Yesterday evening, I was able to go to the big consignment sale pre-sale with a friend. Normally, you can’t go unless you’ve volunteered, but a volunteer can bring a friend and just pay $10. To me, it’s worth it not to have to get up early and hope I get some of the things I need. So here’s the deals, and completely worth the extra $10…

**Playpen-Graco basic playpen for $12! It looks great. The mat doesn’t even look stained. I’m keeping it downstairs and it will probably travel with us. We have an arm’s reach co-sleeper that I use for the newborn in our room, so this is great having one we can keep in the playroom. Josiah has enjoyed staying in one while we do some of school…it’s kind of his away time from everyone else.
**Red Ruby slippers for $5 that match Zoe’s Dorothy dress that I got a much smaller sale last week (the dress was $10 and is going for $30 on ebay).
**$1 sweaters/shirts for me…some cute maternity clothes
**A ton of $1 nice condition shirts for Ace and all of his pjs for $2 or less.
**Anne of Greene Gables, animated, on dvd for $4 (two separate videos)
**Windsuit for Ace from Children’s Place for $3! I kept checking it to see what was wrong with it. It’s very cute red, white, and blue.

Now the not so good deals…people had marked their completely used and stained blue jeans for boys for $6 and up. I even found a pair for $11! I also found a very cute but worn dress for Zoe to wear around the house and get dirty in…it was $8! I’m so cheap, but I can’t see paying that much for clothes, no matter who “made” them, when I can run to Wal-Mart and get pretty much the same thing in better condition!

Well, looks like Obama chose a suitable running mate. He’s so intelligent and knows his history so well, that he had to choose a running mate who was just as educated in the English language.

Click on over to the link to visit a fav site of mine, Literally, a Web Log to see how many times Biden used the word “literally.”

My favorite statement was that he was:

“He will have such an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America, but literally, literally to change the direction of the world.”

That is something I thought only God could do, but hey, some people believe that the president is God, go figure! Maybe I should change my vote?!

I’m giving everyone until Friday to vote on who they think my hiding child was.

Our favorite to watch: Michael Phelps and the swimming. Very fun and interesting by far! Track is really my favorite but it hasn’t started yet.

Four (okay five) words for the women’s volleyball “uniforms”: Sand in your pants! Owww!

Mark just informed me that for two hours during the Opening Ceremonies, one of the screens (scrims) around the arena had the “Windows blue screen of death” on it because one of their Windows operations wouldn’t work (so it went blank…get it…it took me a second too). Very funny!

Just read today that the cute little girl who “sang” during the opening ceremonies was lip syncing because the girl with the beautiful voice was not deemed “pretty” enough. I saw a picture and thought she was really cute. She was 6 or 7 years old, so it’s not like she’s going to look like she’s 20! Ughh. Standards for China are so messed up. Maybe that’s why there are so many little girls with fixable problems that are tossed aside. I need to get off that high horse. Sorry!

Oh, and I wanted to mention one to watch is Ryan Hall. He’s a marathon runner and a bold witness for Christ. We found him last Spring on GodTube. I believe his event won’t be until next Sunday (or Monday for them…not sure which). Watch for him if you can!

Here’s a clip from part of his story:

It’s a bad idea to allow three children under the age of 6 to play with moon sand in the house. It doesn’t matter how hot it is, moon sand is an OUTSIDE toy!

Oh, I just heard it say on the commercial to “bring the fun of the beach indoors.” Yeah, right. Repeat with me, moon sand is NOT an indoor toy and does NOT clean up easily (especially when it sticks to legs and other body parts…just like real sand).

Yep, that’s right, we counted 60 states in the Union! Hmm, I’ve lost ten of them somehow. Or maybe Alaska and Hawaii have now formed one state.

For even more fun…Apparently, Obama’s campaign wanted to use “Joshua Generation” as their faith based outreach. That plan got interrupted when they learned that Homeschool Legal Defense Association owned the rights to that term…oops. So, check out this blog to see some of the suggestions for a new name.

It’s late, we must be off to bed…but, we got really freaked out by watching The Visitation and are trying to find something goofy to take our minds off of it! Good movie, by the way, if you like scary movies (it’s a Christian movie, so no cussing, but lots of demon possession).

We should have a new Wal-Mart Supercenter within the next couple of days. Yes, we already have one but it’s a whole 10 minutes away! This one is only 5…at the most.

Yep, it’s amazing what I get excited about nowadays…a new Wal-Mart. I have no life 🙂

I’m changing my subscribing feed to Feed Burner. That means that if you typed in your email address into the Blogarithm thing on the right, you’ll need to click on the little orange thing above it to subscribe in a different thing (don’t you love my technical talk), I’ll wait a couple of weeks to take Blogarithm off. I think Feed Burner will be better at sending out updates.

Mark and I have had the opportunity to see a few movies over the past couple of weeks. We use a rental service that sends them and we can keep them and then return the when we’re done. This works great if you are like us, who sometimes don’t get to watch a movie the moment you check it out and if you don’t like going to video stores because of all the “junk” that’s on the shelves and your kids have to look at….okay, that’s another post.

Anyway, we saw two really good movies. One was Bella, created as an independant film. It recieved first place at the Toronto Film Festival which is a pretty great honor. The film is the first from a trio of men who felt God calling them to create positive movies in Hollywood. Boy, did they! Bella is their first film. The story was wonderful. Complete….amazing. The acting was even better than I expected. And the cinematogrophy was wonderful. Mark and I both enjoyed it. However, as a girl, I have to tell my other “girl” friends that you definitely need your hankie on this one. I was a blubbering mess by the end. While this film is excellently done, the message is what hits the hardest. It’s about life and how beautiful, fleeting, and delicate it is. Not only is this a pro-life movie (and that’s all I can say without giving too much away), it’s also pro-adoption (there’s another hint…now go rent it). Guess what else…there is no cussing, drugs, sex! Ahhh, a true family centered film. However, for some of the content (serious side) I would say it would be for older teen children…not younger ones. For a film shot in 23 days with hardly any budget…it’s comparative to its big Hollywood studio movies…if not better!

The other movie saw was from the new branch of Fox called Fox Faith. Fox Faith is responsible for bringing several other films to the big screen and DVD such as the Love’s series based on Janette Oke’s book…the awesome Amazing Grace, One Night with the King (pretty good too), Because of Winn-Dixie…okay you get the picture. Well, this past winter, they release a film in select theaters called The Ultimate Gift. I wanted to see it, but you know how it goes. So, we were able to rent it this past weekend. Oh my! This is an amazing film. It’s based on a book by Jim Stovall with the same title. And guess what?! No cussing, drugs, nudity. Again, it’s a hankie movie! But the story behind it is so beautiful. I highly recommend it. It was very well acted with James Garner (American Presidents fame and other old stuff that came out before I was born) and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) and other cast members that I can’t remember. The story is very endearing and encouraging.

I guess I’m just blown away by how well these films are. Neither had big budgets but they were able to come out with a great story, acting, and cinematogrophy without compromosing the values and beliefs that outline their faith. If you get a chance for a date night, or if you just want to see how God is using people of faith in Hollywood, check out these two films! The more we watch films like this the more films like this Hollywood will make (does that make any sense???).