At the end of last week I received my gift from Michelle in the Much More Christmas Swap and, just as in her blogging sweetness, she sure didn’t disappoint! Check out all of my new Christmas goodies in the pic above! Lots of ornaments, Christmas towels, a mug, a door hanger and a special book that Kayla picked out for the boy! She seemed to know that I really like snowmen. Thanks so much Michelle, and Merry Christmas! (She also blessed me with an easy delivery which y’all know how badly I really need this time!)

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Nothing like cramming it all into the four minutes I have to blog…

I was recently sent a bottle of Dawn Direct Foam to review. The claim is that you pump just one pump of foam onto the included (or any) sponge and it washes your whole sink of dishes. Here’s what I thought…

*I received the fresh rapids scent and it was very light - hardly noticeable even - which I appreciated. I hate strong chemical smells and I really hate fake smells trying to cover up chemical smells. This was actually pleasant!
*A sponge? Gross.
*It did wash a lot of dishes with one pump on the sponge, so that claim was totally true. A sponge isn’t “scrubby” enough to get off the tough stuff, but for things that were just greasy it worked great.
*I need soap in my water to feel like the dishes are really getting clean. And, honestly, if it doesn’t fit in my dishwasher it usually sits long enough that it needs a really good soak in soapy water to come clean. The Dawn Direct Foam doesn’t work worth a crap in the dishwater. However, it doesn’t claim to so I suppose that’s okay! You’d need to have two bottles of soap though, which sounds like too much work for me.
*I won’t be buying it, but for those of you who wash your dishes promptly it seems like it works very well. Just remember to boil your sponge or toss it in the dishwasher daily because those are dirty little suckers.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in my first “maybe annual but maybe just once” Much More Christmas Swap!

The gifts should have been mailed by the end of November and are starting to show up in mailboxes across North America. I’ll update this post as I hear about people sending/receiving/blogging about their gifts.

Bitsy Parker from http://valuewit.typepad.com/ bought for Deb at http://justacountrygirl.dakotablogs.com/. Gift mailed - thanks Bitsy!

Deb at http://justacountrygirl.dakotablogs.com/ bought for Janice at http://www.justjanice.ca/cosmogrrl/. Gift mailed and received - not blogged yet.

Janice at http://www.justjanice.ca/cosmogrrl/ bought for CPA Mom at http://cpamomva.blogspot.com/. Gift mailed & received but not blogged yet, as far as I know.

CPA Mom at http://cpamomva.blogspot.com/ bought for Emily at http://fenicle.com/ who blogged about it here. Thanks ladies!

Emily at http://fenicle.com/ bought for J.W. at http://youdamom.com/
who blogged about it here. Thanks ladies!

J.W. at http://youdamom.com/ bought for Amy at http://ashleyandaudrey.blogspot.com/. Gift received posted about here. Thanks!

Amy at
http://ashleyandaudrey.blogspot.com/ bought for Tsoniki at http://mebeingcrafty.com. Haven’t heard anything yet.

Tsoniki at http://mebeingcrafty.com bought for Rebecca at http://trenting.blogspot.com/. Haven’t heard anything yet.

Rebecca at http://trenting.blogspot.com/ bought for Michelle at
http://mdbeau.blogspot.com. Gift received & blogged about here. Thanks ladies!

Michelle at http://mdbeau.blogspot.com bought for me at
http://www.muchmorethanamom.com/. Gift received and blogged about here. Thanks Michelle!

Me at http://www.muchmorethanamom.com/ bought for Jacquie at
www.dealwithitgirlsrule.blogspot.com
who blogged about it here and put a pic here. Thanks Jacquie - glad you liked it!

Jacquie at www.dealwithitgirlsrule.blogspot.com
bought for Damselfly at http://growingalife.blogspot.com. Gift mailed. Thanks Jacquie!

Damselfly at http://growingalife.blogspot.com
bought for Gwen at http://leftcoastmama.net
. Gift mailed. Thanks Damselfly!

Gwen at http://leftcoastmama.net
bought for Chelle at http://soodz.com/blog
. Gift mailed. Thanks Gwen!

Chelle at http://soodz.com/blog
bought for Laura at http://www.lauralohr.com. Gift received but not blogged about yet as far as I know. Good luck finding your camera Laura!

Laura at http://www.lauralohr.com bought for Bitsy Parker from http://valuewit.typepad.com/. Gift received and blogged about here. Thanks ladies!

and that’s (almost) a wrap!

I hope you all enjoyed both shopping for and receiving your special gifts!

Merry Christmas!

(Speaking of Christmas, if you can’t see my new header please clear your cache…)

*~*Anyone looking for gifts for our kids will be sent here, here, here, here, here and several other such places. Notice that none of those places rhyme with All-Fart? I am SO SICK of all the recalls. We have gotten rid of so many toys in the past month (thank you freecycling), though you’d never know it by looking around our house. You still can’t see the floor!

*~*My hips are getting better - thanks for asking. More aggressive stretching and swimming has helped. And also? A husband who has been doing the middle of the night hip numbing hours long rocking sessions. I lurve him.

*~*Our basement is almost finished! My mother in law’s husband and my own have been working their tails off and it’s just about there. We still need two doors, some door jambs, a little bit of molding, bathroom walls tiled and little things like that but at least we can use it now. It’s completely vunderful.

*~*Speaking of vunderful, my child apparently has some eastern European heritage that I didn’t know about because he drinks “vater” and runs into the “vall” on a regular basis. Between 18 and 19 months I think he got at least 50 new words, including but certainly not limited to:

-vater (water)
-vall (wall)
-bike
-van
-cuck (truck)
-cock (clock, you pervs)
-pool
-simin (swimming)
-Favi (Mavi, one of our dogs)
-toys
-Tanta (Santa)
-noman (snowman)
-doke which has recently become coat
-boots
-tar/dahtar (guitar, because he’s all about playing guitar hero without the actual game. He just plays with the guitar and says -”deh, deh deh…” a la ‘Smoke on the Water.”)
-in
-out
-away
-garbah (garbage, where he needs to throw his diapers after a change)
-leg
-toes
-arm
-oram (Christmas oranges - his newest addiction)
-ah-teen (Auntie)
-fence
-gate
-lock
-boken (broken)
-Iam (his friend Liam)
-Sucy (his friend Lucy)
-Dillan
-Bock (his friend Brock)
-Kehzie (his friend Mackenzie)
-Dawdon (his friend Dawson)
-no (snow)
-code (cold)
-slow
-fast
-walk
-run
-cheek
-bed
-bakens (blankets)

…and the two word clusters are flying and are quickly being replaced by many 3 word actual sentences.
I think we’re in trouble.

*~*I’ve finished shopping for the swap but need to get some brown paper to wrap it all up for shipping. That’s my goal for this weekend. Among other things, of course. Remember you’ve only got 1 week left until the shipping deadline!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all of my American friends!

Next week, I’m going to beg for your help to get me ready for this baby!

Alright Swappers… I need your addresses asap so we can get going on this craziness! I’ll bold the participants as I receive addresses so you know that I got your email…

Rebecca at http://trenting.blogspot.com/
Deb at http://justacountrygirl.dakotablogs.com
Laura at http://lauralohr.com
Jacquie at http://dealwithitgirlsrule.blogspot.com/
Chelle at http://soodz.com/blog
You da Mom at http://youdamom.com/
Amy W at http://ashleyandaudrey.blogspot.com/
Janice at http://www.justjanice.ca/cosmogrrl
Angela at http://cpamomva.blogspot.com/
Damselfly at http://growingalife.blogspot.com
Gwen at http://leftcoastmama.net
Michelle at http://mdbeau.blogspot.com
Emily at http://www.fenicle.com/
Bitsy Parker at http://www.valuewit.com/
Tsoniki at http://mebeingcrafty.com
Me at http://www.muchmorethanamom.com/

Update: DONE! Thanks everyone! You should have received your email with your parther’s info. Have fun shopping!

Dad update: The cancer is back on his liver. Chemo starts again Monday. Suckage.

I’ve been reading a review copy of When Parents Hurt that I received from the publisher. Actually, I’ve been trying to read it for at least a month and finally decided to blog about it without finishing it. Hormonal and pregnant do not mix with a book about dealing with kids who don’t want any contact with you no matter how hard you tried. I couldn’t read it without bawling and worrying about the boy turning into a crack-head despite our best intentions.

That said, if you have a teen or adult child who is pulling away from you (whether you beat them, were the perfect parent or anything in between) and you need healing, this seems like it would be a great book. But my God please do not attempt to read it if you’re pregnant or aren’t in that type of situation. It’s damn near impossible.

I have tons of adorable pics to share but my laptop died a slow and painful death so I’m on a borrowed one right now and we haven’t had time to install my FTP program to get the pics up. I’ll try to do it convince the BG to do it this week. I’ll also get the swap partners drawn and email you about that soon-ish. I’m aiming to do it on the long weekend (it’s Thanksgiving in Canada this coming weekend) and will email y’all by Monday. Sound good? We’ve got one “special circumstance” who will need her package mailed early due to an international move so please let me know if you’re NOT okay with that. Otherwise I’ll just let random.org match the pairs.