Spring Fling
Hello, Long-Neglected Blog Readers…
I just wanted to make mention of a Contest I am doing for my Thirty-One business (you can check out Thirty-One here if you’re unfamiliar with the company). It’s my favorite type of Contest…one where every participant wins! The only catch is that you have to let me know by Tuesday, April 13th if you are committing to the Challenge, and I must have 10 people committed to make it a success. Interested? Read on!
“Spring Fling” Thirty-One Contest…
*Where EVERYBODY Wins*
Spring is here (errr…kind of…)
Flip Flops? Check
Painted Toenails? Check
Cute Spring Bag? Oh no!
Don’t worry! You’ve been invited to be a part of a special Thirty-One Challenge. Here’s how it works:
1) I will send you catalogs and detailed ordering instructions once you commit to the challenge.
2) Collect $100.00 in orders (this can come from others…only 2-3 orders to reach this amount on average…or can be your own order).
3) Each person ordering must pay cash or credit/debit card (no checks).
4) E-mail your orders back to me or call them into me by April 26th at the latest.
5) I will draw your prize and you may redeem it immediately! You WILL WIN one of the following…
Prizes
1) $50.00 in FREE PRODUCTS
2) Skirt Purse with your choice of Skirt!
3) $50.00 in FREE PRODUCTS
4) Thirty-One Personalized Note Card Set with Envelopes!
5) ANY item of your choice for ½ off!
6) A Pleated Beach Tote, you pick fabric and embroidery!
7) ANY item of your choice for ½ off!
8) A Thermal Lunch Tote, you pick fabric and embroidery!
9) ANY item of your choice for ½ off!
10) ANY item of your choice for ½ off!
Bonus: EVERYBODY with an order over $50.00 gets FREE SHIPPING and ALL orders ship directly to customers in April!
**I MUST have 10 committed participants to make this Spring Fling a success!
**Your orders, plus your prizes, will be ordered at the close of the challenge!
Affording Hope
I’ve always been a bit of a skeptic about child sponsorship. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. I even sponsored a little guy through World Vision several years ago, but I never truly knew if my thirty-some-odd dollars a month was really making a difference. So I didn’t put a lot into my relationship with him, I’m ashamed to say. I think I only wrote once. At least I hope I wrote once. And then, some where along the line, we stopped sponsoring him. Just kind of trailed off. I truly don’t remember if he moved out of the program or what happened. That’s how uninvolved I was.
But this time is going to be different. This time we have a good friend, Brad Ruggles, who is in Africa right now, holding the hands of children who’s lives are being turned right-side-up through Compassion International. This time we see EXACTLY what it means to a child to have someone on the other side of the globe care enough to send love and hope every month.
And we want to be a part of it. Actually, Brad threatened to not be our friend any more if we didn’t sponsor a child in Kenya, and we don’t have that many friends to begin with yet here in Indy, so we can’t afford to lose him. But we can afford $38 a month. We can afford to take even a foggy look at poverty. We can pray that God will use this new little person to change our family, to educate and better Madalyn and Gabe as they grow.
We can afford the challenge. So this time there will be letters. There will be many pieces of artwork, smeared with glitter glue, that depict round glob people with eyes and mouths and noses and chins (all of Madalyn’s glob people have chins). Madalyn will surely want to send Kanze (did I tell you our new little friend’s name is Kanze?) a “picture” of our family, illustrated by herself.
So we challenge our faith, we stretch our kids, we keep our friend, and we sponsor a child. Go see how Brad is spending his days in Africa and you just might do the same.
Filed under hodgie podgie, what matters most | Comments (2)Letters To My Children 01: Things Will Look Better In The Morning
Dear Madalyn & Gabriel,
When you are feeling sad, discouraged, disheartened, or frusturated, consider how tired you are…right here, right now. How long has it been since you’ve gotten a good night’s rest? What stresses are wearing on your body and your heart?
When you are sad, discouraged, disheartened, or frusturated…sleep. Things will almost always look better in the morning. Better with the sun rising, better with a cup of coffee, better through the sleep that is still in your eyes.
And I promise you this…they will never, ever look any worse for the rest you have allowed and perspective you have gained.
Love,
Mama
Filed under Letters To My Children, hodgie podgie | Comments (2)Mama Respensive Reading
A few things before watching the video clip below:
1) Madalyn likes to make words up. A lot. She also likes to slowly, carefully, and patiently make sure her Daddy and I are pronouncing the created words correctly.
2) I’m not sure why she breaks out into frequent and sudden arabesques during our taping session. She won’t let me sign her up for ballet. Every time I bring up the fine art, she responds with a vehement ” I want to play SOCCER!!!” We are signing her up for soccer this spring.
3) That’s it. Enjoy…you’ll laugh, you’ll cry…you’ll learn some Spanish.
Untitled from Laura Carney on Vimeo.
Filed under hodgie podgie | Comments (4)“Hodge Podge Life”
A few months ago, I was thinking about how my life has become so different than what I’d imagined it would be. I thought I would get married, graduate from college a year later, work for a few years, and decide to have a baby or four. I thought…well, I don’t know if I know what I thought. I don’t quite remember.
Things happened differently than what I’d imagined, irregardless. I got pregnant immediately after Dan and I married. And I think everything has been in a bit of a tizzy since, to be honest. A beautiful, chaotic, lovely, scary, tizzy.
Or a Hodge Podge. I don’t quite remember how or when that word came to me (to be clear: the correct spelling is “hodgepodge”, but because I like it broken up into two words”Hodge” and “Podge” and because I create all grammatical rules on my blog, it shall hereby stand as “Hodge Podge”). Anyways, I googled “Hodge Podge” to find out just exactly what the meaning of the phrase was, and this was the first definition I found: “A heterogeneous mixture of dissimilar items.”
Bingo. That’s me.
If you’ll harken back to 5th grade life science, you’ll recall that a “heterogeneous mixture” is a mixture inwhich items retain their own specific shape and properties. Think of a tin full of nuts and bolts. It’s a mixture, for sure, but all the bolts and each of the nuts keep their unique shape and being. A “homogeneous mixture”, on the other hand, would be like taking your favorite sunscreen and squirting it into your favorite hand lotion and then shaking vigorously (after replacing the cap, of course…just in case you’re a hands-on learner who is attempting this as you read). The lotions would lose their individuality and combine into one mixture.
And my life, truth be told, feels quite a bit like the former. There are things that I love and things in which I struggle to find my place. They are more dissimilar than alike.
So there’s going to be a lot of Hodge Podge on this site. Just want to be up front about that. It reflects, celebrates even, the twists and turns that have made this heterogeneous mixture of dissimilar items I call “me”.
I’m glad you’re here in the mix. I’d like to hear your Hodge Podge, too. I’d like for us to remind each other that life doesn’t have to be perfect or even always make sense to be…quite beautiful.
Filed under Nondescript Hodge Podge | Comments (3)
