Little Leaps of Love Challenge

A few years ago when I first started blogging, I held a little “challenge” of sorts. During the month of February I posted daily ideas of little things that we could do to show our family {kids, spouses and extended family too!} a little bit of love in a simple, but fun way.

It was SO much fun that I want to host it again!! Ready to hear more about the Little Leaps of Love challenge?

Each day in the month of February {excluding Sundays}, I will post a challenge to do with or for your family that day.  The challenges will vary from things to do with your children to special things to do for your spouse  ~ don’t worry, it’s all fun and family-friendly! I fully intend to participate in the leaps too! Some will be practical, some will be fun, and a few might be just plain crazy...you'll just have to wait and see!

Each challenge posted will be assigned a point value and there will be prizes awarded at the end of the month. You don’t need to keep track of your points ~ you can just have fun along with us. One prize will be awarded for any participant and one will be for the participant with the most points.

How do I earn points?

You earn points by completing the "Leap" assigned on the day it is assigned. Some of the activities will also include bonus points.

How do I keep track of my points?

Download the ‘Little Leaps of Love’ Point Tracker. Hang it up on your fridge and as you complete the challenges, fill in the blanks. It’s even cute…{grins}

Are there prizes {and what are they}?

Oh YES! There will be prizes! I am so excited that a Vintage Pearl gift certificate will be a part of both prize packages!!!

~ The participant with the most points during the month will be awarded a lovely prize pack that includes a $50 Gift Certificate from the Vintage Pearl as well as a $50 gift certificate to Amazon!!

~ One random participant will be awarded a $50 Gift Certificate from the Vintage Pearl. At the completion of the challenge, there will be a ‘participator’s post’ where you can all chime in with your name and contact info ~ even if you participated just one day!

Can anyone participate?

Absolutely. Yes. Please join in! You do not need to have a blog to participate, but you do need to be a US resident to receive prizes.

Can I join at any time?

Yes! Start in whenever you can. Any leap of love is a GREAT leap of love!!

Can I post a button on my blog for the challenge?

Grab a button and help spread the word! If you would like to post a button in your blog sidebar and share the fun with your friends and family, grab the code in the box below.

<a href="http://www.noordinarymomentsblog.com/search/label/Little%20Leaps%20of%20Love" target="_blank"><img src="http://i678.photobucket.com/albums/vv146/homeschoolcreations/LittleLeapsButton.jpg" alt="Little Leaps of Love" /></a>

When will Little Leaps of Love begin?

Officially, the fun will begin on February 1st and there will be challenges almost every day of February {excluding Sundays}! You need to actually do the leap on the day it is posted - otherwise you might just plain drive yourself crazy trying to do it all in one day. So no procrastinating…just have fun and love on your family.

I would recommend subscribing by email so that the challenges are delivered to your inbox not long after they are posted. Can’t wait to start having fun with you all ~ tune in starting February 1st!

Relaxation Coming Up!

Tomorrow Rick and I are headed out for a much needed, much anticipated vacation together.

Alone.

For ONE WEEK!

I can hardly believe it myself and have asked Rick several times if he’ll get bored with me after 2 days since we haven’t had that much alone time since…well, a LONG time ago. Almost 10 years, to be exact.

I have a feeling that we’ll figure something out and that there will be plenty to do {and eat} aboard this loveliness…

We’re taking the camera and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of pictures to share, although Rick says there are only so many pictures of the ocean I can take. I’m determined to prove him wrong!

You’d think after almost 13 years he would know better…

Deep Thoughts From Kaleb

Kaleb took a little car trip with Rick the other day and while they were driving, he was apparently pondering some pretty heavy stuff.

K: “How many Jesus’ are there?”

Rick: “Just one.”

K: “How can He be in my heart and other people’s too?

R: “Jesus is everywhere.”

K: “Is He big or small?”

R: “He’s big.”

K: “Is Jesus bigger than Goliath?”

Just so sweet to see his little mind working and thinking things through. :)

Vintage Pearl Loveliness…Coming Soon!

Next Monday I will be sharing details about a fun little challenge for you all that will last the entire month of February. I am getting all the little details worked out right now, especially since there will be prizes too!

I am so very excited to have The Vintage Pearl join as a sponsor of the challenge ~ because their necklaces and handstamped pieces are gorgeous! Each piece created is unique and something that you will have as a keepsake for years to come.

The Vintage Pearl will be providing two $50 gift certificates as part of the prize packages for the upcoming challenge ~ and their site offers so many choices! I personally have two necklaces from The Vintage Pearl ~ the Circle of Love and a special one from attending the Relevant Conference this past fall.  I wear my Circle of Love necklace frequently and am constantly getting comments on it {have I mentioned I love it?}.

Start browsing The Vintage Pearl, making your lists {a side list for your hubby is highly recommended!}, and don’t forget to check back Monday to find out more details on the upcoming challenge. A huge thank you to The Vintage Pearl for being a part of the fun!

I Woke Up…

My kids are highly competitive with each other in just about everything. Most every morning we have a conversation at breakfast about WHO got the least amount of sleep or woke up the earliest.

Betcha didn’t’ know THAT was something to compete in!

This morning the breakfast conversation went something like this:

McKenna: Mom! I woke up at 6:32 this morning.

Laurianna: I was up since 6:18.

Zachary: I woke up at 4:37…or 8 and couldn’t get back to sleep.

Kaleb: I woke up at 7:eight, nine, ten.

He can’t tell time, but at least he can count. :)

Head on over to Mary's at Not Before 7 for some more Tiny Talk Tuesday!!

4 Minutes Til Midnight

It’s waaaay past New Year’s Eve, but while I was downloading pictures from my camera I found this picture and it was just too cute not to share! Our kids have never stayed up til midnight on New Year’s Eve {unless I happened to be nursing them!} and this year we let them all stay up.

We also {wrongly} assumed that several of them would crash long before the appointed hour and we’d just wake them up to wish them a Happy New Year.
Almost every one of them held out until the bitter end. But FOUR minutes until midnight, Kaleb gave into sleep when he sat down one of our Ahh Products bean bag chairs…

This Too Shall Pass

A friend passed this link along to me, and aside from the song being fun, the video is WAY too amazing. The choreography in putting something like this together just boggles my mind…

 

Too Much Reading?

Laurianna is a girl that takes after her Mom in the more ways than one, but especially in her love for reading. She recently became engrossed in a series that had her reading 300+ page books in a day {if she could sneak away to do it}.

The other morning she came running out to tell me she couldn’t find her book that she was almost finished with ~ and was SURE that McKenna had taken it. I went into the girl’s room to see if I could help her find it.

I found McKenna sitting on the floor sobbing {and you’ll just have to imagine McKenna getting this all out in between her sobs}…”I just {sob} hid her book {sob, sob} because I wanted her to play with meeeeeeee.” {sob}

It was so pitifully sweet. :)

Surrender the Night ~ Book Review

When Rose is attacked on her farm and rescued by an enemy British officer, she feels obligated to care and nurse the man back to health ~ and get him away from her farm as quickly as possible. If he is found on the property, it would mean certain death for the officer and accusations of treason for her family.

Lieutenant Reed only did what he saw as necessary ~ protect an innocent person, despite the fact that she was an enemy during wartime. Standing by and watching a fellow officer harm her was not an option.

Rose has already suffered much in her young life and has lived trapped in her fear for years. As she helps Lt. Reed recover, her defenses slowly begin to drop, leaving her confused by her growing affection for a known enemy.  Her primary goal is to get him well enough to leave and return to his ship, although she wishes there were a way for him to stay.

My Thoughts

Similar to the first book in the series, Surrender the Night had me completely engrossed. Mary Lu Tyndall does a wonderful job developing the characters in the story, especially in light of the conflict that they face in being ‘enemies’ with each other.  The story takes place during the War of 1812.

At first I wasn’t sure how Surrender the Night would tie in with the other book in the Surrender to Destiny series, Surrender the Heart.  Eventually, it all begins to tie together and I was happy to get a little update on many of the characters from the first book in the series as well. 

Find Out More

Surrender the Night by Mary Lu Tyndall will be available on 3/1/11. You can pre-order the book now on Amazon.

This book was provided for review by Barbour via Net Gallery. All opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.

My Clean, Clean House

I do believe that at the moment my house is about the cleanest that it has ever been. The smell of fresh paint is still in the air mingling with the lovely smell of the carpet shampoo.

Which reminds me, if you are thinking your carpets need to be cleaned, pay the $25 to rent the Bissell Big Green from Lowes and have at it. I can’t believe we waited this long…and we are AMAZED at how wonderful the rugs look!

Rick was able to take 2 days off last week and while he painted, I cleaned, touched up, sorted, organized and the end result is so lovely I’m wondering what I need to do to keep it looking like this forever. You know, short of moving the kids out of the house…

We haven’t officially listed our house yet, but managed to get it ready just in time to show it this weekend and are still waiting to hear how the showing went. The whirlwind surround this whole experience has been amazing and once things are more clearly defined, I can’t wait to tell you all the things that have been going on behind the scenes.

For now, I’m just soaking in the clean and organization. Ahhh……

Getting Teary-Eyed

This week has been a flurry of activity in our house. Starting Monday, our house has been in ‘paint and prettify’ mode with the possibility of our moving. Amazing, since we had no intention of moving or selling our house…but things are definitely moving in that direction.

With the repainting project, we had to cover up something on our wall that has been there for the last 8 odd years ~ the growth charts of the kids.

Before we started painting over them, Rick held a tape measure up to the wall so that I could take pictures of the growth timeline to have on record…and just looking at them gets me a little misty…

The kids were watching a movie while we were painting and when Zachary came upstairs and saw that the wall had been painted over, he was SO upset. Until I showed him all the pictures to prove we still had all the important information.

Growing up too fast!!

Not All Ghosts are Bad

Today I overheard the boys talking to each other while they were playing:

Kaleb: All ghosts are bad.

Z: Well, except for Jesus. He’s the Holy Ghost and He is good!

A Bag of Clothes

Before our church took all of the lost and found items to donate, I rummaged through the boxes to see if there was anything in them that belonged to us.

I found a shopping bag with a pair of pants, shirt, and socks that belonged to Zachary ~ essentially the entire outfit.

Which begs the question ~ what in the world was he wearing when he LEFT the church? {or do I even want to know?}

2010 Blog Recap Summary

For the last two years I’ve participated with Musings of a Housewife’s Blog Recap Carnival~ and who am I to break tradition? Here’s a look back at this past year on my blog with the first lines from the first posts of each month {if it was a review post…I’ll admit I skipped it!}.

January ~ We love the LeapFrog dvds in our house and Kaleb wanted to watch the Learning to Read dvd the other day which has some punctuation songs on it.

I had to go back and read this post…and remembering the panic on McKenna’s face because of what she read on the body spray container just made me laugh out loud!

February ~ If you are on Facebook, you might have noticed bunches of people changing their profile pictures to those of various celebrities.

Seeing who my look-alike was determined to be is still humorous! :)

March ~ Who gets to take a turn first, second, etc… can sometimes be a battle. When we were playing a game the other day McKenna said, “I should be next since I’m the middle-aged person in this family.”

April ~ Do you remember this lovely bunny?

This bunny STILL haunts me….

May ~ Remember last week when I told you about my little surprise ~ the one where Kaleb announced in the middle of our shopping trip to Target that he was wearing underwear?

Has it only been a mere 7 months with no diapers….it’s heaven. Pure heaven!

June ~ We have a great deck off our kitchen that has really had little use since we’ve lived at this house. While we have an amazing table and chair set, it is so huge and bulky that there is little room to move, let alone rest, on the porch.

July ~ This is a great one-dish meal that goes together quickly and really isn’t all that spicy…unless you’d like to make it that way.

August ~ As of 10:34pm on Sunday night I'm still in 2 Kings, and a little less than 2 days behind. Assuming that I can keep my eyes open for a bit longer, I’m hoping that I can finish it off in just a bit.

Still cannot believe that I read through the Bible for the first time this past year…and twice to boot!

September ~ While the final bill has yet to be determined for our first family camping trip, I will start out by saying that despite getting off to a literal bang-up of a start, things did get better…eventually.

We were just talking about this last night and laughing.

October ~ Can you see the bottom number?  This is what happens when a certain little someone gets a hold of your indoor/outdoor thermometer.

Thank goodness we got this fixed! {grins}

November ~ It’s really rather simple, but it took all of 1 hour of the Zhu-Zhu pets being home to turn what could have been a lovely relationship…into something rather annoying.

It’s here that I’ll admit I have ‘hidden’ all of the Zhu-Zhu pets….

December ~ Just like I was swept away by the ladies of Cranford, the BBC series Lark Rise to Candleford has me completely distracted.

I’ll admit that this series STILL has me distracted! I haven’t watched season 3 of the series yet, but have it nearby to watch when I do have time!