The first day of kindergarten here was fabulous! The school is great, the teacher is precious, and the other classmates provided my oldest with lots of ideas for chatter this afternoon with her sisters. Win, win!!



Speaking of winning... the winner of the Staples $25 gift card (after a quick coin toss) was from comment number 2. So MimiB please shoot me an email with your mailing address and I will get your card right out to you. Thanks!

STAPLES Back to School

It is almost back to school time here.... or should I say Off to School for the first time?!? We'll officially have a Kindergartner in the house next week, and school shopping has been high on our list of things to do lately.

Somewhere amidst all our shopping and planning and paper signing, Staples sent us some really cool back to school products for review.

Some of our favorites:

I personally loved all the goodies from the DoSomething.org line of products. I think it is outstanding that as a company Staples donated over $125K to start off their Do Something 101 Back to School supply drive!

The new kindergartner of the house loved setting up her own personal desk in her room with the Glam Rocks Stapler, Pen, and Calculator. She is all about staplers these days, and the Go Glam products fit her personality to a T.

The best part: Staples has offered a $25 Gift Card to one of my readers to help with back to school shopping. For my local readers, I know there isn't a Staples within 35 miles of here, but their website is completely user friendly and really makes you want to say "that was easy" about shopping there.

To enter to win simply leave a comment here letting me know if school's in yet where you live or not... and any advice you may have about first day jitters for the mommy is also greatly appreciated! Contest will end on Monday, Aug. 23rd at noon.

This review was written as part of Staples Back to School Blogger Tour. Staples provided me with a goodie bag of items for review and the $25 Gift Card to give away to one of you. As always the opinions given are my very own.

Rayovac Powers Your Summer!

Whoa, it's been a v ery long time since I've posted over here! Things have been zooming along at break neck speed lately, but I had to stop and take a minute to share the news about Rayovac's Power Your Summer Promotion.

Simply go to Rayovac Powers Your Summer and enter to win daily prizes ranging from Bikes, Camping Supplies, Cameras, and a Summer Supply of Rayovac Batteries!! So easy!!! Even though our summers are primarily KID powered, the winters would get pretty long without our games... many of which require batteries.

If you use Twitter, then be sure to check out their Twitter event on June 30th as well.


Discolsure: The first 99 bloggers to promote the Rayovac Powers Your Summer Event won a prize packaage from Rayovac.

FedEx Out of Office Blog

This time of year while we're trapped in the house for days due to the cold weather, I'm on the lookout for crafts and project ideas to keep the girls busy. I've found a couple of great new ideas over at the Out of Office blog from FedEx Office. It offers ideas for projects, parties, and presents year round!

For example, the Four Silly Sisters will soon be making winter place mats for our kitchen table, inspired by a post from the Out of Office blog. Our biggest difficulty will be 40 miles between us and the nearest FedEx Office store.

In addition to the craft ideas, I've found many of the posts on the Out of Office blog to be useful for home organization and gift ideas as well. They've got everything from chore charts to ways to re purpose your children's art work..... boy am I going to need these in the near future!?! I can't even imagine the volume of school work that is going to come home once the trio enter "big school".

I'm not a crafty person at all, and I have a house full of little people who are craft lovers. Therefore, I've enjoyed perusing this new site for ideas, and I look forward to using these ideas as inspiration for beating a bit of winter boredom.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of FedEx Office. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

ABC Bible Verse Songs for Kids- Review

The Four Silly Sisters all love to perform. They love to sing, and dance, and grab an audience. So it was with great pleasure that we received a copy of Ms. Candace's ABC Bible Memory Verse Songs from her Sonbeams site. What better way to hide God's word in their little hearts than by setting those words to music. I seldom forget the words to songs once I have learned them. I can still remember all the songs from the musicals I performed in as a child, and considering how terrible my memory is these days, it must be the music that is keeping all those words locked in up there!

Ms. Candace has done a great job of selecting the verses to correspond with each letter of the alphabet and putting it all to music. The girls especially enjoy the upbeat tempo songs. I think this will be a great tool to use for helping the girls to memorize Bible verses. It will also be handy to keep in the car so that I can listen along with them and memorize a few more verses myself, although the memorization doesn't come quite as easily as it once did! I plan to share our copy with the girls' Sunday school teachers at church as well to see if they would be interested in using it for Scripture memorization.

You can hear samples of the songs by clicking here and scrolling down to ABC Memory Verse Songs... I think it may say there that it is only available as a download, but the CD is now available.

Sonbeams is having a sale and from now until Monday November 30th you can buy these CDs with shipping for only $10. That doesn't leave much time, but if you are interested pop on over there and check out the ABC Bible Verse CD's even if you don't get to it by Monday because they are still reasonably priced at $13.95.

Thank you Ms. Candace for the opportunity to review this product. I look forward to enjoying the fruits it will provide... my sweet children's voices singing Bible verses!!

Click here to go to Sonbeams website!



Disclosure: I was given a copy of the music for this review and am using affiliate links in this post.

Sesame Street K'NEX Review and Contest

The Four Silly Sisters all really love the K'NEX Sesame Street building sets. The folks at Team Mom sent us the Police Station to review, and it is a big hit.

As a mom, I love that the K'NEX sets promote imaginative play. There are lots of options so they can build and rebuild and rebuild. I just love that a good building set utilizes many important skills and encourages thinking and problem solving while also providing hours of enjoyment!

The girls all like to take turns putting the things together in their own ways and then discussing their creations with each other.

These building toys are also very durable and good quality. We have a couple of sets that we purchased and were given for reviews last year around Christmas time, and after a year of hard play they are none the worse for wear.

We very much enjoy the K'NEX Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection building set that we received from Team Mom for this review, and we are likely to purchase more in the future.

You can find the K'NEX Sesame Street Neighborhood Collection building sets, of which there are 4, on their web site, as well as Target, Walmart, and Toys "R" Us stores.

Additionally, K'NEX is sponsoring a Video Contest in which you have the chance to win $1,000 worth of K'NEX Building Sets. See the official rules for details on how to enter located on their web site.

Book Tour: Lost Mission by Athol Dickson

First the scoop from the back cover.....about the book:
What haunting legacy awaits deep beneath the barrios and wealthy enclaves of Southern California?

A billionaire driven mad by grief.

A pastor in love with the wrong woman.

An illegal immigrant desperate to feed his family.

Only Lupe de la Garza can save them from the ancient evil lurking in a lost mission's ruins, but it will take an act of faith beyond all human power.

An idyllic Spanish mission collapses in the eighteenth century atop the supernatural evidence of a shocking crime. Twelve generations later the ground is opened up, the forgotten ruins are disturbed, and rich and poor alike confront the onslaught of resurging hell on earth. Caught up in the catastrophe are...
· A humble shopkeeper compelled to leave her tiny village deep in Mexico to preach in America
· A minister wracked with guilt for loving the wrong woman
· An unimaginably wealthy man, blinded to the consequences of his grand plans
· A devoted father and husband driven to a horrible discovery that changes everything

Will the evil that destroyed the Misión de Santa Dolores rise to overwhelm them? Or will they beat back the terrible desires that led to the mission's good Franciscan founder's standing in the midst of flames ignited by his enemies and friends alike more than two centuries ago?

From the high Sierra Madre mountains to the harsh Sonoran desert, from the privileged world of millionaire moguls to the impoverished immigrants who serve them, Athol Dickson once again weaves a gripping story of suspense that spans centuries and cultures to explore the abiding possibility of miracles.

About the author:
Athol Dickson is an award-winning author of several novels. His Christy Award-winning novel River Rising was name one of the "Top Ten Christian Novel of 2006" by Booklist magazine. He lives in California with his wife. Find out more about Athol and his books by visiting his website.

My thoughts:

I thought this was a very good read. It wasn't one of those books that I just couldn't put down until closer to the end, but I still thought it moved quickly and once I neared the end I couldn't read fast enough.

While it was a bit confusing at first, I quickly came to enjoy the way the author paralleled the historical with the modern by flipping from one era to the other within each chapter.

I also really loved the fact that it wasn't tied up all nice, neat, every question answered, in a cute little bow at the end. It certainly makes you think about witnessing to others, greed, the effects of mega churches, immigration, and numerous other issues.

After reading this novel I will definitely check out his other books!

A Contest:

Tweet this and be entered to win signed copies of Athol’s award winning books:

Tweet 4 words that describe Athol Dickson’s #LostMission along with this link: http://tr.im/BPD1

Or

Athol Dickson’s redemptive tale #LostMission is a MUST read! Gripping story about mistakes and miracles! http://tr.im/BPD1

(To be clear – to be entered into the contest your tweet must have these 2 elements 1. Athol Dickson’s #LostMission 2. this link: http://tr.im/BPD1).

Thank you, LitFuse, for providing a copy of LostMission for me to review. You can find other reviews of Lost Mission on the blog tour here.