Valentine and 200th Post Giveaway

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Can you guess what's in this pretty box below? I don't think so, nor would I expect you to. In honor of Valentine's Day and my 200th post, I'm having a giveaway. The pretty box is packed full of goodies for someone to enjoy. I'm having the giveaway early so that the lucky winner will get their prize in time for Valentine's Day. Please add my Valentine Giveaway graphic to your blog and inform others so we will have lots of participants.

Rules: I'm hoping that this giveaway will help bring some new blogging friends into our lives, so you must have a blog and leave a comment to enter the giveaway. If you win, I will need your shipping address immediately so I can get the parcel out to you in time for Valentine's Day.


The deadline for entering the contest is Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at midnight my time, which is EST. Thank you for your participation. Now let's have some fun. ~Blessings, Mary~

T-Shirt Contest and Other News

Denise from Samaritan Women has started a new blog, Sew the Word and she's having a T-Shirt contest. This looks like it is going to be FUN, FUN, FUN. Denise has a little shop at her home and she designs all kinds of wonderful things. Here is an example of the T-Shirt.

And this is what Denise has to say about the contest:

THIS IS JUST TO GET YOUR JUICES FLOWING IT IS NOT THE DESIGN...............
I have wanted to do this for a while and Sharon over at Sit With Me A While has encouraged me to jump in there and do it sooooooooooooo here is the deal...
.........I do graphic design and screen print and I want to design a tee shirt for the all the ladies here in the blog world.. I want you ladies out there and men if they are around to submit the caption of the shirt.......... Now I have a little shirt at the top of this post and it is just to get your juices flowing...... A Caption ..... Like Blogger Buddies--- Ladies of the Blog--- Friends of Cyber..... ok you get the idea... There are some very very clever ladies out there and I know that one of you can come up with something sooooooooo special. After we close the contest I will post all the ideas and we will vote on them.........
.... The clever lady that submits the winning caption will win a free shirt... Then the shirts will be on sale on my blog and I promise that they will be at a very good price..... I want all the ladies and men to have a shirt....... How much fun is this going to be....
The shirts will not be limited to one color but to several colors that will suit the design..... I will use heavy weight cotton Tee's and I will find some V neck Tee's for the ladies that do not like the conventional Tee...... I have been screenprinting since 1988 and I will do quality work...
..........I am going to show some of my work on the side bar so that you can see that I can do a good job with this project..
but I need your help...... come up with a very catchy caption and I will design the shirt ...... I will keep this open till 12 noon on Valentine's Day.. that will give us pleanty of time to get the word out .............. Put on your thinking cap..............
Denise is a very talented woman and this is a wonderful idea, so head on over to Sew the Word and take part in the contest.

In other news, it has been snowing here all night and all day. We don't have a lot of accumulation but there were whiteouts this morning. My SIL started off for the 1.5 hour drive to work and a half hour into his trip, turned around and came home because of the whiteouts. The roads were really slippery this morning as well, though they are pretty much clear now. The salters and sanders worked all night to get the roads in decent shape for the commute to work this morning and the city streets weren't too bad. It's the country roads, which my SIL travels that were bad.

Daughter, Michelle, is having some pain from her cyst and she believes that it's growing. She has had a tough month with having a tooth removed, the news of her surgery and now pain. Please keep her in your prayers.

Not much else going on around here. The usual. I didn't get my laundry done yesterday, so am doing it today. I wanted to go to the scrapbooking store to see what I could find for the boys' scrapbooks that I got them at Animal Kingdom. If any of my readers or friends are experienced scrapbookers, any ideas or advice would be very welcome. This is my first attempt and I want the scrapbooks to be perfect. If I get them done in time, I plan to give them to the boys for Easter. If not, I will either give them to them for their birthdays or wait until next Christmas.

I hope each of you have a wonderful day. I enjoy reading your comments and visiting your blogs, but am still not fully caught up since vacation. Thank you all for visiting me and commenting. I value your friendship.

If you haven't entered my giveaway, be sure to do so today. Enteries will be closed at midnight tonight EST. The winner will be announced on tomorrow's post. Good luck to everyone that enters. I wish you could all win, but unfortunately there can be only one winner.

~Blessings, Mary

Florida Trip Day 7 January 2/08

I woke up at 6:30am, got ready and headed down to the lobby. I wanted to check on all of my blogging friends and I figured I would be able to get on the free computer at that time of the morning. I was right.

By the time the boys got up and we had breakfast, time was marching on. We headed to Disney to take in a day at the Magic Kingdom. We wore our winter coats. It was cold, even by our standards -48 degrees F. Not exactly what you'd expect in Florida. People had on gloves, hats, scarves and winter coats. It didn't help any that there was a brisk wind.

The entrance to Disney World

We parked in Sleepy and were close enough to walk to the park gates. The tram was just heading out when we got there.Just inside the gates, who did we bump into but Mary Poppins.

The train station from outside the park.

Main Street USA all decked out for Christmas

And another of Main Street USA. Beautiful decorations.
Cinderella's CastleCharacters from Song of the South just outside Splash Mountain.

I couldn't imagine that the boys wanted to go on Splash Mountain when it was so cold and windy, but they did. And they did get a little wet. They asked to go again, but I said no. I was afraid they would get sick. They did go on Big Thunder Mountain. We checked out the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean that we'd missed three years ago, but the lines were 2 hours long. So that was out!

It was so cold that we spent most of our time buying hot drinks and looking in souvenir shops to get warm. We saw the Tiki Show, which is talking and singing animated birds and the boys and Grandpa climbed up the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House.

We headed for the souvenir shops again and Jordan bought himself a Mickey Mouse watch as a souvenir. Good choice. Brandon wanted to wait. He's more careful with his money and wants to look around before he chooses. Another good choice.

We left the park around 6:30. It was just too darn cold to do anything. Even shutterbug Grandma behaved herself and didn't take many photos that day. We certainly weren't going to stay for the fireworks.

We had dinner and when we got back to the hotel, Dwight and the boys went swimming. After that I tucked them in bed and before long we were fast asleep. A great end to a very cold day.

Note: I'm not going to post anything more about our Florida trip for a few days. Not sure what exactly I'll be posting, but I'll think of something. I'll continue with Florida photos and stories later in the week.~Blessings, Mary~

Here's to the Long Distance Truckers - Trucker Saves Lives in Toronto, Ontario

It is cold here and I mean really cold. The wind is blowing at 37 km per hour, which almost 23 miles per hour and this makes it feel much colder. It was a good day to stay inside where it was cozy and warm and that's exactly what I did.

It is -12 Celcius, which is 10.4 Fahrenheit, but with the windchill factor it feels like -22, which is 7.6 Fahrenheit. It's been colder, I know, but just coming back from 70 degree Fahrenheit weather last week when we were in Florida makes it feel like 40 below.

On tonight's news forecast out of Toronto, they reported that there had been a 100 car plus pile up on the 400 highway. This is north of Toronto and they interviewed some of the people who were involved. They said they were driving south when suddenly out of nowhere, there was a whiteout. A whiteout, for those who don't know, is when the wind blows snow and causes the visibility to drop to zero. I've experienced my share of whiteouts and they're not pretty. The road was also icy, so other vehicles skidded out of control.

Many cars stopped on the road, which is something you don't do on the 400. That would be akin to stopping in the middle of Interstate 75. Someone's going to hit you in the rear end and that is exactly what happened. Then there was a chain reaction and soon there was over 100 cars involved.

There was a hero in all of this. A long distance trucker who was on his way to Wisconsin saw that he was going to hit several cars that had crashed into one another, so he, being a wise and brave soul, turned his rig off the road and drove into some bushes. If he had hit those cars, someone would have been killed. Instead, he put his life on the line and drove off the road. Luckily, he nor his truck were hurt. Someone was watching over him today.

So, here's to the long distance truckers who pride themselves on driving their big rigs safely and doing all they can to spare lives when they're in a dangerous situation. I pray that angels watch over this man as he and his big rig makes their way toward their destination of Wisconsin.