Time Together Books + Adelaide's Attic Gift Card Giveaway (#HelloSummer Blog Hop)

Disclosure: I received review samples of these books for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Summertime is on the way, whether we are ready or not! Welcome to the Hello Summer Giveaway Hop hosted by the Blogging Mamas Network. We're gearing up for all the fun ahead and saying Hello to Summer in fun giveaway style! Beat the heat and hop around to all the different giveaways at the bottom of this post. And don't miss out on the fabulous Summer Vacation Savings Account Grand Prize sponsored by Outski!

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I am all about the everyday moments and adventures of life. We love having dance parties, backyard adventures, and little snuggles in the middle of a busy day. My kids are little - and little ones are tough sometimes - but it's a beautiful life, and I am striving to enjoy it all. 

Since my kids are really close in age (21 months between their birthdays), they both need attention almost all the time. I really savor the times that I get to spend one-on-one time with each of them, and I know they love those moments, too. One of our favorite ways to spend time together is reading books - and they love our latest finds - Time Together: Me and Mom and Time Together: Me and Dad.

Each of these is a picture book that celebrates the best moments between a child and their parents. The little moments of life are represented: painting, hide-and-seek, tea parties, dance parties, grocery shopping, and much more. The illustrations (by Pascal Campton) are beautiful and very diverse, showing families of all races. The text is minimal and makes for perfect reading with toddlers who have short attention spans. Author Maria Catherine has beautifully captured the important things in life when you have little ones in your family.

These books are precious and will be treasured in our home library for years to come. Want to purchase? You can find them here: Time Together: Me & Mom and Time Together: Me & Dad. Make sure you follow along with Capstone Young Readers on Facebook and Pinterest for more fun!

Giveaway

Two Director Jewels readers will each win a set of these "Time Together" books plus a $10 Gift Card to my Etsy shop, Adelaide's Attic! This giveaway will end on May 27 at 11:59pm CST.  This giveaway is open to US readers only.

To enter the giveaway, follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter form below (you may need Javascript enabled to see the form and it may take a moment to load)! Once you complete the first entry, the other options will open up so that you can complete them as well.  All of the "extra entries" are optional - you can do just one, or as many as you want! Winners will be contacted by email and have 48 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Once you have finished entering my giveaway, hop on over and enter to win the Grand Prize! Then hop around to enter all of the other fantastic giveaways, too!

So Easy Being Green, Viva Veltoro, the Blogging Mamas Network, and the Hello Summer participating bloggers are not responsible for sponsors who do not fulfill prize obligations. I received review samples of these books for review. All opinions expressed are my own. For more information, you can read my Giveaway Policy and my Disclosure Policy.

19/52

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Baby cousin Max was a huge hit this weekend!

 

Linking up at Practising Simplicity.

Well, That Was Unexpected

I thought I was all prepared. Last week was my spring semester drama students' performance. Performance week is nuts around here. Looking back, I find a lot of posts like this one where I'm hysterically busy and crazed and filled with anxiety in the days leading up to my performances.

So, this time? I decided to keep my Type-A personality happy. I worked really hard the week before last. I scheduled all of my posts for crazy drama week. And it worked! A full week's worth of posts were prepared; I kept pageviews up and felt like I didn't have to worry about keeping up with the blog. 

So, you're probably wondering - why am I complaining?

I woke up on Monday with great intentions to start off a beautiful, new, productive week. And then I stood up and felt like I had been hit with a sack of bricks.

I'm still fighting off some weird virus or bug. I don't know what it is. My stomach feels weird and my throat is scratchy.

Today was the first day I felt like I could actually sort of function again - so I spent the whole day working on summer drama class info and having potty training wars and feeling kind of like this again.

I've rambled on quite awhile now, with the single purpose of saying: I have some great posts in the works, but for now I'm celebrating the fact that both of my kids are momentarily in bed by eating this Trader Joe's whoopie pie. It's really, really good. Even with a slightly nauseated stomach.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who has days (weeks) like this one. Here's hoping everyone sleeps all night - and I wake up feeling not weird anymore.

I have my doubts, but I'd love it if it turned out that way.

18/52

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014."

Mac & Cheese faces all around.

 

Linking up at Practising Simplicity.

Our Family's Easter Recap 2014

Easter was almost two weeks ago, but I haven't done a post with lots of great kid photos in a long time, so you can probably forgive me - right? Our Easter turned out much better than last year, when we stayed home with strep throat - so it was a great day.

We started our Easter morning at church. Getting toddlers out of the house early in the morning on a weekly basis is hard enough, but adding in the mommy's desire to look slightly nicer and it means the daddy may be the one actually dressing the little ones for Easter. I think in our case, he did a pretty great job.

I wanted to get some photos before the day got too far, as I fully expected someone to ruin their outfit along the way. Thankfully, I was wrong about that, but it was nice to have kid pictures out of the way first thing.

After church, we drove around for a long while and the kids both took naps in the car. Lincoln gave up naps months ago, but we knew it was going to be a long day so I didn't mind him getting some midday rest.

The afternoon was spent having lots of cousin fun and yummy food at Andrew's parents' house. The kids enjoyed a backyard Easter egg hunt. Lincoln caught on to the egg hunting after a little while, but Addie was more interested in just holding onto the first egg she found.

They were all pretty worn out by the time we were done!

Addie and Lincoln and their cousins Kinley and Max.

After that, we headed to my parents' house for more fun, egg hunting, and food. The kids still had loads of energy, but the parents were pretty wiped out. We crashed on the couch for awhile before we finally took the kids home and coaxed them to sleep.

It was a really fun day! In spite of having no Easter baskets, I think the kids enjoyed their day. I'm now on the hunt for clearance Easter fashion for them to wear next year!