My Apologies!

Due to being a bit under the weather yesterday (as in, perhaps a stomach virus or perhaps too much antibiotic from my sinus ordeal building up) I was unable to go to work and therefore unable to check my blog for last minute giveaway entrants. Sooo...long story short, I will be drawing from a hat tonight & posting the winner tomorrow!
Forgive me?

The Goodies!

As I announced last week, I am hosting a Giveaway to celebrate my 200th post. The giveaway will close tonight at midnight, so be sure to leave a comment to enter!
Here is a pic of the things I have gathered for the prize:
*Venus razor
*Softlips chapstick
*Thermacare wrap
*Glide Floss
*A nice new clicky pen
*Two Gooseberry Patch cookbooks
*A pretty pad of writing paper
*Five little heart shaped post-it pads
*A country basket with a bird house themed lid

The winner will be posted on Wednesday. That will allow me to check again on Tuesday for final entries & have Mike help me draw the winner on Tuesday evening. BTW, he's so into the bloggy world that he thought I was crazy when I said I was hosting a giveaway. Obviously he understands football better than blogging!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend & that Monday has not been too painful so far. Our weekend was super busy & I enjoyed a wonderful time at the Ladies' Retreat. One too-stressful-let's-not-ever-let-that-happen-again moment at the retreat was when my g-ma took a spill & hit her head on the concrete floor. Camp can be a dangerous place for Grands (especially when they have a tendency to be unsteady on their feet!). But it was a profitable time for sure. We learned a lot about not letting our emotions control us, how to comfort others in times of trial or pain, & how to love our husbands. It was fun to sit in a session like the last one & know that the teaching is now practical to my life b/c now I have a husband! :-)

Anyway, today it's back to the grind. We both overslept this morning & had to hit the ground running! I kinda hate mornings like that, but the Lord has been good to bless me with a very un-hectic work day so far at the first job. Here's hoping & praying that job #2 is this smooth & relaxed!

Headin' Out!

I'm getting ready to hit the time clock to punch out, run a couple of errands, get home & do a quick workout video (target toning area - my sad noodle-y arms!), pack up some clothes & then head out to camp for ladies' retreat!
The weather is less than stellar (cold & rainy) so I'm not sure if I will be spending lots of time on the zip line like I did last year. Oh well.
It's gonna be a good time but I will be glad to get home. Funny how having a husband makes me want to come home :-)
What exciting & fun things do you have planned for your weekend?
*don't forget to enter my Giveaway!

Another Giveaway!

This time not by me...but by Tricia over at Spend Freely. If I know how to insert a link, I would do it. But since I'm not that savvy, you will just have to go to www.spendfreely.blogspot.com.

I've been wanting to try this granola stuff for a while b/c I've heard it's YUMMY.

So go win something!

A Milestone...AND a Giveaway!

THIS IS POST #200!

And since that equals a

Milestone

in my opinion,

there shall be a

Giveaway!

Ever since I read about a giveaway on someone else's blog, I've wanted to do one. Now I have a reason to ~ I can't actually believe that I have stuck with this blogging thing long enough to have a 200 posts milestone. Yay for me! :-)

Now, I am a newbie at giveaways. Actually, I can't even promote what I will be giving away because it has not yet been decided. I'm sure I'm breaching giveaway etitquette, aren't I? *grin* I'm sure you all will forgive me. Trust me though, it will be a good giveaway.

So here's the nitty gritty...I'm not going to insist on a United States address. I have a couple of friends that live abroad & I just can't exclude them. All you will need to do is leave me a comment & an email address or some other means of contacting you. The deadline is Monday, September 28th at midnight. I will probably choose the winner by some very technical method, such as writing your names on a piece of paper & having my husband draw one out of a hat (I just love to get him involved!). He loves it, too... believe me! *LAUGH*

For me, today is a special day. Not only am I writing my 200th post & announcing my first bloggy giveaway, there is MORE. I got to use my crock pot today. That may not seem special to a lot of you but to me it's a special occasion. Since I work at least two nights a week I don't actually cook much. And I don't use my crock pot a lot because I have to go to work so early in the morning (and who wants to get up at 5 a.m. to get a jump on dinner prep???). But today, we are going to nosh on beef stew which will be especially yummy b/c it is raining & chilly. With some fluffy biscuits, we will be happily fed. Plus, I'm not sure if you noticed that today is special b/c it is three months until Christmas Eve!

Yes, I do actively think of things to be excited about. My boss especially loves the Christmas Countdown that usually begins sometime in May or June ~ I just can't help myself!

So...leave your comment & enter the giveaway! Earn an extra entry by posting an additional comment about why today is a special day for YOU!

Starting Down That Path AGAIN???

I'm slowly coming out of about 10 days of just feeling held under by a sinus infection. Yesterday & today I have actually felt like I am back to normal. I didn't realize how yucky I had been feeling. It was like walking uphill all the time. Thank God for antibiotics - otherwise I would have died of snot long before now.

Anyway, this little bout with sickness has caused me to experience the temptation to worry that this winter I am going to have another ongoing battle with my pathetic immunity. I was doing a little research about immunity boosters & I kept coming across the words 'probiotics' & 'kefir'. So I bought a jug. I had a coupon. I thought, why not? But I'm just not sure what to do with it. Anybody out there ever partake of kefir? Do you just drink it straight up or do you smoothie it down? If you smoothie it, how do you do it? Do you pour it over cereal?

Give me some ideas & I'll give them a try! Maybe I'll start a little series of posts reviewing your ideas :-)

Don't Laugh!

I'm just going to put the disclaimer out there - you asked me to post my essay if I got one written. Well, I wrote it & now I'm posting it. DON'T LAUGH or I'll cry bloggy tears!
Just teasing, but there is something terribly intimidating about letting you all ready my essay. I emailed it the magazine without a thought b/c I don't know those people & I know I won't win anyway :-)

So...here it is!

For most people, the desire to feel all grown up begins at an early age. For me, it was very early. With an older brother and an older sister, there was no shortage of people in our house who felt that it was their responsibility to boss me around. “Someday…” I would think to myself. “Someday I’ll go where I wanna go! I’ll wear what I wanna wear, listen to the music I wanna listen to, play the games I like!” and the list went on and on.
Now when I crawl out of bed each morning my thirty-two year old face stares back from the bathroom mirror. My white gold wedding band gleams on my hand and I have definitely reached the point in my life where I would be described as a ‘grown-up.’ But when did it happen? Could grown-up-ness just happen to me one day without me even noticing? Is it like that first gray hair I ever had? I wondered how long it had been there before I even noticed it. It just snuck up on me.
Maybe I became a grown up in the same subtle way. After high school I went to college out of state. I could now freely do all the things my childish mind had determined to do. There were no older siblings to boss me around & best of all, my parents were 500 miles away. Yet, I depended on them for so much – money (of course!), support, guidance. I certainly was not truly standing on my own two feet.
The years after graduation were crazy and fun-filled. I labeled myself a ‘Fake Adult’, moved back in with Mom and Dad, loving the single life. I worked a very flexible job which was not high paying by anyone’s standards. I wanted to travel. So I did – road trips, camping trips; beaches and mountains were the places I roamed. I was having a wonderful time but I was not really living the grown up life.
Then things started to happen, in a very gradual way. I got a real job that I actually enjoyed so the thought of staying there for more than six months was not distasteful. I started saving money instead of booking airline tickets. By God’s wonderful design I landed in a stable relationship. I even bought a house. After a little more time had passed, I got married. I entered my thirties - oy! By any standards, I can no longer label myself a ‘Fake Adult’. And yet, some nights I still half expect my mom to pop her head out the front door and call out through the fading evening light for me to come home and get ready for bed. Sometimes I still feel like we are playing house.
There is evidence to the contrary; evidence that shows I have reached the status of Grown-Up. My parents talk with me and our conversations are different. Now they ask me my opinion of things or what would I do if I had been in a certain situation they had been faced with. Since I work in pharmaceuticals, they ask me questions about their health and medications. These are not conversations we had when I was a child. Things have changed.
Now each morning the alarm clock goes off at an early, cruel hour. I lie in bed savoring my husband’s warmth for one last snooze session before stumbling into the bathroom to stare at my thirty-two year old face in the mirror. The truth is, no matter how I try to determine just when the transition from child to grown-up occurred, the fact is that it has. And not just because I bought a house or got married. It is just like that first gray hair that sneaked up on me – it is inevitable. And it is a good thing!