CONTEST CLOSED!

We have our two winners!  Congratulations to Lynn Matthews and Michelle!  Please send me your mailing address within 72 hours, and I’ll get these in the mail for you!

The My Little Pony franchise is one of the recently resurrected ‘80s-era toy lines that seek to capitalize on fond memories of parents who grew up with stables full of brightly-colored plastic ponies with wild, multi-colored locks. I am one of those parents. My sisters and I would spend hours parading our ponies through the living room, brushing their hair, and even dressing them up.

When ponies hit the toy market again I was happy to show my daughters the simple joys that they’d brought to my life as a child. It’s no great surprise that I was excited to watch My Little Pony – Twinkle Wish Adventure with my daughters to see what animated adventures the next generation ponies were up to. When confronted in-store with the pearly-pink and ever so twinkly box design, parents of girl-children will have a hard time resisting this latest pony release.

Twinkle Wish Adventure finds the ponies preparing for their winter festival where the Wishing Star will wake from it’s year long slumber to grant each pony a special wish. However, everything goes wrong when a huge dragon kidnaps the Wishing Star. The ponies are off to recover this vital ingredient for their festivities. In the process of this voyage simple lessons about friendship, reconciliation, and honesty are conveyed.

I was a bit surprised to find that the pony’s seasonal festival closely resembles the secular-consumerist holiday of contemporary Christmas celebrations. When I think winter festival my thoughts turn to Quebecois celebrations of snow, ice, and maple syrup – the ponies do go skating and participate in other outdoor activities, but their celebration is centered on mainstream Christmas traditions – baking cookies, making ornaments, and a huge evergreen that they adorn with their handmade contributions and the Wishing Star himself. If like us, you don’t celebrate in this way, you’ll likely want to pass on this title despite the pony-goodness. If you do go in for light-hearted, secular holiday celebrations – read on for details.

The pony’s adventures are punctuated with songs that get my girls up and dancing every time they watch the movie, including the restyled My Little Pony theme song. The animation is bright and fun, filled with flowing multi-colored pony hair and plenty of pink, sparkly moments. Some of the teaching moments are handled too briefly and without much depth – for example, the moment in which an apology for lying is made is incredibly short and there is no real remorse shown in the character.

Shout! Factory goes all-out with the bonus features. Our family’s favorite is the six “Sing-A-Longs”; drawing from the My Little Ponytheme song, four songs from the movie, and a bonus song, the lyrics show along the bottom of the screen and turn pink as they are sung. A short prequel to Twinkle Wish Adventure “Waiting for the Winter Wishes Festival” is included along with “Elefun andFriends” is a 22-minute vintage-primitive animated cartoon that also focuses on the theme of friendship. The DVD also contains four holiday printables in .pdf format, and access to downloadable pony activities. No scene selection navigation is found on the disc however.

At 81 minutes running time My Little Pony – Twinkle Wish Adventure contains all the pink holiday party fun a little girl could hope for. Something I’ve discovered is that you can’t go back in time – in all honesty I found the film a bit inane – my children love it though. This is one to pop in and head while you tackle some overdue chores, it’s not at all appealing to adults (no matter how much we loved My Little Pony as kids), but it’s a fun, light-hearted movie for the little ones.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT AMAZON.COM!

CONTEST DETAILS:

Thanks to Shout! Factory I have 2 copies of My Little Pony: Twinkle Wish Adventure to give away to two blessed winner sin the U.S. or Canada!  To enter, simply leave a comment and let me know why you’d like to win!.

For additional entries:

1. Subscribe to this blog for updates – see the left hand sidebar. Leave an additional comment letting me know you’ve subscribed (or if you already subscribe).

2. Write a post on your blog promoting and linking to this contest. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

3. Add the Quiverfull Family button (see the code box in the right hand sidebar under BUTTON UP!) to your blog’s sidebar, or let me know if you already have the button displayed. Leave an additional comment with a link to your post.

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Each additional step taken counts for 1 additional entry. A total of 6 entries are available if you complete all of these steps. Please leave a separate comment for each entry!

The contest will close at 12 a.m. MST on Wednesday, December 09th, 2009. Two (2) winners will be randomly drawn for a copy of My Little Pony: Twinkle Wish Adventure on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 and notified by email. Please fill your email address in the comment form when you are completing your comment so that I can contact you. The winners must respond with a mailing address within 72 hours of my email, or a new winner will be chosen. This contest is open to those living in the US/Canada.

I look forward to seeing God bless a reader with these DVDs!

Some of you might know that we’ve had some problems finding readers that my daughter (6) would actually ENJOY practicing with.  She hasn’t been liking the little “Bob Book” style readers – she’s not too keen on the black-and-white line drawings, and the small format.  She hasn’t been liking our big reading textbook.  But what she does like are some used Scott Foresman Reading readers that I got used on Bookmooch that came with some other titles I’d mooched.

What I don’t understand is how these fit into the whole system.  What I have are softcovers from 1987 that used to belong to a school.  There isn’t any instruction, just full color illustrations and simple stories that my daughter really likes to read.  When we encounter a word that uses a rule she’s unfamiliar with I just informally teach it to her verbally, and this has really been working well.  Now if only I can figure out how their leveling system works, and how I can find some more of these!

We live 1/4 mile down a hidden driveway out in the country in a rural county with a total population of 3,000 people.  As a result – and the fact that we don’t have a lot of the type of property that thieves normally go after (ATV’s, expensive stereos etc.) as a result we don’t have a  great need for a wireless security camera.  Those living in the city, business owners, or those with a lot of high value goods are more likely to need such high-tech security solutions.

The only possible use  can think of for ourselves personally are being able to see who’s coming to visit us before we open the door!  We don’t have any windows that face our approach or front door, so it’s always a bit of a mystery if we hear a car drive into our place, or hear a knock on the door.  We often hop outside to see what the dog is barking at, because you never know when you’ll get company – especially now that we have neighbors!

wireless surveillance camera‘s are certainly amongst the most high-tech surveillance devices I’ve ever seen – you can use them up to a half-mile away, and they come equipped with night vision. We could even see who was driving down the road at the end of our driveway with one of those (even though it’s a very low-traffic road).

When I was just out of high school I worked the midnight shift at a gas station in the city…on weekends.  Okay – not a job I’d want my own girls to have in retrospect.  I’d often have drunk men, strange taxi drivers, and other delinquent types coming through…eek!

Anyways, I often had folks stealing gas on my shift.  When it would get busy (around bar let out time), I’d often find that someone had snuck off without paying their tab, resulting in my filling out an official report form (yep, they keep pads of these at the gas station!)  So while most of us aren’t particularly interested in installing outdoor security camera‘s outside of our homes, there are truly businesses that can benefit from having a handful of these at different angels to prevent crime, or at least track down the perpetrators after the fact. Some of the main brands to look for are Vivotek, Lorex, and SVAT.

Okay, as my title indicates I’m just not up on gaming platforms.  We have a DS that was gifted to us by my sister, but that’s it .  I’ve seen the Wii at my mom’s house, have heard a lot of online buzz about it, but have never, ever tried it.  Until last night.

After playing with the Wii Fit Plus for an hour or so, I think I’m in love!  What an innovative way to get some fun physical activity!  Our two oldest did a bit of running too.  Funny how a bit of interactive visual stimuli can keep you motivated to exercise (not to mention some competition with my little sister’s top scores!)

I might have to, ahem, save up for one .  To those of you who do use Wii Fit Plus, have you found that it keeps it’s appeal over the long-run?  I’d hate to invest in something only to have the fun wear off after a week or two .

The night before last I was trying to explain the concept of dialects to my oldest daughter (6).  Now, I’m not a linguist, so you’ll have to excuse my explanation if it’s not exactly correct.  I used the differences between American, Canadian, British, and Australian English.  We speak the same language, but have very different pronunciation systems (even between regions in many cases), and use different words for different items even.  We don’t often think of regional variances in English as dialects, but I think they are.

For example, here’s a UK website called Bestcarhire.co.uk. Now, I don’t know about where you live, but we would NEVER refer to a car rental business with the words Car Hire, it actually took a couple of minutes for it to click.  Nice looking website though!

In my quest to read through the Bible in a year (something I’ve never before done, but think I’ll make a permanent spiritual discipline), I’ve now finished reading through the books of Leviticus and Numbers.  In a couple of days I’ll be finished Deuteronomy, and therefore, will have completed reading the entire Torah – the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

The version I’m reading is The Daily Bible, a chronologically arranged NIV.  In this version the actual laws are presented a bit differently, they’re pulled together from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy topically, so that all the verses pertaining to the laws for adultery, for example, are listed in a single location.  Pretty neat.

Something that I’ve been reflecting on while reading the Law is just how great and good God’s mercy is towards us.  So many sins that are never preached on in Western churches are included in the law, and both sins of commission and omission, knowing and unknowing are covered.  We are GUILTY whether we realize we’ve sinned or not, GUILTY of sins we aren’t even aware that we’ve committed.

Truly, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23.  By reading through the Old Testament laws I’ve been really blessed to catch a bit more of the great great grace of God, and the immeasurably priceless atonement that Jesus made on the cross for us.  Thank you Father, thank you!

A couple of weeks ago our stainless steel sink lost one of it’s ‘cups’.  I don’t know the technical name for this, but it’s the metal part that goes around the sink drain and holds the sink stopper in place.  Can you picture that with me?  Anyway, it broke out, Larry glued it in, but then found that didn’t work, so we picked up a new cup at the big hardware store in the city, only to get it home and find that it was deeper than the other side, so now our sink was lopsided and didn’t seal properly underneath.

Larry’s pretty handy, but if it were me I might resort to buying new stainless steel kitchen sinks.  Mr. Direct has super-fast shipping on a wide variety of kitchen sinks, and it’s faster than waiting for the once a month city trip!

Yesterday my brother-in-law was diagnosed with extensive prostate cancer.  Having found 3 separate ‘types’ of cancer in his biopsies, they found that on a scale of 1 – 5 with 1 being least invasive and 5 being the most aggressive, two of the cancers were rated a 3, one a 4.  The doctor recommended the immediate removal of the entire prostate, and while they are doing that they’ll check and see if it has spread – lymph node biopsies etc.

Living in Canada, hospital waiting lists can be somewhat long.  He needs to be transferred to a specialist in the big city, who’ll then book a surgery for him.  His urologist recommended immediate removal, but chances are he won’t receive surgery until sometime next year.  He and my sister have a 2 year old son.  Prayers for surgery to be quickly scheduled, peace of mind for both he and my sister, and health for him are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Our family is one of the spaciest I know when it comes to keeping time.  Being self-employed, and homeschooling it’s so easy for the days to all blend together.  We’re never sure if it’s a weekend or not when civic holidays take place, and so on.  We do try to keep a schedule that focuses upon several key events, and we try to hit them within an hour either way.  Sometimes we miss.

To help us keep on track better I’ve actually purchased a watch for my husband after thinking about it for some time!  Shhh, don’t tell him .  He probably won’t read this post since he’s pretty busy!  His birthday is coming up on December 1st, and while I didn’t get him a fancy casio pathfinder, I think he’ll be happy with the choice I made for him, just waiting for it to come in the mail now!

I do fairly well because I’m in the house where there’s a clock, but Larry is outside for much of the day – sometimes off deep in the woods cutting down trees, so it can be a bit trickier to get him into the house on time for luck or supper.  it’s most difficult when he’s working at a neighbor’s farm, but he doesn’t do too badly either in all honesty.  I can’t wait to see how much a watch will help him stay on track .

Well, we’re off on another somewhat unexpected trip to the city!  With the recent snowfall, our cows will now be okay at home for a while without us (they eat snow in the winter so we don’t have to water them – yeh, they are tough!)  We hadn’t had any snow that stayed yet this year, and have actually had a wonderfully warm November generally speaking!

So Larry is working on my parents house and putting in a new bathroom for them in the basement.  I’m not sure how long we’ll be here for, but it looks like we’re due for a series of visits until this job is done .