Moe & Malaya Visit the Nurse is a very unique addition to our family library.  Published by Inhabit Media, this is the first children’s picture book we’ve ever seen that is bi-lingual, in both English and Inuktitut.  Nunavut is one of Canada’s northern territories, and Inuktitut is the language of the First Nations people there.  Written it is an iconographic language, and very interesting to read!

Originally written in English by Odile Nelson (a resident of Iqualuit, Nunavut’s capital city), it has been translated into Inuktitut by Louise Flaherty, an educator and advocate of Inuktitut literacy.  The Inuktitut is on the top of each page, with the English beneath it.  Not only does this bilingual picture book capture the language of Canada’s north in print, but it also captures the setting and surroundings through the text and illustrations.  Some Inuktitut words are transliterated for English readers within the text so that we can get a taste of the language as well.

So, right off the get-go Moe & Malaya has piqued my interest and is worth of inclusion in educational libraries just because of the bi-lingual, multi-cultural aspect, but the story itself is also delightful!  My two-year-old keeps bringing it to me so I’ll read it to her, and my four and seven-year olds enjoy it as well.  Moe and Malaya are two early-elementary aged neighbours (and cousins) who take a trip to the community nurse together.  While there they learn about nursing as a career choice and the subjects they should focus on if they want to pursue a career in nursing.  This is so fun!  We get authentic northern culture and setting along with a sort of ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’ storyline.

Peggy Collins provides watercolor and pen artwork that are cartoon-inspired yet entirely culturally appropriate.  The facial features, architecture, infrastructure, and clothing are all wonderfully authentic.  One distraction was that some of the under drawings didn’t seem to be entirely erased, as though the lines had been too dark to begin with, so some faint traces of then could be seen through the paintings.  As an adult, I found this a bit distracting, but my children didn’t notice.

The story is charming and engaging with lively and memorable characters – especially Moe!  I’m so glad we’ve had the opportunity to share this story together as a family.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW ON AMAZON.COM!

I don’t have a lot of time to spend online looking for free free samples, but I know that it is a popular hobby and a lot of people do quite well with it. After checking out this website I can definitely see how it could be addictive! I just found an offer for a packet of free Emergen-C Blue (US residents only though, sigh!) We LOVE fizzy vitamin C powders, so this just proves there is free stuff to be found online for everyone, even free beauty product samples!

Many freebie websites are operated like a co-operative community and let you post any great freebies that you find online for others to benefit from.  Some freebie offers are simple to take advantage of (filling out a short form), but others have more complicated requirements. That is why some freebie-hunters keep their eyes peeled for free samples without surveys.

So often online offers are only open to American residents, so it’s tricky for Canadians like me to be able to cash-in on many contests and freebie offers, but sometimes if you are vigilant you can find those that are open to international types like myself.  Contest websites are better about listing geographic eligibility than freebie sites are though, someone needs to get on that and list US only, US/CAN, or INT on freebie offers!

EEEK!

Today my oldest daughter was getting a book out of our children’s bookshelf and discovered that it was covered with…a dark slimy liquid.

ATTACK of the rotting potatoes!!

SOMEONE….(I have my suspicions) had put a potato into a little carrying sack and left it in amongst/behind the books.  Having been away for nearly a month waiting for/recovering from the birth of our latest little one, this potato had turned to mush in the freezing/thawing process.  Our house is wood heated so it freezes up when we are away.

Blessedly, we only lost one book, but our illustrated children’s dictionary sustained some minor damage to the tops of a around 20% of the pages.  I will be looking for a replacement in case it starts to smell funny.  Our oldest daughter is heartbroken at the thought of parting with it though, and has convinced us to keep it until a replacement can be found.

Wouldn’t life be boring without these sorts of delightful surprises that children bring into our lives?

There can no longer be any doubts that technology (and the internet specifically) have drastically changed the way we live, and even the way we think.  However, I don’t believe that we often examine how ‘traditional’ activities such as homemaking and cooking have been affected by technological advances.

For example, Cooking Recipes can now be watched online on demand – a great help for visual learners who’d like to learn new cooking techniques on the fly.  Unfortunately our slow dial-up doesn’t allow me to watch video recipes like this one for Ginger Bread.  Looking forward to getting our satellite back this Spring!

Kamal Saleem’s career as a radical Muslim terrorist began at his mother’s knee.  Her daily Islamic family devotions ingrained in her young son the precepts that he would build his early life upon – killing for the glory of Allah.  His first missions as a seven-year-old saw him smuggling weapons and watching his fellow playmates mowed down by automatic weapons.  Clearly, most readers of his memoirs will have much different childhood memories than his.

Saleem (a pseudonym due to serious death threads from jihadists) shares his rather graphic memoirs in the hopes of wakening those living in our accepting (and often naïve) culture with the realities of the dangers radical Islam poses.  Grippingly written with the help of Lynn Vincent, it is hard to pull away from the story he shares, and it is one that will linger with me for a great while.

More striking than even his detailed admissions of violence and conspiracy committed in the name of Islam is his meeting with the true and living God; the only force capable of turning him from the path of destruction he had lived on for so many years.

The Blood of Lambs is easy to read and incredibly engrossing.  I have always had a difficult time getting a handle on the situation in the Middle East, but reading of major events and skirmishes through Saleem’s eyes helps me to see things in a personal, and therefore memorable way.

Perhaps more importantly, it calls us to be aware of the tactics Islamists use to deceive, convert, and recruit terrorists even within the bounds of their target countries.  Believers are called to be as wise as serpents however, so being aware of the tactics at work helps us know how to watch for, counter, and most importantly pray for those who would see our violent destruction. .  It would be easy to slip into a spirit of paranoid fear after reading Salam’s memoir, so it is important to remember that God is sovereign and holds us in His hands.

Any reader with even a passing interest in the ongoing war on terror, Christian/Muslim relations, radical Islam, or terrorism but without an extensive background in these topics will be well served by Saleem’s first-hand account and insiders point of view.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM OR AMAZON.COM!

Remember way back when…when I was only 11 weeks pregnant with Anne? We took an IntelliGender gender test to see if we could tell if we were having a boy or girl (you can read my original review here).

This is my official update!  When we took our test it told us that we were going to be having a girl, and…we did!  Anne is our beautiful little girl, she’ll be two weeks old tomorrow, and our fourth daughter (so far).

So, for us, the test was accurate .

Living in Canada doesn’t stop our family from doing a LOT of online shopping.  If it isn’t groceries, hardware store purchases, or purchases from second-hand stores, we get most everything else online.  We buy all our books online (though I get those at the second hand store sometimes too!), niche type products like breastfeeding gear, movies, and on and on!

Sometimes my husband finds great deals online for tools etc. but they are normally at Amazon.com who has Target as one of their suppliers – sadly Target won’t ship to Canada!!  That’s always disappointing, because they often have really good prices, especially when the exchange rate is so close!

If you do live in the US though, it’s fairly easy to find Target Online Coupons to maximize your savings. Target coupons can set you up with free shipping, clearance sales, discounts, and more.

Because of our geographic location we won’t be needing to use any Target coupon codes in the foreseeable future, but if you are looking for a place to start, dig in, and happy shopping!  Let me know if you find any particularly spectacular deals on items your family has been looking for on these coupon websites, enjoy!

Congratulations to Elizabeth K, the winner of our contest for a product from SootheTIME’s line of baby solutions!  She wanted to win a Snooze Wrap Plus Swaddle – Ecru.

I’ve sent you an email Elizabeth, so please get in touch within 72 hours with your mailing information so we can get this out for you.  Enjoy!

Our family doesn’t eat out as regularly as some other families might, and chances are that when we do it’ll be at a fast food restaurant rather than a full-scale, sit you down, wait a long time for your food to come restaurant. We save restaurant eating for VERY special occasions!

Sometimes these eating establishments completely surprise me however, with their lack of restaurant credit card processing capabilities. Some of the fast food restaurants we’ve been to only take cash (which is amazing in this plastic money based economy), frustratingly, some only take cash, debit, and ONE kind of credit card. I think I was at an A & W once that took cash, debt, and Mastercard, but not Visa!

Of course, there are far more options than these when it comes to credit card processing (like splitting bills, adding tips, processing gift certificates etc. but I DO think that at a minimum food sellers should accept both Mastercard and Visa.

Wow.  There just isn’t anything that will mess with your sense of continuous time flow like having a newborn in the house will!  I’ll be the first to admit that I am NOT good at keeping track of the passing of time.  I can’t remember events that happened on a specific date to save my life in the vast majority of cases.

Combine my naturally loopy sense of chronology with a newborn though and things get pretty funky!  Normally I can tell you how many days ago something happened, or how much time has gone by since a certain event, but when I have a newborn I just feel like I’m floating in a space that is devoid of time.

Right now, I’m hoping that time will pass by quickly so I can get over this cold, get through the postpartum recovery period, and get back into the swing of things, but for now, I’ll just need to keep hanging out in la-la land with my tiny baby and my other little ones.