I’ve been noticing that my Travel category in this blog is a bit wimpy. I mostly focus here on books and parenting issues. But if you’re like me, blessed with little ones at home, you may have to do a lot of your adventure-seeking from your armchair (or should I say rocking chair? Or maybe I should even say laundry room, after seeing a picture of a mom tapping away on her laptop a la washing machine over at the recent contest on Mommy Net).

Did you know people all over the world are writing travel blogs? This technology did not EXIST when I did some international traveling in my late teens/early 20s. As I mentioned once, when I lived in Japan, I spent every evening writing letters, one by one, BY HAND telling my family and friends (and my special pen pal who later became my husband) all about my adventures living overseas.

But now the technology is here to be able to update everyone instantly — with words and pictures. This is also useful for anyone preparing for a trip somewhere. I mean — why read a guidebook that was written like two years ago when you can read about a traveler eating in a trendy bistro this morning?

The best site I’ve found so far is one called Travel Blog: Live Travel Journals. Have you heard of this site yet? I recently went to Rome — and before that, I climbed a mountain with a traveler somewhere along the coast of South America! The pictures are stunning. Of course, since the blogs are not edited, you never know what you might read. But for the most part, I’ve been interested to hear people’s fascinating stories.

You can choose any continent in the world, and hundreds of countries. The site owners pick different blogs to feature on the home page — I’m not sure if they’re updated daily or maybe weekly. Today’s front page features:

— On March 30th, a traveler named Keith took pictures and wrote about seeing humpback whales off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

— An explorer dubbed Honest Abe reports on sheep herding and eating curry on the island of Fiji.

— A traveler shared views of life on Penang, a large island off the northwestern coast of Malaysia.

— An April Fool’s Bike Ride through Pittsburgh (I suppose exotic to someone).

— A duo who call themselves “Cumberland Sausage” share pictures of a Holi Festival in Udaipur, India. You won’t believe their pictures. And they close their brief post with this: “No more blogs for a month I’m afraid, we’re off trekking in Nepal.” Ughhh!!

You gotta love it. I can travel the world for free via reading these people’s blogs — and you can too.

With two more months until summer, I’d love to hear back from you readers who don’t live in America. I know you’re out there! You may not realize it, but your home is very exotic to me. I know where a few of you live, but I’d love to learn more. Can you write me and tell me what it’s like? You don’t have to send a picture — I can probably find one on Google.

Do you live on an island? Anywhere near the ocean? I don’t. So in my opinion, you’re on vacation year-round. I want to know what the ocean sounds like for you. What color is the sand? Do you eat fish from the sea, and what kinds? Do you cook it at home or eat it at a restaurant?

You don’t need a blog to write — and you can email me, and I’ll use only your first name or initial. I just think it would be so interesting to use this blog technology to bring the world to my home — and yours.

If anyone else knows a good travel website, I’d love to hear about it.

(Sigh … bigtime sigh.)

Edit: (after much sighing) — If anyone reading this happens to live on an island and is in need of a family to herd your sheep for a while, we’d be happy to consider your offer. I think I’m kidding, but I might not be.

I’m clinging to this one today. Anyone agree?

It is no great matter to associate with the good and gentle; for this is a naturally pleasing to all, and everyone willingly enjoyeth peace, and loveth those best that agree with him. But to be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse persons, or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace, and a most commendable thing.

Thomas a Kempis
Thomas a Kempis Biography And Works

It’s April. Can you believe it? We’ve made it through winter. In our house, we survived spring break last week. Now, I feel like we’re coasting through the next two months until school is out at the end of May.

So, I’ve been poring over our calendar trying to decide what we’ll do this summer. We’ve got one trip planned (YEA!), and my kids are already asking me, “How many days until we go on our trip?” Add that to “How many days until my birthday?” (my almost 6-year-old) and “How many more days of school?” and you can see why I’m living in the future!

It may already be too late, but I’ve got to get on the phone with some of my mom maven friends who seem to know everything and find out whose kids are signed up for which camp or activity. Summer’s when I catch up with a lot of friends who I don’t see as often during the school year because they homeschool or their kids go to a different school. So, we try to coordinate our plans so our kids can play together while we hang out and gab.

I also try to take my kids to a pool somewhere at least three times a week. Honestly, this is not my idea of relaxation because my younger ones need me to get in the water with them. I don’t get to lounge along the side of the pool lost in a good book — I’ve got to be IN the water constantly. It’s fun when I find another mom with her kids there to talk to. But some days when we go to the city pool, I’m the only mom there — except for the day camp workers. So I end up playing Marco Polo and Ring around the Rosy with other people’s kids, and they hang on my shoulders — and I feel COMPLETELY worn out by the time we get home.

But I do this because my kids MUST know how to swim. We’re around water so much — a lot of people in our area live near lakes and ponds — and some people have backyard pools. Right now, I think only two of my kids are strong swimmers, so I’ve got to keep diligent about teaching the younger ones, which means lots of practice.

In giving all this some thought, here’s my news — I’ve decided to take a break from blogging over the summer. We’ll be on the go so much I won’t have time to be on the computer. I know this won’t be a big deal to those of you who’ve subscribed to me via Bloglines because you can tell when I’ve updated. But I’m very loyal to you — and I don’t want to suddenly slack off without giving you some warning! Mom 2 Mom Connection will be very quiet during the months of June and July. School starts back in early August, and that’s when I plan to get back to blogging.

Our Beth Moore Living Beyond Yourself Study will go for the next nine weeks and end on June 2. Sallie has her new Carnival of Beauty schedule posted on her site up until the end of May as well. The last topic is “Beginnings and Endings,” which I think is an appropriate way for me to end my first season of blogging. (By the way, my 6-month blogiversary was last week — 226 posts!)

Over the summer break, I even plan to turn off my comments so I won’t be obsessed tempted to check in. I’ve just GOT to. I want my children to remember all the fun summers they had growing up — and this is their childhood! Between going to the pool, library summer reading program, the park, ice-cream shop, vacation, and a couple of day camps they enjoy, my job as “special events coordinator” and “elite transportation service provider” takes up all my time!

Until then, I’m so excited I’ve got several interviews lined up with moms who’ve done outstanding things. This week, we’re going to be visited by a GRANDMOTHER who is out and about writing children’s mystery books that take place on islands, and she’s also a three-time award-winning playwright. I absolutely can’t wait for you to meet her. She’s AMAZING!

P.S. Don’t forget — those of you who like writing for the Carnival of Beauty. Today at 3 pm is the deadline on the topic of “Technology” over at MzEllen & Co. That’s a really interesting topic — I can’t wait to see what people come up with!

I have a cousin who once handed me her business card, a simple white rectangle, emblazoned in black letters with her name, address, phone number, and the descriptive phrase, “Domestic Goddess.” That made me laugh then, as it does now. She IS a wonderful cook and homemaker, and a world-class grandma. She sent me a letter recently with some pictures and included her new card, “Domestic Goddess, retired.” She’s a widow now.

I love her sense of humor. But I have to tell you I had a glimpse of a true domestic diva the other day when I flipped channels on our TV and saw Martha Pullen, sitting at her sewing machine, telling her audience the proper way to stitch white zig zag onto lace using the zig-zag stitch on a sewing machine.

Are you familiar with Martha Pullen? I used to subscribe to her magazine, Sew Beautiful, and she always wrote the most uplifting letter from the editor, complete with scriptures. She also has a program on public television called Sewing With Martha.

If you’re at all interested in sewing, you’ll love everything about Martha. Here’s how I first heard about her. I had a close friend a few years ago who was REALLY into heirloom children’s clothing. She talked about Martha Pullen this, Martha Pullen that every other sentence. Our first two children were the exact same age, so we spent a lot of time talking while our kids played. Finally, I admitted to her that I didn’t know how to sew — even though my mom had shown me a few simple things growing up. Sewing machines just scared me!

We saw an ad in the newspaper for sewing machines, and she said she’d help me pick one out. So we went shopping together, and I came home with a nicer one than the ad offered, but she assured me it was a good price. Then I went over to her house once a week, and she taught me how to turn the machine on and not be scared it would bite me, thread a needle and wind it around all these places on my machine so it would sew, trace and cut out a pattern, and make a little sundress for my daughter. It was full of all kinds of weird mistakes, but I took her picture wearing it, and it made me so happy that I made something!

Then we moved. Oh, how I missed that friendship. We moved to the country, and I didn’t have any friends for the first several months. So I tried to keep sewing to give myself something creative to do, and it gave me an excuse to call my old friend and tell her what I was making. Thinking back, I realize that’s what kept me trying to sew — I wanted to keep finding a reason to connect with her because the first thing she always asked was, “So, what are you working on?”

I finally discovered a store about an hour from my house that taught smocking and embroidery lessons, and I went and took a few classes. I was the youngest one in my class. It was me and a few sweet grandmothers — who were all excellent seamstresses. I kept stabbing my finger and bleeding on the fabric. I felt like I had two left hands, and I couldn’t keep up. It was so embarrassing to ask the simplest questions!

But this is all I had to do to keep myself occupied while we adjusted to our new town. Finally, we found a church where I made some friends with moms of young children, and I made a few friends who also liked to sew. One Easter, we all went a little crazy and bought a bunch of fabric. I taught one friend how to smock, and there were four of us who all made matching clothes for our kids. It was a fun time.

Those were simpler days for me — and who knows? Maybe someday I’ll get back into it. It really is exciting to make things with fabric and thread — and it can be a joy for young women to see their creativity blossom into something beautiful to wear. Right now, I DO NOT have the patience for it. That hobby requires keeping up with so much STUFF. (Fabric, notions, patterns, magazines with ideas, crafty this and that…)

Since God has blessed me with three daughters, I don’t want them to grow up being scared of a sewing machine like their poor mom. One of the best things my friend taught me is that even though babies and little girls will outgrow their dresses, dolls never will! So one day, I’d love to make doll clothes. Maybe that day will come when I’m a grandmother. What a happy thought!

For now, I’ll sneak a peek at the domestic queen herself, Martha Pullen, and see what she’s up to. And say a prayer for my friend who is on my mind today, who I still miss very much.

Here’s a note to the other 29 ladies in the Beth Moore group — and to anyone else who’s joining along with us in our endeavor to study Living Beyond Yourself. Don’t give up! I’ve been to many of your blogs over the weekend, and we ladies have a lot of stuff going on in our lives! This is only the second week of the study, and I know some of you are already behind and feeling bad about it.

It doesn’t matter! Whatever you have going on — kids demanding your attention, a house full of company, spring break, suitcases full of dirty laundry from returning from trips, earthquakes (someone in our group blogged about an earthquake last week!) You don’t have to do every bit of the homework — and you don’t have to blog about anything profound. It’s very intimidating to be “on” every day you post something — especially when there are hundreds (thousands?) of people who are reading your words and criticizing you (good or bad).

If you can just turn on the video or audio and listen to Beth Moore’s teaching, that’s the most important thing in this study, I feel. Because she’s in the Word so much while she’s teaching, and she’s digging deeper than many of us have been in a while. Even if you can only listen to one segment, it’s still better than nothing.

We’ve got nine more weeks — we can do it! This group will go until June 2. Now what would be more fun than getting dressed up in a cute new outfit and going out with your friends to hear a speaker like Beth Moore? We’d of course go out for dessert afterward and laugh a lot, right? So that’s what we’re doing here, when we download the video onto our computers — in our own time, when the kids are napping or asleep (or crawling all over us…)

Here’s a verse for you [with my interruptions]:

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses [the other members of this LBY group!], let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles [worrying that we’re behind], and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us [the next nine weeks, until June 2].

Hebrews 12:1-3

It’s all about JOY!

I needed to read this verse today — because I’m weary. There’s something funky going on in the April atmosphere around here, and I’ve lost my voice (it sounds all scratchy), and I’m behind on all the yukky, boring things I need to spend my time doing. So, I’m going to write out this verse and hang it up on the wall in three places in my house: over my kitchen sink (where I’ve got to spend a lot of time today), in my laundry room (which is not really a room, only a closet; I’ve got to spend a lot of time there too), and over my bathroom sink (because I’m feeling really, really discouraged about my weight that is never going to come off. Now that my baby is turning one, can it still be called postpartum?)

I’m looking forward to what Beth has to teach me this week — and although I may not come up with anything profound to write, I know I’ll be blessed for at least digging into the Word.

Our Beth Moore cyber study group has grown again — Lauren says we’re maxed out at 29 30 people. She’s once again provided us with new HTML to update our chart and blogroll. Thanks, Lauren!

Wow — what an awesome, life-changing week of intense Bible reading for me. I can’t wait to go see what everyone else in the group says about it. I worked on my homework as much as I could — but I still have to finish Day 5. I’m trying to keep up! And I don’t even have an excuse like Patricia, who says she got busy preparing for her interview with Rebecca St. James!

The whole theme of Living Beyond Yourself is based on the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. Beth Moore says some of us don’t have a lifetime to wait for these character traits to develop slowly and ripen. We need a change right NOW!

That’s me. Reading the Word keeps me connected to the Vine — the growing, living, overflowing Vine of Jesus Christ. If I’m cut off, I’ll die. I’ll get all brown and withery and crinkly, falling to the ground. Useless. Full of myself and not full of the Holy Spirit. Yes, Beth Moore is talking to me.

I could go through the homework verse by verse and tell you about 90 million things that leaped off the page into my heart — but that would take a week. Instead, I’ll give you a scenario of something that happened YESTERDAY in which the Holy Spirit got a hold of me and helped me to live beyond myself.

I’d scheduled a portrait sitting for my youngest daughter who turns one next week. This is supposed to be her six-month sitting. I had some trouble getting this done, can you tell? I decided to go to a chain portrait studio because my wonderful local photographer who I love very dearly has raised her prices, and I can’t go there very often unless she’s running a special.

I had to change this appointment three times because of various catastrophes, and I finally rescheduled it inadvertently during spring break — which meant I had to bring the whole crew with me. Now, this ordeal first involved my plowing through basement boxes to find the perfect-sized hand-me-down dress, washing and ironing it, bathing the baby and making sure she stayed clean, praying she wouldn’t get a bump or scratch before picture day — AND gathering all the other kids to load up and drive across town.

We showed up only five minutes late. ONLY!

When I walked into the studio “area,” the woman was sitting in front of the computer moniter on the phone. I waited for a minute or so, then she looked over at me and asked, “Are you here for something?”

“Yes, I’m here for a portrait sitting.” (Thinking: my baby! my baby girl is turning one! the last baby portrait!)

She sighed and said to someone in the phone, “I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll call you back.”

(So I guessed I was her “stuff to do.”)

My three older kids sat down quietly in the waiting area while we moved back to the portrait-taking area. I saw a beautiful child-sized white wicker chair, just like the one my other kids had their baby portraits made in. I asked her if we could use this for the picture.

“No, it’s the wrong size,” she snapped back.

“Well, I think it looks like a wonderful size. If you don’t mind, I’d love to use it for the picture,” I said.

“Not unless you want to get me fired for using the wrong size chair!”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to do that.” I began to feel a flicker of anger … seething. Why was she treating me this way? Did she have ANY idea how much effort it took to get me there? And how precious this last baby portrait sitting was to me?

She found a short, slippery wooden chair and plopped it on the white-carpeted stage. “This is the one we have to use,” she said.

Well, my daughter wasn’t happy about getting her picture made. Even though she looked like total Gerber Baby cuteness in her soft pink dress, she started crying. By now, my other wonderful favorite photographer would have been jumping up and down doing toe touches and waving feathers to get her to smile. But this lady was trying to use a talking stuffed animal that had a deep scary voice. And it wasn’t working.

So I reached over for another stuffed animal that had a jingle bell and started shaking it. Then the photographer glared at me, “M’am, you do your job, and let me do mine. Your job is safety. You watch to make sure she doesn’t fall. I’ll take care of getting her to smile for the camera.”

Can. You. Say. Angry.

I was angry. I clenched my teeth. I wanted to walk out and leave. I wanted to tell her that I’d done this dozens of times and not once have I had a crying baby!

But then something happened. As I felt those hot, smarting tears form in my eyes, the Holy Spirit took over and said, “Give her MY grace. There’s something behind the scenes going on in her life right now. She’s having problems with something or someone. Let it go, and give her grace.”

So I did. I let it go. I clapped whenever the camera flashed at the perfect moment of a brief between-tears almost smile. And I kept the atmosphere friendly by doing as I was told. Finally, when we sat down to look at the proofs, I told her what a great job she had done. Then I noticed up on the wall there were dozens of award certificates for photos.

“Did you take all those?” I asked her.

“I sure did,” she said.

“Well, you’re a wonderful photographer,” I said. “I can’t imagine all the work you put into getting those kids to smile.”

That was it. That was the connecting point. She SMILED and thanked me. I could visibly see her relaxing. I picked out my portraits and placed my order on the spot, even though my favorite studio would have given me weeks to look at actual proofs and decide. They weren’t perfect, but there were a couple of really good ones. And at least we got it done!

The lesson I learned here — it’s POSSIBLE to live beyond myself — to let God’s Spirit fill me and have me respond like He would. I’m still learning and growing, and I battle my impulses every day. (Hey, but we learned even Peter had a struggle every now and then.)

I’m not wearing a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet — but the more I study this Beth Moore homework, the more that question captures my every thought.

Addie	Heather*	Carol
M	Rach	Jeana
Jenn	Amanda	MamaB
GiBee	Boomama	Maria
Blair	Heather	Nancy
Janna	Flipflop	Robin
Sherry	Patricia	Tara
Lauren	HolyMama!	Faith
Christy	Eph2810	Karin
Leann	Rachel	Janice
This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm – Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word.

I haven’t blogged about FlyLady in a few weeks because to be honest my email inbox has been on overdrive, and I haven’t been reading the FlyLady digest email. Does anyone else have an issue with email? I’ve created a monstrosity of folders in Outlook Express, so I’m trying to at least file email that comes in. And deleting a lot. But I’m a packrat about email the same way I’m a packrat about everything else. What if I delete something I might need again someday?

I’ve actually created a folder titled “High school people” because emails are coming in every day from people I haven’t heard from in 19 years. I love these people! I sat next to them in homeroom, we learned the names of the planets together, hung out every weekend together for over a decade, and grew up laughing at the same sitcoms on TV. So it’s fun to get back in touch — BUT! I’m also starting to get a steady stream of Mom 2 Mom-related requests. I guess because I signed up to be in some blog directories, like this and this.

Yesterday, I got a very professionally written request from someone offering to write me a women’s health column. She’s written for dozens of top national magazines — so why is she contacting me? I don’t have money to pay anyone for a column. Although it would be a great idea. But right now, Mom 2 Mom is just my simple little blog written by me — when the mood strikes. The only way I’d ever turn it into a magazine is if I had paid advertising. But even then, the thought of receiving and editing submitted articles, finding good writers and columnists, and keeping a cash flow coming in so I could pay everyone seems like a huge stressful nightmare for someone like me.

So back to FlyLady. At the end of every email digest, I read these two sentences: “You are not behind! I don’t want you to try to catch up; I just want you to jump in where we are. O.K.?” And then the FlyLady motto for this year: “Simple Routines Do the Trick in 2006!”

I need to stick to the very basics at this season of my life. It doesn’t take 20 minutes of having five kids home for spring break to let the Entropy Monster take over our home. I think in some homes dining rooms are used for dinner parties. In my home, my dining table is used for card tricks, origami, board games, coin sorting and admiring, stamp counting, art projects that involve popsicle sticks and hot glue guns, and LOTS of book-making that requires a steady flow of paper, crayons, and staples. Our kitchen is used for all food prep and consumption. The dining room is the only place my kids have a table to work somewhere together. It also happens to be the first thing you see when you walk in the door.

Along with the foyer. The hardwood floors here make the perfect spot for Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends to meet the Matchbox Car Friends and get into a pile-up together involving wooden blocks. Did I mention we don’t have a playroom? I know a friend who has a gorgeous basement playroom, and her rule is “No toys above ground level.” Her house is big and beautiful and always clean. She also said FlyLady changed her life. I wish FlyLady could come over and build me a basement playroom.

For now, I’m going to work on simplifying … today, we’re handing down the hand-me-downs. I told the girls about a family in our town whose house burned down, and the first grade little girl lost everything. A club I’m in is collecting clothes and toys for her. Suddenly, this very real sad situation has finally gotten them interested in passing along last year’s Christmas toys and outgrown clothes.

I think we should start the weekend a little bit lighter.

P.S. Here is why I’m afraid of Google Adsense! This is an actual ad I just read: “Christian Faith — Free to Join. 1000’s of pictures of Beautiful Christian Singles.” What if you came to my site and had to read THAT? I would quit blogging before I had that on my site!!!!!!!!!

How’s it going for those of you in the Beth Moore study? I hope you’re able to find a chance to dig into the homework. It’s not easy, is it? I’m loving every minute I can sit down and really pore through it. And my thoughts are with you today. I know I want to keep it up so I’ll be able to join in the discussion over the weekend.

Last night, my husband was showing our kids a video of a camping trip he and some friends took to a lake in Minnesota about 15 years ago. It was a beautiful spot — quiet and peaceful. At some point, one of his friends filmed him sitting beside the lake writing in his journal. I was so jealous just watching that! I said, “I can’t even imagine how much fun that would be — to sit beside a lake and do my Beth Moore homework!”

While I do mine, there’s a swirl of noise around me — and last night my 11-month-old daughter kept grabbing at my Bible — I have the NIV Life Application Bible — which I love! She was fascinated watching my pen scribble across the workbook pages. And you know how those onion-thin pages sound when you flip them back and forth — as we do in our homework. She loved that crinkly sound and wanted to flip pages with her little chubby hand.

I kept giving her other toys to play with or another book to read — but within a couple of minutes, she was right back where I was, wanting to know what FASCINATED me about that fun BOOK I was reading!

And I realized — this is the start for her! She’s only a baby now, but as she grows up, I want her to keep seeing me read my Bible. It’s the Book that matters most — full of relevant, life-changing words that will build her faith and give her life a purpose. Even just a few minutes ago, I was listening to James Dobson on the radio as he shared about abstinence education for teens. It’s in the Bible! It can give teens something to hold onto during those years as well.

One of my favorite bloggers is Carmen of Full-Contact, Christ-Centric Living. I remember a few months ago when Carmen just started her blog, and she said she wasn’t sure what exactly to focus on. We emailed back and forth about it. I told her something like, “Mentor people like me! Teach me how to raise godly kids! How do we do this in our culture today?”

Carmen (a mom of six) has some great advice in her blog for moms raising teenagers. Her recent post, To Hunt or Not to Hunt is inspiring for me. A mother asked her a question: “Christian guys are so timid today, and my daughters are asking if it’s OK for them to approach guys. How will they meet the right guy? Should they call guys or wait to be called?”

And here’s part of Carmen’s answer, though I encourage you to read all of it!

I’m raising a house full of boys. I’m in a position to tell you what the kind of boys I’d want to get hitched up with for the rest of my life are looking for in a girl, and it’s NOT a girl who’s chasing after guys. My sons are learning to prepare their fields first, then build a home. In other words, they aren’t looking for girls, and are hoping to avoid entanglement until they’re prepared to provide a home for a family. When they do begin to look for God’s will in a wife, the pursuers, hunters, chasers, flirts won’t be on their lists.

My advice for teenage girls? Learn to be beautiful in God’s eyes (I Peter 3:1-6). If you’re good at something, get better at it (sure wish I had been serious about art or writing when I was 17 or 18!) If you’re not good at anything, learn. Learn to write, learn to crochet, learn about hospitality, learn about horses, learn to sew and strive to excel at it—in other words, do it as unto the Lord. Enjoy being a single young woman in the Lord now. When you get married, you’re married for life. That’s a long time!

Can you see why I like “hanging around” Carmen? We live on opposite sides of the U.S., yet she’s mentoring me through her blog, and she’s also become a parenting columnist for The Dabbling Mum magazine.

Now, while you’re visiting her site, I hope you can take a few minutes and check out this survey she’s working on. You can cut and paste these questions into an email and send it to her. Do you visit your local public library? If you do, her survey and research may help make your public library a better, more wholesome place for your family. It took me less than five minutes to answer her questions.

P.S. These aren’t my hands here, in case you’re wondering.

OK, y’all. This doesn’t happen too much around here, but a few minutes ago the phone rang, and the caller ID showed “New York, NY.” As you know, my kids are on spring break, so I was afraid to answer the phone. Lots of background noise!

It was a call from Cecilia Fang, who is a producer with the TODAY Show in New York. For real! Last week, she’d sent me an email asking if I’d be interested in helping her with a series on mothering. I thought this might be a joke from one of my brothers-in-law, but I went ahead and wrote back and said, “Sure.”

So, she called here, and we chatted. I found out that I’m NOT the person she needs for this show … but maybe one of you are!

— Are you a mom who stays home to care for one or more children?

— Does your husband work away from home?

— Would you like to see your husband switch jobs with you for the day?

— Here’s the catch … Are you pregnant? If so, are you showing enough to where you LOOK pregnant?

If you’ve answered yes to these questions, you could be on the TODAY Show! This is not a joke. I checked into it a bit, and Ms. Fang has a blog and mentioned this request to her readers here.

I also found this on a message board for moms:

Hi there,
I’m a producer with NBC’s Today Show. I’m doing a special story on understanding each other, specifically husbands and wives when the wife is pregnant. I’m looking to shoot a story where we give the wife and pregnant mom a day off and have Dad know how it feels to be pregnant and a mom for the day.
I’m specifically looking for a couple that already has at least one child with another on the way. I would love to chat with any of you that are interested. Please email me at cecilia.fang@nbc.com if you are and I can explain more. This is a legitmate interview request from the Today Show.

Please spread this around to as many moms as possible because she needs somebody this week! And if one of you fits the role she needs and gets to be on TV, please let me know so I can say that I knew ya way back when, OK?

I’ve got spring fever today! Our kids are out of school for spring break this week, so we’re trying to do some fun things.

Amanda has posted the Carnival of Beauty on her site today — I hope you enjoy her garden of stories on the topic of flowers.

CONGRATULATIONS to children’s author R.K. Mortenson! He’s writing the Landon Snow series, which is a Christian fantasy series for children published by Barbour Books. Mortenson and his wife have become parents again! They’ve just brought their adopted baby son home from the hospital.

I enjoyed reviewing Landon Snow and the Auctor’s Riddle last fall. His second book has just been released, Landon Snow and the Shadows of Malus Quidam. If you get a chance, you can visit him today over at Gina Holmes’ amazing blog, Novel Journey. And leave him a comment that you’ve stopped in. (If any of you love to read or write Christian fiction, you’ll also have to check out Gina’s archive of interviews.)

Sally of All About Children’s Books has already reviewed the second Landon Snow here, and she had an interesting chat with the author in her comments section — which will give you some insight into Mortenson’s good sense of humor (which of course shows up in his books for kids.)

Here’s my poem for the day:

I can type in red.

The H-T-M-L!

P.S. I may even get brave and download the new WordPress upgrade — but every time I seriously consider it, they fix another bug. Those hi-tech smiley faces are starting to be hard to resist. Any advice from fellow WP bloggers?
🙂