we were until we maxed out at a $20. ;)

Grandpop passed away in July of 1999 after a series of strokes, just before my Nana's 83rd birthday. She wasn't the same in those last few years. She wanted to join him.

In the end of October I was visiting my parents. Nana and my mom's brother Bob came up to visit while we were there. I'm so glad they did- it was the last time I saw her. She was happier than I'd seen her in years. She got to meet Babykins and love on my other kids. I wish my kids could have known her, and known her better. I miss her so much!

January Giveaways!

http://everypreciousjoy.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-giveaways.html 
First, here are some awesome giveaways I have found! Check back frequently as I will be removing the ones that are over and adding new giveaway links as I can! Please click on a date to see a few select giveaways ending on that date. (If date is not clickable, I have not selected any giveaways to feature for that date yet.)

Giveaways By End Date:
January 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
February 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
_____________________

Linky Time!
••For more places to list your giveaways click HERE
_____________________
_____________________
Your turn! :) MckLinky up!
In the space that says Link Title, remember to include 3 things: YourBlogName - Giveaway Title [End date]. Does not have to be in that exact order but I do need all three in some order or another please. Link to the giveaway post specifically, not just to your blog in general.
PLEASE make sure you follow these easy instructions so it is easy for me to maintain and easy for people to view and use. Alot of people have not been doing this and it makes maintaining the list much harder and more time consuming for me. This is not an unreasonable request in the least: most giveaway linkups require this same format. You can use proper format and copy and paste it the same (proper) way to all the linkys you use. If this gets too hard for me to maintain due to people not doing this as I have asked, I will stop fixing them and have to instead delete any that I don't have the time to fix. So you see why it's not only courtesy but is also important to use the BlogName-GiveawayName[EndDate] format. (In any order. You can do End Date - Blog name - Giveaway or Giveaway - End date - Blog name or whatever as long as they are all in there.)
ALSO please note: I will immediately delete any entries that are innapropriate and further links from that blog may be deleted if I don't have time to screen them. A good way to look at it is if you wouldn't want your 13 year old daughter to have one or read the review in your words then DON'T LINK IT HERE. This is supposed to be a family friendly blog and when I've got people posting giveaways for ...um... 'romantic props' or something it is extremely embarrassing and upsetting to find that on my blog where my friends' innocent children could see it.
Your link WILL BE DELETED IF it links to a post that:
**Contains profanity, nudity, or inappropriate inuendo.
**Does not contain a blog giveaway.
**Endorses abortion, divorce, adultery, or things that are anti-God, anti-moral absolutes, anti-ten commandments, etc.
**Endorses a product/company that endorses abortion, divorce, adultery, or things that are anti-God, anti-moral absolutes, anti-Biblical commandments, etc.
**Is not appropriate for an innocent child to view.
This is what I believe in, and to allow links on my blog that go against that is something that I cannot do in good concience.


Entries will stay on the list until they expire (until the giveaway ends).
I will try to delete expired giveaways often to keep this list fresh and easy to view.
I will create a new list each month. This MckLinky list will run January 1st-31st. Check back February 1st for a new list.

~*~

BOOK REVIEW: "Unto The Hills; A daily devotional" by Billy Graham

TITLE: Unto The Hills; A Daily Devotional
AUTHOR: Billy Graham
GENRE: Christian devotional
ISBN: 978-0-8499-4621-9
PUBLISHER'S SUMMARY: "For peace, for strength, for courage and inspiration, look UNTO THE HILLS. Day by day, you can join the nation's most beloved spiritual leader for a moment of quiet and reflection - a Scripture, a thought, and a prayer. The author draws from his lifetime of study and ministry to offer this devotional classic, featuring 365 meditations to calm you and point you toward the One who can always help."

First off I want to say that the summary from the back cover is just awful. It makes it sound like some pious guide to religion by some religious leader who is worshipped as God Himself is. Really unappealing.
The first few days of this devotional were equally unappealing to me. They were generic, spiritual babyfood. I wanted some meat to chew over, not platitudes I learned in Sunday School when I was 6. If I flipped this devotional open in a store and read the first few days, I would most definately not buy it.
BUT after a few weeks of readings I felt like the...

[To read the rest of my review, please click HERE to go to my review blog!]

I lost my Nana...

My dear Nana passed away last night. She was 85 and went Home in her sleep. I was her first grandchild and we were so close. I'm still in shock I think. Just numb and queasy. I'm probably not going to be blogging much if at all for the rest of this month. Thanksgiving and a funeral to think about, memories on my mind.

Sneak Peek (Baby!)

Wanna see a sneaky peeky of the newest member of my family? ;)

I was just sitting here looking down at her sleeping in my arms:

...and I'm thinking how blessed I am! :)
~*Mama Mirage*~