The Sisterhood of the Traveling Book

A couple of months ago I won a book from my in-real-life friend's, Tudor Rose's, blog. Are You My Guru? How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved My Life by Wendy Shanker. You can read Miss Rose's review by clicking here.

I love a good memoir/personal narrative. In fact, I've been reading a lot more of those than I have fiction in the last few years. This one didn't disappoint. The author was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder in her late twenties, a time when she really had a lot going for her (she had worked at MTV and Oxygen network and met dozens of celebrities). She begins a years long fight to save herself from this disease and has to find the combinations of treatments that work best for her. This is NOT a book full of lots of medical jargon. It is a book full of self-deprecating and sometimes dark humor and lots of pop culture references (especially to Madonna). It's a quick and easy read too.

Tudor Rose sent me her actual copy of the book, which was sent to her by one of her friends who lives in Malaysia. So if you want to keep the book traveling and would like it to show up on your doorstep, leave a comment below. I'll choose a random person at the end of the week and get in touch with them to mail the book. And it would be totally awesome if you'd keep the book traveling when you're finished with it. I might even get creative like Miss Rose and send you my own mix CD of my favorite Madonna songs (does "Like a Prayer" bring back memories of middle school and high school for anyone else?).

Happy reading!

~Melody :-)
P.S. Don't be fooled by their looks today. Miss Cate got up twice last night-- once to pee and once just because. And Brennan, who has been a pretty good sleeper lately, decided he needed a 3:30am snack instead of waiting until his normal 5:00. I am one tired mama today since 3:30 was NOT one of the times big sister got up.

It Was Epic

Turning 29? Not so bad. Pretty sure I feel the same way about turning 30. 40? Eric might have to get me out of bed and get me dressed, but that's 11 years away, so why worry about it now?

I started celebrating the last year of my 20's with breakfast with my dad. He took the kids and I out for pancakes. Mmmm! Next up was the BMV to renew my license plates. Turned out I needed a new license as well. Good thing I had put on makeup to go out to breakfast. We got home and some friends came over with a cute necklace/earring set (that I wore out to dinner later and that Cate is wearing in the picture below with my cake), my favorite wine (Emeri sparkling sauvignon blanc), and my current favorite ice cream (Jeni's Salted Caramel-- comes from Columbus and made with milk from local cows).

The middle of the day saw a bit of a hiccup. Cate's been complaining of her ear hurting for a couple of days. I took her in today and she's got a doozy of an infection in her right ear and a moderate infection in the left. But doesn't she look so darn cute in her ballet costume (picture taken yesterday)?
Brennan ended his pooping-strike while we were at the doctor's office and I ran out of wipes (wet paper towels to the rescue). We came home (after picking up Cate's medicine) and took it easy.
My in-laws came over to watch the kids later that night. Eric and I went to check out Senate where we had some awesome gourmet hot dogs and truffle fries. Eric also got me this. In red. I'm not a self-conscious kind-of girl when it comes to body image. Never really have been. I love the vintage styling of this suit and can't wait to wear it all summer long! It looks pretty fab on.
We came home for some cake-- Boston Cream Pie actually. Cate blew out my candles. The kids went to bed and we enjoyed Michael Scott's last day at Dunder Mifflin and Jack Donaghey's flute-playing skills.
Oh, and on the way home from dinner, God gave me a rainbow.
And....the winner of my Amazon giveaway? Commenter #13, Tina. Congratulations Tina. I'll email you at the email address you left to see if you'd prefer the instant gratification of emailing you the gift card or if you'd rather get it via snail mail.
Happy Weekend friends! I feel like I've been blogging a lot lately. Probably because both kids have actually been going to bed!

~Melody :-)

It's Been

It's been:

• One month exactly since Cate had an accident (while awake) in her underwear. I'm so proud of her. We keep her in a pull-up at night, but she wakes up dry most mornings. We'll probably transition to underwear soon.
• Over 72 hours since we've had to take Brennan to an urgent care or pediatrician. He still coughs from time to time, but slept in his own (albeit slightly inclined) bed last night (well, his bed in our room, he hasn't moved in with big sis yet and probably won't for a couple more months). He rarely wheezes or sounds like a crackly radio.
• A while since I gave my blog a facelift. What do you think?
• Almost 4 months since I went on maternity leave. This is the longest period of my life that I have not worked since my sophomore year of high school when I started my first regular job at a local retirement center. Before this maternity leave, my maternity leave with Cate (which was about 10 weeks) was my longest non-working time. Before that, it was the six weeks I didn't work after breaking my elbow. My jobs in college were very part time (like 4-6 hours a week), but I worked every year I was there. I'm still coaching our Power of the Pen team though. We have four students going to the State tournament in a month. I just resumed coaching duties last week. It felt great to be back in the classroom and reaffirmed that I made the right career choice and am not crazy to want to go back in August.
• A trying spring so far with our roof. New leaks continue to spring up. A roofer has confirmed hail and wind damage. Our insurance company will probably try to fight and say that our roof is old and "non-recoverable." Either way, someone's going to be paying for a new roof. I'd love your votes (click here) to become an editor/reviewer for HopScout. It's not a ton of extra income, and I'm kind of a longshot, but I'd use my earnings if given a position to literally put a non-leaky roof over our heads. If you could share that link through your own blog, tweet, or Facebook, you would so rock my world. I'm not sure if you have to have a Facebook account to vote.
  

No matter what though, God is good. My husband recently shared with me that our lives are not a series of peaks and valleys (where we have our highs of good things followed by the lows of bad things), but rather parallel train tracks. We can have the good and the bad at the same time. All of it builds character and faith. We're living that right now with our kids' health and steady improvement right alongside our leaky roof.

Cate asked to hold Brennan earlier tonight. She does this every few days or so. Not that she totally ignores him on the other days-- she tickles him, sings to him, tries to interact with him. She just doesn't always ask to hold him. I had to take a picture. My phone was the only thing readily available.11 more days to enter my 600th post giveaway. $10 to Amazon is up for grabs!

How has it been for you lately?

~Melody :-)

A Little of This, A Little of That, and a Giveaway

Comments Closed-- Winner will be announced tomorrow 4/29/11. Thanks for entering!

Wow! Today marks my 600th post. I realize my life isn't really that interesting. That most of my blog posts are just little updates on our family from our corner of the Midwest. And really, I thought I would've given it up by now. But this blog has been a chance for me reconnect with people I know in real life, a platform for meeting new people via their blogs (even if I never meet them in person), and oddly therapeutic. So until it becomes a chose to do so, I'll keep blogging. If nothing else, I know there are a few family members that check-in just for the pictures-- reason enough to at least keep posting those. Speaking of pictures, how about a little of this: The advantage to living close the zoo and having a membership, is that we can go for an hour and not feel like we wasted money or gasoline. Sunday was beautiful-- temperatures in the high 80s and sunny! We went to the zoo for the last hour they were open and took some pictures among all of the bloomin' flowers.

I took over 100 pictures. So many turned out well. It's hard for us to decide which ones we want to blow up to hang up around our house. I know one will be this one though:
It's one of my favorites.

The crazy thing about going to the zoo though? Both of my kiddos were in great spirits despite being sick. I'm not some psycho-mom heck-bent on getting pictures on the one nice day of the week. Cate had strep throat last week and was pretty much on the mend, other than complaining her ear hurt. A weekend call to our pediatrician verified what I already thought-- she was already taking an amoxicillin, which should cover the ear if she had an infection. We were to call back if some Ibuprofen and over-the-counter children's decongestant didn't clear things up. Brennan had a little bit of a cough over the weekend. But he was eating, sleeping, and going through diapers just fine. Sunday night, we could hear a little more of the cough in his chest, so yesterday morning I took them both in (Cate was still complaining about her ear).

Turns out there was a nasty infection growing in her ear. She's on a new amoxicillin now and seems much better 24 hours in. Brennan was diagnosed with Bronchiolitis. The doctor said he was too little to give any medicine, but if his condition worsened (struggling to breath, not eating, not wetting/dirtying his diapers), we were to bring him back for a breathing treatment before heading to Children's Hospital for oxygen and possible fluids. Thankfully, God heard our prayers to protect sweet B, and while he got a little worse initially at home, he started to improve by yesterday afternoon. This morning he's not wheezing or purring (raspy breathing). He's not really coughing much either. We're still being vigilant and are planning to stay at home today and tomorrow (and the rest of the week if we need to), just to be sure his lungs and airways are able to heal. Please continue to pray for his recovery. The thought of a hospital trip freaks me out a bit-- especially after having made a few with Cate already in her 3 years.

And now...the real reason you're here. I thought quite a bit about what to giveaway. I don't have blog sponsors nor do I make extra money from advertisements. So no freebies there. A friend suggested something handmade. But when I think about the things I can make in a reasonable amount of time, they didn't seem like things people would actually want. If you really want some knitted dishcloths for your kitchen or a sensory blanket for your baby or something else that I've shared on here, just let me know. I like doing that kind of stuff. I'll make it for you.

So since my blog is pretty random and seems to cover "a little of this" and "a little of that," I thought I'd giveaway a gift card for somewhere that has "a little of this" and "a little of that." They have a little of everything. Amazon! We're on a budget though, so today's giveaway is $10 to Amazon. $10 goes further than you'd think on that website. And the best part? I can send the gift card electronically (unless you want snail mail) so you can use it as soon as you win. To enter, leave a comment.
For additional entries:
1. Follow this blog (click follow on the right) and leave a comment letting me know you follow
2. Link your blog or a Tweet or a Facebook status (or all three) to this post and leave a comment for each that you do.

Comments will close on my 29th birthday, which is April 28th, and I'll announce a winner the next morning.

~Melody :-)

**Amazon did not contact me for this giveaway. They did not give me any compensation nor provide today's gift card. I'm providing out of our own budget and the kindness of my heart because I love ordering from Amazon myself.

***I think Amazon would be in business whether I promoted them on my blog or not. :-)

A Stop Traffick Fashion Giveaway!

My awesome in-real-life friend, Emily, had an awesome idea a couple of years ago to start a boutique that would sell cute and trendy accessories made by survivors of human trafficking. Making the products and selling them through Emily's online boutique, Stop Traffick Fashion, provides an income for the survivors.

To celebrate the 2-year anniversary of the Stop Traffick Fashion blog, which keeps readers up to date on efforts to stop human trafficking, she's having a giveaway. You can get all of the details by clicking here. And be sure to stop by her online boutique and buy some cool accessories.

~Melody :-)

Winner!!!!

Congratulations "Jewels of Hope"! You were commenter #5 and our winner! A copy of Velvet Elvis will be mailed to you tomorrow (provided you get your address to us). Enjoy the book!
This giveaway was so much fun! We might have to do another one this summer. I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle right now and am really enjoying it. Hmmm....we'll have to wait and see.

~Melody :-)

Summer Reading and a Giveaway!

COMMENTS CLOSED! CONTEST IS OVER.

I just finished book #3 for the summer while Cate was napping (and still is or I wouldn't be writing this). The book: Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I loved it!
Eric read this book last fall and couldn't stop raving about it. He wanted me to read it, but I was caught up in a few other books and just now got around to it.

Sidenote: Being married to an English teacher can be a challenge for him as usually I'm the one talking about books I think he would enjoy and not the other way around.

Anyway, Velvet Elvis is about the church. I know, scary word for some people. The thing is, I'm friends with Christians and atheists and a whole bunch of people that fall somewhere in between. Bell wants us to rethink our idea of church. I think a lot of us, Christian or not, have been "burned" or "turned off" by church at some point in our lives or another. But when we typically think of church, we think of a physical building...and that's not what the early church was. The early church was simply a community of believers in Christ who shared life with one another (okay, it's not completely that simple, but Bell uses this idea throughout his book).

You see, Bell argues that we can be close to God when we're experiencing things outside of a physical building. Really the "church" is anywhere that believers are to be found. It exists in community where truly both believers and nonbelievers can wrestle with faith and truth, build into one another, and experience life together.

I won't go on and on and on...though I could. You'll just have to read the book. And because Eric and I are both so much in love with this book, we're doing our first blog giveaway. Tonight we'll be heading out to one of our local bookstores and buying another copy of this book (ours is all marked up and highlighted anyway). This copy will be given to one random person who leaves a comment on this post sometime between now and tomorrow evening (we're going to mail the book out on Saturday so you'll have it next week).

According to our stat counter on site meter, a decent amount of people visit our site to make this worth our while. And hey, if only one person participates, then they're the big winner.

So all you have to do is leave a comment in the comment field of this post for a chance to win. Make sure that you include an email address in your comment so that I can get a hold of you to mail you the book. And I know that our blog posts automatically import to both of our Facebook profiles, so if you're reading this on Facebook, you need to actually come to our blog (http://growingupriggs.blogspot.com) and leave a comment (which can be as simple as saying "hi" in the comment field). We'll draw numbers from a hat or use an online random number generator to pick the winner sometime tomorrow night.

Whatever your thoughts on faith or Christianity, I think you should give the book a chance. And even if we know you, you can still win. This giveaway is open to anyone. :-)

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes. Cate is waking up and we're off to the library. She's earned another prize (hopefully she won't pick a third monkey cup) and mommy has finally earned hers too (my coupon for the library book sale...woo hoo!!).

~Melody :-)

"It is possible for music to be labeled Christian and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a "Christian" movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft. Just because it is a Christian book by a Christian author and it was purchased in a Christian bookstore doesn't mean it is all true or good or beautiful. A Christian political group puts me in an awkward position: What if I disagree with them? Am I less of a Christian? What if I am convinced the "Christian" thing to do is to vote the exact opposite? Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective."

"It is impossible for a Christian to have a secular job. If you follow Jesus and you are doing what you do in his name, then it is no longer secular work; it's sacred. You are there; God is there. The difference is our awareness."

"Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up on his dream for the world."

"The church doesn't exist for itself; it exists to serve the world. It is not ultimately about the church; it's about all the people God wants to bless through the church."

"Time spent around the table with each other is time spent with God."