I hope you had a good weekend. I found out some exciting news for Mom 2 Mom Connection blog readers yesterday — we’ve made it as a finalist in the 2005 Weblog Awards! Our category is “Best Blog Design.” So, if you like my design, could you please vote for me? You can VOTE HERE at the Weblog Awards site. The voting goes until December 15, and you’re allowed to vote once a day. I don’t know all that many people, so I’m hoping my husband will remember to vote for me — and then I might get at least two votes a day!

I also found out that Mind & Media is a finalist in the Best Business category — Stacy Harp says “we’re like a David against a lot of Goliaths.” Please cast your vote for Mind & Media because Stacy started this business to help Christian authors publicize their books in the blogosphere, and she’s doing a great job.

Other Mind & Media reviewers who are finalists: Matt Anderson’s Mere-Orthodoxy and Jay Adkins’ blog in the Best Religious Blog category; Catez Stevens in the Best Australia or New Zealand category; Charmaine Yoest in the Top 501-1000; and our favorite political blogger, La Shawn Barber in the Best Conservative Blog category. All of these blogs stand for something I believe in, so they’re getting my vote every day — and hopefully yours too!

I encourage you to browse through the other finalists. This international award is a great way to introduce blogs to new readers. There were over 3,000 nominations this year for 37 different categories, and a committee narrowed it down to 15 finalists. I’ve already discovered some wonderful blogs I’d never heard of! The awards are hosted by Kevin Aylward of Wizbang.

Onto other news…

This is the week — FOUR MORE DAYS until “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Have you gotten your tickets yet?

If there’s any way possible, I encourage you to listen to Focus on the Family’s broadcast TODAY, Entering the World of Narnia Through Film. I just heard it a few minutes ago, and it was fantastic. I can hardly type these words fast enough, I’m so excited to tell you about it!

Dr. James Dobson interviewed author Kurt Bruner, who wrote the book, Finding God in the Land of Narnia, as well as Michael Flaherty, who is the cofounder and president of Walden Media. I had never heard the background of how Walden Media was formed — but its sole purpose is to find great BOOKS to adapt them to film. Bob Waliszewski was also a guest on this program — he’s the senior director of Focus on the Family’s teen ministries’ dept. and reviews movies for Focus’ website, Plugged In, as well as on the radio.

I did not take notes because the radio broadcast came on at 5 am, and I listened to it in the dark — but everyone is saying this movie is going to be even more far-reaching than “The Passion.” They said Lewis has created a world in which he can share the principles of Christianity in a fresh way that captivates. It’s best to first experience Narnia through books, but Focus on the Family also produced a wonderful radio broadcast that you can listen to. One of the interviewees said they were listening to it on a long car trip, and during the Stone Table scene, his child shouted from that backseat, “THAT’S JUST LIKE JESUS!”

The big shocking news for me is that parents are cautioned it’s got some very scary scenes in it, and it’s not recommended for children under age nine. Nine! What are we going to do? We’ve all been talking about it so much — how can we NOT take our younger ones? Does anybody have any advice for me? They said it may cause nightmares — the White Witch is truly horrendous during the Stone Table scene.

So, please — if you have time — listen to the broadcast! And when you’re on Focus on the Family’s website — you can see lots of other related articles and links.

Here’s a good article from today’s LA Times about the Denver-based millionaire, Philip Anschutz, who’s backed this movie with half its $180 million budget. If all goes well at the box office, Prince Caspian is rumored to be next…in Dec. 2007.

The countdown to Narnia continues…

Yesterday, I noticed a link back to my site from Two Talent Living. So I went to that site and discovered the owner, Sallie Schaaf Borrink, is hosting the 2005 Blogs of Beauty Awards. Well, I was quite surprised to discover someone had nominated my blog for “Best Encourager.” Thank you to whoever nominated me — you really made my day!

When I have more time, I’d love to go visit many of the blogs that were nominated — the few that I’ve seen are wonderful. I was reading through the award categories and got to this one: “Best Quiet Spirit: Demonstrates a beautiful, quiet spirit through her blog entries.” And I thought — that’s got to be my sister-in-law. And there she is — she’s nominated in that category! I’m always wishing for a more quiet spirit — it’s nice to have a place to go to learn what one looks like.

Sallie has now chosen three finalists for each award, and you can vote on your favorites until 8 pm Tuesday, December 8. The contest is already a success in that it’s nice having all these blogs gathered in one spot — so we can “fellowship” in the blogosphere!

P.S. If you’re involved in the homeschooling community, you’ll want to check out the Homeschool Blogger Awards 2005. You can nominate from this site. Nominations are open until December 11, and voting begins December 12. The awards are hosted by Karen “Spunky” Braun (Spunky Homeschool), who is a homeschooling mom of six and a columnist for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

Are you a blogger? Are you thinking about starting a blog? Are you thinking about thinking about starting a blog?

I was afraid for months before I jumped into it. I didn’t know what I’d write about. I also thought it would only take me a couple of weeks before I’d run out of things to say. Then I went through a phase where I was emailing a bunch of people the same thing. Telling the same stories, but not wanting to send out a group email.

Finally, one day, I wrote a story about a tornado that ripped through our town, hopping over our house because of God’s mercy and my son’s prayers. I sent out a group email message, and it got forwarded around. Then I started getting emails back from people I didn’t even know — like my Dad’s accountant! Friends wrote back from as far away as Sweden and Japan. Someone told me how much my story had blessed them and made them want to give their kids a hug. I couldn’t believe it. I was hooked!

Paul Chaney feels the same way. I read his article this morning, “I love the blogosphere! It connects people at a personal level.” If I were looking to hire a marketing firm, his company, Radiant Marketing, would be at the top of my list because I know Paul’s a Christian and a great writer. I know he stays on top of his field, and he keeps a positive outlook day after day. I’ve never met him before, but I like reading his blog. (I especially enjoyed hearing about his recent trip to China!)

Here’s another article I found intriguing. It’s called “Do Not Fear the Blog” by Rebecca Goetz, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She’s a graduate student at Harvard who’s discovered to embrace instead of shun the blog. Yet, career counselors at her school are telling students that having a blog will harm their future academic careers. She disagrees.

I will say I try to keep my blog as professional as possible, and if I’m ever tempted to rant, I head to my ink pen and spiral notebook. I wonder about high schoolers and college students whose careers seem light years away. Are they being careful with their language?

Google is merciless. Something I said ten years ago still pops up under my name. I’d gotten a call from a reporter at my local newspaper one day asking how I felt about our dry weather and the potential that we wouldn’t have fireworks on the 4th of July. I made a brief comment, and THAT is still showing up faithfully under my name.

At least now Google has picked up Mom 2 Mom Connection first. I’m starting to see what God is doing with this. For now, it’s a lot of fun. If it ever stops being fun, well, I’ll do something else.

Thanks for popping in here to read. I hope you have a great weekend as we head into the Thanksgiving holidays.

P.S. I just read this from La Shawn Barber’s blog:

Are you going to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire today or early next week? If so, I’d love to hear an after-movie report and review, especially if you attended yesterday’s/today’s midnight viewing.

I will do a Goblet of Fire round-up post, so if you have a blog, send the link. If you don’t have a blog (Start one!), e-mail the report or post it in the comment section, and I will select the best reports and publish them on LBC.

I’m starting a blog for Christians who read fantasy fiction, and I’ll post reviews there, too.

Addendum: Any Narnia fans out there? I hadn’t read all of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, so I bought a bound volume of all seven yesterday at a bookstore in the airport. As you may know, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the second book in the series, hits theaters December 9.

I think I’ll send her my posts from this week about Christian fantasy. I heard recently that she gets over 50,000 visits a month to her blog.

If you’ve taken the time to enter my blog, you’ve chosen to hear what I have to say out of nearly 20 million other blogs. So, today I wanted to take a minute and tell you what I think about blogging in general, and pass along a few statistics I discovered recently.

This blog is not my online journal. I’ve got a spiral notebook for that, and it’s full of my private thoughts where I work through things on my mind, add in some scripture I’m reading, then try to turn my words into a prayer that God will please help me to see His perspective on things. It’s a struggle for me every day, to try to replace my way of thinking with His. (see Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 12:2)

I started this blog because I wanted to join the community of millions of other bloggers. It’s really quite amazing — that an ordinary person can have a spot in the blogosphere the same as a huge corporation or a powerful person. It’s made the world a much more honest place, in my opinion. If a company promises something in its advertising, then doesn’t deliver on that promise, people can talk about it online. I’m much more likely to believe a person who actually used or owns a product than the company itself, which must make a profit in order to survive.

For me, it’s also a chance to get a word in edgewise! I’m usually surrounded by kids, a position I love to be in, yet I tend to small-talk and chit-chat and avoid topics that require concentration. In the past several months, two of my brothers-in-law and a sister-in-law have also started blogging. It’s been so fun to get to know them on a deeper level that involves writing!

For example, I’ve known one brother-in-law for over 20 years, but I didn’t know he absolutely loves Walden. He shared with us recently: “Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is best read yearly. Always consult before buying property or a house, and before starting a new job.” Interesting. I haven’t read it since high school. Maybe I should.

According to Technorati, which tracks nearly 20 million blogs and over a billion links every day, the most-discussed news story right now is Time Magazine’s List of the Top 100 English Language Novels Since 1923. You can read the list, then also read how people react to it. At the Technorati home page, you can also see what the most popular movies, books, and blogs are — isn’t that interesting? What if we had a record of what people were talking about a century ago?

Technorati also posted this recently:

• As of October 2005, Technorati is now tracking 19.8 million weblogs.

• The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months.

• The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup.

• About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day.

• About a new weblog is created each second.

• 2% – 8% of new weblogs per day are fake or spam weblogs.

• Between 700,000 and 1.3 million posts are made each day.

• About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second.

You can read the whole article here.

So, I think blogging will stick around for a while.

How about you? Have you started blogging yet?