I spend a lot of my time with my girls and pups taking pictures, which we post in blogs and on flickr. The joy of digital cameras is that you can delete the bad pictures, and crop the images so that the pics you select are exactly what you want to share with your friends and family. There are a lot of programs and websites where you can share pictures online, but there aren’t many where you can choose who can see the pictures of your kids OR sites that easily mail your digital images to someone who might not have a camputer. Kinzin is a program that allows you to limit who can view your pictures, and will mail 10 pictures to any address once a month. With out of state family and great-grandparents without computers, (and far too many unfulfilled promises about mailing prints) we were eager to review the service for PBN.
Read the rest of the review

MG and I have become very lucky. Last week the lovely jimiyo asked if he could sketch one of the girls from the innumerable pictures on flickr. I agreed and if you look here, you can see the sketch of MG in progress.

If you want to pick up some of jimiyo’s designs, you can buy:

Lovely women’s shirts at etsy
• Life, ’tis Precious, which has some wonderful detailing
• Revelations, which has a gorgeous lion

Meanwhile, I was chatting with some of the designers last night, and one of the designers, cho, made a quick sketch of me based on this picture! I was a bit embarrassed at the attention, but it’s really cool!

If you, like me, are impressed with his designs, you can pick up 3 shirts by cho this weekend:

• My favorite, as I’m partial to water/beachy designs, Treacherous Waters

• Reminder of childhood, Duck Hunt
• Fun with video games and the alphabet, Alpha Battle

They’ve both got entries in this week’s shirt.woot Derby, where the theme is “Revolution”.

We have always tried to make our birthday party invitations stand out a bit. We’ve made collages out of construction paper, and customized invitations made using theme-appropriate clip art on the computer. However, since BG was turning 10 this year, we were thrilled to team up with PBN to review birthday party invitations by tiny prints.
Read the rest of the review

I was listening to npr on my way to the therapist last night, and I heard a story about gender identity, and treating children who self-identify as the opposite gender early in life. I missed part of the story as I picked up meds & had to go into the building, so I was happy to be able to read the story online. My heart aches for families in this situation, but my heart especially breaks for the boy who had his toys taken away.

For something completely different, I found this cool comic strip while haunting the halls of shirt.woot. Today’s comic about genes and whips reminds me of Tom Lehrer’s “Masochism Tango”, but with genes. Geeky is cool, who’da thunk it?

I’ve mentioned the cool t-shirts over at Threadless before. Well, another shirt.woot designer has an intense Threadless submission up titled Apocalypse, be sure to vote for it! jimiyo creates work with such an incredible level of detail. Very cool.

Rachel’s tip for the day: if you work in a checkout lane and ask someone for ID, don’t say “oh, my mom is your age”. Gah. I was feeling old enough when BG turned 10, knowing someone younger than me has a child working in the grocery store completely freaked me out.

While reading the Maximum Ride series, my girls are committed to saving the environment. (When they remember, of course!) We were all thrilled when our local grocery store switched to printing on both sides of the receipt! They aren’t printing goofy ads on the back, either – it’s the regular receipt of purchases, but put on both sides of the paper.

B’s company has also put more green ideas into practice – they gave each employee 3 reusable grocery bags (the nice ones that fold up), and took away the styrofoam and plastic cups for water and coffee, replacing them with a ton of mugs, a rack for the mugs, and special pens so folks can put their names on them. They also have special parking for hybrids, so they’re on the “good” end of businesses!

It’s been gorgeous here lately! The sun is too bright for me to work on the laptop outside, even!

And why are we outside all day? Well, BG got an incredible bike for her birthday, so BG and MG are riding all around the neighborhood, and exploring with some friends. The bike has gears and shocks, and is just a wonderful bike for her to ride on roads, grass, or trails.

The older girls have also started to take their bikes down to the playground, and play with the other kids in the area. I follow on my scooter with LG and at least one dog, and we hang out. It’s great!

I have to be careful about sunburns, though – the first day on the beach I got burned.

Sadly, my camera isn’t working, but my mom was nice enough to take a few pictures, including two of MG scaling the rock wall and BG climbing the rock wall. They both climbed to the top the first time! We’ll have to go back soon, they loved it. I’m hoping LG is tall enough to join them soon!

So, what’s been up with you while I’ve been distracted by the nice weather?

edited: because I mis-typed a link, making it all go wonky

BG turned 10 today! I can’t believe that she has been here for a decade! It feels like only yesterday she was a baby that needed to be held, nursed, and cuddled all the time. Babies are cute for a reason – they make you sooooo tired! Here’s a pic from when she was 7 months old:

Now she’s just as cute, but so much her own person, with a very strong personality. She is very verbal, very social, and feels everything very strongly. She is an incredibly loyal friend, and she loves to play any number of imaginative, board, or other games. I am so proud to be her mom! BG’s a great kid.

Now it’s time for visiting the grandparents and picking up her new bike!

Bonding between our 15 year old Harley-girl and our 14 week old puppy Ra. Harley didn’t really bond with Jack, and she has been missing the connection between her and her late “mama dog” Chloe. (none of the dogs are actually related)

For folks who haven’t been following every picture of Ra, he is our Australian Cattle Dog puppy, a red. Harley is an ACD/lab mix, and the un-pictured Jack is our 10 year old ACD, but you can see he’s a blue in other pictures

Check out the other Love Thursday pictures!