Contest round-up #18 - updated

Here is this week's contest round-up! :) Edited to add a few new ones - you'll see them in blue...

Here's a big one! You could win an iPhone from I make Money On Facebook! What an awesome giveaway - hurry over because you only have until January 10th to enter!

Bloggy Giveaways is back after a holiday break and has several great giveaways running right now. You could win one of four prizes from Sarah and Abraham, including one set of 15 personalized gift tags, one set of 18 blank gift tags, one personalized 8" x 8" or 8" x 10" illustration, or one personalized 5" x 7" illustration. Enter by January 7th for you chance at one of these. You could also win a $50 gift certificate to KLEAN Bath and Body (enter by January 8th), or one of 3 planners from Bizzimom (enter by January 9th).

Also - there's another edition of Shannon's giveaway carnival coming soon - she's going to run it once each quarter. The next mass giveaway is scheduled to run from January 28 - February 1.

At 5 Minutes For Mom right now the New Habits in the New Year giveaways are going strong. There are many great prizes you could win, including a Busy Body Book Family Planner, three Minusbags totes, a Family Dinner Box of Questions for 2 winners, how to enter 2 contests at Floridajuice.com, and five copies of the book Growing Friendships. You have until January 8th to enter all of these.

Check out An Island Life and An Island Review for Kailani's giveaways this week! You could win a copy of the book The Hawaiian House Now (enter by January 8th). Or you could win one of five desktop calendars from momAgenda (no deadline given).

Tangled and True is ringing in the New Year by having a giveaway a day for 2 full weeks! There is one week left, and each giveaway is only open for one day, so so head over every day next week (January 7th - 11th) to check out what you can win!

Here's a chance to win free movies for a year! Head over to Table for Five and see how you could win a year’s supply of Orville Redenbacher’s Natural Popcorn AND a 12 month subscription to Netflix! But hurry - you only have until today (January 5th) to enter.

Check out superdumb supervillian to find out how to win a necklace of your choice from i love blocks! You have until January 6th to enter.

Over at Mommy Cracked you could win a framed print from Olive Kids. Enter by January 7th for your chance to win!

A couple of weeks ago, I won an amazing Land's End diaper bag from Musings of a Housewife. If you'd like to win one too, there are a couple of sites that are also giving them away. First, check out Marketing Mommy - she has 2 'girlish' (floral) ones and 2 'boyish' (frogs) ones, so you have 4 chances to win (enter by January 8th). You can also head over to The FlipFlop Mamma before January 9th for another 4 chances to win (she also has 2 'girl' and 2 'boy' bags to giveaway). And MumsTheWurd! also has Land's End diaper bags to give away as well - 3 'girl' and 2 'boy' ones this time. Enter by 9:00 pm CST on January 14th for this one! Ok, just found about yet another opportunity to win one of 5 (3 'girl' and 2 'boy') of these great Land's End diaper bags, over at Design Mom, and you only have until 2:30 pm EST on January 11th to enter!

If you know a little girl in need of a beautiful tutu, check out the contest over at Sweet Life in the Valley - she's giving away a custom fit ocean blue & green tutu from Princess Tots! You have until midnight on January 10th to enter.

Over at Organising Queen you could win a $25 gift certificate to Stacks and Stacks! And don't forget to check out her new Organise your Home e-course - you could have an organized home in just 12 weeks! The contest is open until January 11th.

Ordinary Days is looking for your best 'dirt' to share with the blogosphere! She'll be judging entries in 3 categories: best picture, funniest confession and TMI. And the winners will receive sponges, each with a $15 Target gift card attached, so starting thinking now - your post has to be entered by January 11th (disregard the 9th on the button above).

Are We There Yet is giving away a free item from the Under My Umbrella Etsy shop! There are lots of fun wooden designs to choose from, so head over to check them out and enter before January 12th.

Kim the owner of thebabymarketplace.com - a great online spot for Baby Clothing, Shoes, Toys, Gifts and Cloth Diapers is hosting the January Gift Card Give-Away @ mommyknows.com go on over and comment and be entered to Win one of two $100 Gift Cards!

It's time for the January Write-Away Contest over at Scribbit! This month's topic is "The Great Escape", so start thinking of your ideas now! You have until January 20th to enter, and you could win a copy of The Double Musky Cookbook, the official cookbook for Alaska's famous Double Musky restaurant.

Sherry at Everything Moms is having her January Giveaway - you could win a copy of the book," The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen" by Syrie James. Enter before January 25th for your chance to win!

The Kids Birthday Fun Review is giving away a $20 gift certificate from Oriental Trading Company, Inc. and a $10 gift certificate to Amazon.com. The more comments you leave over there, the more entries you receive - all the way through January!

A Cowboy’s Wife is having a contest on her food blog! You can win a Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer and she’ll ship anywhere so everyone is eligible! You have until January 31st to enter.

Are you thinking of starting a new blog, or changing either to a different blogging platform or a new template or design? If so, check out The Big Bloggy Move, hosted by After a cup of coffee and SortaCrunchy. As part of the move, they're having some giveaways:

"To win a complete blog design, click here. To win a custom header click here! Don't forget to visit Megan for the chance to win a custom Blogger design. Enter all three if you'd like. Contest closes Jan 6th and the winners will be announced Jan 7th."

It's time for HGTV's annual Dream Home giveaway. This year's home looks incredible and is located in a real paradise, The Shore at Islamorada, in the Florida keys. You can enter every day through February 19th and a winner will be revealed live on March 16th at 9:00 pm ET.

As usual, if you know of a contest or giveaway that I missed, just e-mail me or leave a comment below and I'll add it in! Enjoy and good luck! :)

Fun Friday Awards

I am very glad that this first week back from vacation has been a short one. Having to get myself and the girls up at 6:30am again has proven to be a struggle over the past several days (just ask my frustrated hubby), as has trying to get all of us out of the house on time. Abby and Hannah go back to school next week and all of our evening activities start back up then as well though, so I am happy to be jumping back into the 'swing' of things relatively slowly. And very happy that it's Friday and another two days off are ahead of me before I have to deal with all of the craziness again. :)

I need to catch back up (again!) on some bloggy housekeeping items and Fridays always seem to be such a good time for that. I have a few awards to acknowledge - and some tags as well, but I'll probably do those in separate posts so that this one doesn't get way too long.

Isn't this a very cool idea for an award! I received the "I Less-than-three your Blog!" award from Karen at Pediascribe a little while ago. She said,

"One more thing….Deb at Mom of 3 Girls….I less-than-three your blog too, but you just posted way too much for me to keep up with! Girl, I’m up to 39 unread posts from you! So you can accept this award from me even though you probably thought I stopped reading two weeks ago! I do less-than-three your blog!!"

LOL, I think I did go a little post crazy back in December - maybe the freedom of not having to post every day after NaBloPoMo ended caused me to create what I will admit was probably an overabundance of wordiness. Oops. Hopefully I can keep a somewhat steadier pace here in 2008 and will try to post on a regular basis without overwhelming anyone. :)

Anyway, thank you Karen - it means a lot to me that you even tried to keep up, especially considering how crazy busy your life has been. I 'less-than-three' your blog right back!

I'd like to pass this award along as well to a few new (to me anyway) blogs that I've discovered recently - And Babies Make Six, From Talbots to Target, and Overstuffed.

Over at The Life of a School Bus Driver! I received a wonderful Christmas present - I was her 'Blogger of the Day' on December 25th. What an honor - and thank you so much! :)

Wow, this was a surprise - I discovered that I was included in 1 Million Love Messages' list of 2007 inspiring blogs. Thank you so much! Here is the full list of all 200 awardees:

1-Cotojo 2-Lisa -Deborah 4-Pearl 5-Sandy 6-Jesse 7-Chris 8-Santa 9-BlogElf 10-Jackie 11-Marzie 12-Adrian 13- 15-NAFASG 14-PolliwogFrog 15-Sue 16-Kathy 17-Maartje 18-Morgan 19-Greg 20-MaryAnn 21-Eric 22-Hawk 23-Carol 24-Diane 25-EvNucci 26-Surjit 27-Kuanyin 28-ChristyZ 29-Sandee 30-Robin 31-Hanna 32-Maunie 33-Kim 34-Bobby 35-Billy 36-David 37-Jennifer 38-Aryst 39-Winston 40-Christy 41-LilyRuth 42-Jess 43-Rudy 44-Lynda 45-Lili 46-SandyG 47-Ange 48-BlackWyrm 49-Vincent 50-Colin&Anne 51-BlandlyUrbane 52-Marco 53-Mihaela 54-John 55-Aziz 56-Ugyen 57-Lansy 58-Alex 59-Victors 60-Nostalgia 61-Franco 62-Herby 63-Rubie 64-Santaram&BVK 65-Jean-David 66-Namgay 67-Catherine 68-Yunita 69-PJLighthouse 70-Lorimer 71-DreamCatcher 72-Fred 73-Anja 74-MariaLourdes 75-JonB 76-Aayush 77-Denise 78-Dharmendra 79-BrentD 80-Jerry&Daryl 81-BrianB 82-Calvin 83-Pieter 84-Jessica 85-Taflas 86-Alex 87-Norie 88-Justin 89-Ashish 90-David 91-Thanate 92-Kevin 93-Etienne 94-Gerbera 95-Christina 96-AbhishekD 97-Uprai 98-TexasJam 99-Azmiel 100-Daniel 101-Kristin 102-Luwis 103-Adavait 104-NowSourcing 105-BuenAmigo 106-Kiran 107-Peterson 108-Lynn 109-Chessnoid 110-LuisHipolito 111-Joliveira 112-Jennifer&Pete 113-TeamDog 114-Megan 115-Mark 116-Raivyn 117-Mel 118-Andrea 119-Jen 120-Mimi 121-Bobo 122-Lynda 123-DreadBob 124-Julie 125-RennyBA 126-Bobbarama 127-Becky 128-Magdalena 129-Michelle 130-Stacie 131-ClimateTeam 132-CashMarble 133-OilOffShore 134-Piper 135-Barbara 136-Ann 137-Deb 138-Headbanger 139-Danny 140-Morina 141-Aira 142-Jericho 143-Jeane Michelle 144-Breigh 145-SecretMind 146-Awannabe 147-Gerri 148-Colin 149-eRocker 150-Kitty 151-Mariuca 152-Donna 153-Babyshern 154-Sanni 155-SatoNa 156-Cyn 157-Nessa 158-Steve 159-Francisco 160-Em 161-Christo 162-Riccardo 163-Naren 164-Denise 165-KingTang 166-El 167-Francesco 168-Bella 169-Chris 170-Fe 171-Jim&Emma 172-Incinq 173-Cristian 174-Matson 175-Kiwipulse 176-Sean 177-Anne 178-Xerendipity 179-Omega 180-Debra 181-SJ 182-Joseph 183-Nikki 184-Pocholo 185-BloggerNoob 186-Filot 187-Aseem 188-Mark 189-Antonio 190-Henry 191-Jamiz 192-Tamsyn 193-EverydayWeekender 194-JustMe 195-Brent 196-Ink 197-Alan 198-Debbie 199- BlueRibbonBloggers 200- Me

I also received an award from (and created by) El Gigante Verdoso - the 'You Rock My Socks' award, which was given to mostly the same list as the one above, so I won't include it here. Thank you!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Aloha Friday #15

It's Friday again! My favorite day of the week. Especially a short work week like this one has been. :)

Here's my question for this week's Aloha Friday:

What is your child's (or children's) favorite gift that he/she/they received over the holidays this year?

My kids got way too much this year, as usual. But they each do have a clear favorite or two. Abby loves her kitty that moves and makes real meowing noises. Hannah was thrilled to receive her Barbie as the Island Princess doll that she'd wanted, and she also loves her puppy that grows and knows her (and its) name. Becca has a lot of favorites, but has played the most with her magnetic fridge farm matching toy and her stuffed Backyardigan friends (she already had Uniqua, Pablo and Tyrone but got Tasha and Austin for Christmas), of course. She sleeps with them every night and carries the whole crew out into the living room with her as soon as she gets up in the morning.

Oh yes, and all 3 girls got Webkinz pets from our friends Carlos and Cheryl - Abby and Hannah have been inseparable from their black kitty and pink poodle (one guess which animal goes with which girl, LOL), but Becca so far has been completely unimpressed with her lion. We have yet to do much with the whole online part of it, other than going in and getting it set up for the bigger girls, but it'll be fun to explore and see everything they can do.

Be sure to check out An Island Life for other fun Aloha Friday questions and to play along!

Ringing in the New Year with robots and rats...

Ok, so it's already the 3rd of January, and I'm just now getting around to posting about how our New Year's Eve went. I can see that 2008 is starting out about just the same as 2007 ended...  :)

For the past few years we've gotten together with my friend Kristi, her hubby Steve and their boys and had a small party for the kids. Two years ago this involved a chocolate fountain - fun, but messy and only held the kids' interest for about 10 minutes. Last year's event included noisemakers - for as long as we could stand them.  I'm sure Kristi's neighbors were probably wondering who was making all of the racket at 9:00 pm - we moved 'midnight' up a bit so that the kids would still get to bed at a decent hour.

This year, Kristi decided to attend the kids-oriented party at our local children's museum. This is something we've thought about doing before, but the tickets seem to sell out weeks before we're starting to think of New Year's Eve plans. Not so this year - we were prepared! But I thought about it and decided that this might just be too much for my kids this year - especially Becca. On to Plan B for us.

We've been trying to get together with our friends Carlos and Cheryl for months now - but the guys' work schedules make it difficult if not impossible to find a time that works for both families. We also live an hour away from each other, which makes visiting pretty much an all-day affair. Cheryl and I figured that New Year's Eve might work well for a get-together. Unfortunately though, Ron did have to work on New Year's Eve and didn't get home until 4:30pm. An extra hour drive after being in his work truck all day wasn't appealing - nor was the idea of driving home so late at night (he'd promised Abby and Hannah that they could stay up until midnight). So much for Plan B, on to Plan C. (Plan B was carried out the next day - we had a great visit with Carlos and Cheryl on New Year's Day instead)

It was strange to have no set plans on New Year's Eve. We sat around debating what to have for dinner (in our extremely grocery-challenged kitchen), and finally decided to use the gift cards that Ron's parents had given us for Christmas to go out. That plan worked great, except that I forget that the gift cards were in my purse, not the diaper bag (I thought they were in my wallet - they weren't), so we did end up paying for dinner ourselves - but hey, it gives us an excuse to go out another time as well.  :)  We had a nice, enjoyable dinner, then hit the video rental store on the way home.

We watched two movies - "Meet the Robinsons" and "Ratatouille" (thus the references in the title of this post!). The girls and I had seen Ratatouille the previous weekend, but Abby was begging to watch it again and Ron hadn't seen it yet. I spent the evening taking down our Christmas decorations while trying to stay out of the way of the television so everyone else could see.  The girls spent the evening like this:

So did the girls make it until midnight?

Abby did. She stayed awake through both movies (we stopped before Ratatouille ended though since it hadn't quite finished by midnight) and the ball dropping, and then promptly fell asleep in the recliner.  Hannah fell asleep on the couch around 11:00 pm.  Becca had been put to bed on time, but woke up at 11:30 pm so was half-asleep on my lap at midnight. I put her back in bed soon afterward and she slept for the rest of the night.

Ron saw a sum total of probably not more than 15 minutes of Ratatouille - he snored (loudly!) through most of it. He was awake at midnight and then was in bed and back asleep by 12:30am.

Me? I was up until 2:00 am, finishing up the Christmas decoration removal, and then doing a little blog reading and posting. But I got to sleep in the next morning, so it was all good.  :)

I think next year we'll try the party at the children's museum - Kristi said that it was probably the most fun that her kids had all year. And by next year, Becca will be almost three, so she'll be better able to handle it, especially since they also do 'midnight' at 9:00pm (which is how Kristi and I got the idea).

I mean, we 'only' have 362 days to get our plans in order, right?  :)

Seeing where your readers come from...

I've had several people ask in the comments of my Thursday Thirteen post today about how to find the search results that bring people to your blog.

There are a few different ways, but the way that I use is Google Analytics, which is a handy little tool that gives you a lot of different information about your users, where they come from, what sites are sending traffic to you, and which of your posts/pages are the most popular.

By the way, this is not an affiliate or paid post in any way - I just wanted to pass this information along since so many of you were interested! :)

It's very easy to set up Google Analytics - and Jordan over at MamaBlogga created a great guide that explains exactly how to do it. This is what I used when I set it up here. Once you have it configured so that it's obtaining the information from your site, you can create a lot of different reports, charts and maps to start analyzing it all. You can track information over different time periods, get averages, and look at your statistics in a lot of different ways.

I used the 'Keywords' report to find the search terms that I used in my T13 post. You can add this report to your Google Analytics dashboard very easily - Jordan's handy guide tells you exactly how. The keywords are words (or combinations of words) that people typed into the search bar in Google, that brought up results which included one (or more) of my blog post pages. For example, I wrote a post a while back on having had "Fifth Disease" and I see a lot of search results on my Keywords report from people who are searching for information about that disease.

The first thing that I did was to choose (in my Google Analytics dashboard) the time period that I wanted to see - I did my first 'Fun with Google search' post back in September, so this time I choose to see what people were searching for in October, November and December:

Then, I looked at the snapshot of the keyword report that appears on my dashboard:

Obviously, none of these are very interesting, and they're all pretty logical things to search on if you're looking specifically for my site. To see more keywords (and find the funny unique ones), you have to click on 'view report' and look at the full keyword report:

There's a few different things you can do from here. If you want to look for specific keywords, you can search using the 'Find Keyword' box on the bottom. Or, if you just want to scan through all of them, you can change the 'Show rows:' to something bigger than 10 or navigate through all of the pages using the little arrow buttons at the bottom right. I've got 784 unique keywords (or combinations) where someone searched and my site came up - from the time period that I selected earlier (October 1 through December 31). I just looked through them and chose the 13 that I thought were the most hilarious best.

So there you go! It's very easy to do and you can learn a lot about how people are finding or linking to your site, and where your visitors are coming from. Have fun with it! :)

Thursday Thirteen #22 - More fun with Google search

I did this back in September and thought it was a lot of fun, so I went searching through Google Analytics this week to see what fun new searches I could find.

By the way - I've had several people ask in the comments how to find search term keywords for their site, so I wrote a quick post on how I did it - you can find it here! :)

It's very interesting to see what terms people are searching on that bring them to my blog. Some are quite disturbing - just think of the words "three" and "girls" (and maybe throw "Mom" in there) and I'll just leave the rest to your imagination. It's completely mind-boggling how sick some people can be.

But here are 13 of the searches that are PG and quite interesting - at least I think so! :)

1. "pretend diapers" Well, it would be nice to just pretend to change diapers, but unfortunately they are all too real in my household, at least for now.
   


2. "'a is for alligator' song" Oh yes. Zoophonics. And now that song is stuck in my head - again. Thank you very much. (Not!)
   


3. "little bare feet" Definitely something I'm very fond of - they're just too cute!
   


4. "'mom of three' birth pain" Well, yes I would think that most moms of 3 are probably quite familiar with birth pain...
   
   
5. "3 girls and a puppy" Close! But no puppy. And don't even think about suggesting it. I have enough to deal with already, LOL.
   
   
6. "rash on face that looks like sunburn" First of all, the way this reads it sounds like the face looks like sunburn. Assuming that it's just faulty grammar, I still can't help, but if it looks like sunburn then my guess would be that it probably is!
   
   
7. "vomit splash blankie" Not a pleasant mental picture there, for sure, but one I'm unfortunately pretty familiar with - as is pretty much every parent, I would think.
   
   
8. "why aren't the leaves falling" Sorry, can't help you there! But for what it's worth, they didn't fall until way later than normal around here either.
   
   
9. "four year old girl temper tantrum middle child" You just summed up Hannah in 8 words, LOL. And if you find a cure for this, let me in on it, ok?
   
   
10. "am i a bad mom or am i just tired?" My vote would be just tired. At least I like to think that's the case over here.
    
    
11. "breast milking contest" Um, I really don't think I want to know...
    
    
12. "do girls enjoy pooping" Does anyone? LOL
    
    
13. "what's my dad's middle name" Are you really expecting Google to be able to answer that one? Because I sure can't!

And a bonus #14 - "sexy family girls mom & dad" Well, thank you very much! (blushing...) LOL

Links to other Thursday Thirteeners:

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Thank you to Write From Karen for the header graphic this week!

Two 'peas in a pod'

One of the reasons that I love getting together with my friend Mary is that we have a couple of girls who love to play together. Hannah and Emma are only 3 months apart in age, and it is so much fun to see what they come up with. Sometimes they play with Abby as well, sometimes (but not too often) with Emma's brother Matthew, but not usually with Becca, since Emma has a complete aversion to anything remotely resembling baby drool.

This is something she's going to need to get over since she'll be sharing her room with a new baby brother, oh pretty much any day now.

But, Hannah and Emma have been friends and had fun playing together since back in these days:

(Emma on left, Hannah on right)

And our trip this past weekend was no exception:

(Hannah on left, Emma on right)

They played with each other:

They ate with each other:

They rested with each other.

And with some company as well...

Abby got into the fun sometimes:

You'll notice Becca in the background of these...But don't worry - she was perfectly happy to play with lots of new toys all by herself.

Like her sippy cup and Emma's grabber toy thingy:

And chairs...

And Mary was happy to oblige her in a few games of 'Ring Around a Rosy' when the 'big' girls wouldn't.

All fall down! Well, except for the 8-months pregnant lady, that is... :)

2007 in Review

I saw this on An Island Life and thought it was interesting. Kailani shared her favorite and/or most popular posts for each month in 2007. Well, I started blogging in May but didn't start tracking any kind of statistics until July (not that I really had many readers before then anyway, LOL), so here are my most popular posts from July through December, not including meme or giveaway posts.

July - To My Mom

August - Fathers and Daughters

September - My two jobs

October - It's a Cyber Baby Shower!!

November - I am grateful for my children...

December - Not just another Friday

This was a lot of fun to go back and see - I'm looking forward to doing it again next year for a full 12 months worth! :)

And to pass the fun along, I'll tag Blog That Mommy, Believer in Balance, From Under the Clutter, LIVE! and In Color, and One Moms World.

Wordless Wednesday #25 - Now if she could only reach the cupboards...

Check out more Wordless Wednesday here and here!

Summing up my blogging year

I was tagged by Anna at Beth & Cory's Mom for a couple of fun meme's relating to the New Year, so here goes! :)

The first is to post the first sentence of the first post from every month of 2007. Well, I didn't start blogging until May, so here are my 8, in the form of one paragraph, as Anna did:

I'm writing this in the last 5 minutes before 5pm (oops), so it'll have to be short. Ok, well so a little bit of pet history here. Yes, the 4th hasn't even gotten here and yet I'm exhausted. Well, it's not quite Tuesday anymore, but this is the first chance I've had tonight to post, so I'm going to anyway. And we're off... Today is the big day! So I just realized that my 13th Thursday Thirteen post falls right after Halloween... Here it is, lucky contest round-up #13!

Well, I'm not sure if I learned anything profound from that, but it was fun to look back!

Here's the second meme:

~Start Copy ~

Rules :
1. Copy from "Start Copy" until "End of Copy".
2. Before "End of Copy", share your best memories of 2007 include your name and your blog URL.
3. Share this tag with your friends.

For me, the year 2007 had a lot of happiness (and hope for 2008). Happiness because i see my son, grow and grow day by day. I have a great husband. I met lots of new friends from around the world via blogging ^_^ - Juliana RW

The year 2007 has been a good year for me. Me and my husband had our 10th anniversary, my children are healthy, I got a new great-nephew, and I made a lot of new friends through blogging. ~ Mom Knows Everything

2007 has been an interesting year. My daughter got her driver's license. My son started high school. I can't believe how fast they are growing up! I have now been married to my wonderful husband for more than half of my life - as of 7/22/07. This year, through my blogs, I made a lot of new friends from all over the world. I am really enjoying getting to know them. ~ Anna - Beth & Cory's Mom

The thing that comes to mind about 2007 is how fast it flew by! My oldest started first grade, my middle daughter started 'real' school, and my youngest has turned from a baby into a stubborn, determined, adorable little toddler. I was hired in permanently to my job, and we kept afloat (mostly) with financial issues. I discovered blogging and started my blog in 2007 - and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting wonderful new people and blogs from all over the world. ~ Deb, Mom of 3 Girls

~ End of Copy ~

I'm not awake enough at the moment to tag anyone specifically, so if you'd like to do this one, feel free! :)