Shoes can be expensive – there’s no arguing there.  And women love shoes – again, no arguing there.  Even my newly turned eight-year-old is a sucker for shoes.  She has been campaigning for another pair of shoes for the summer, even though we think she is already properly shod!

I recently made a new online friend named Beth of Shoebuy Coupon.  She runs a website that lists coupon codes for shoes, and she is wondering if anyone might have a coupon code for Endlesss coupons that they might be able to share with her for her site.  If you do, could you head on over there and share it with her?  I’m a big fan of sharing coupon codes when it is permitted by the issuer of the codes – not only does it help us all to save a bit of money, but it also drives more business to the store that issued the coupon.  Win-win, right?

By the way – we are holding steady against our daughter’s demands so far, I hope we can hang in there.  If she had her way, she would have far more than the six or so sets of footwear she already owns (ah, living in a four-season climate!)

My husband had been thinking about purchasing a set of a dramatized Narnia series from Focus on the Family.  Thankfully I found a link to all seven of the Narnia books being read aloud that is legal!  Thank you, WTM forums!  I much prefer this as it contains the original language rendered into spoken form, as opposed to actors reading from an audio script that differs from the original.  And….free.  How can you beat that?

Here in Alberta, hard water is nearly epidemic.  The water in the big city of Edmonton isn’t too bad – middling hard I’d say, but out in the country where the water is drawn from wells it can be terribly hard!  I suppose that it isn’t much different from what people who live further south than us face, leading to a demand for Austin whole house water filtration systems. When your water is so hard that it is red with minerals, you know you need filtration or SOMETHING so you can do laundry!

One of our current read alouds (for Canadian studies) is Owls in the Family – hilarious by the way!  Sooo, when I saw this giveaway going on for owl pellets, I knew I had to enter.  Seriously, we have been wanting to dissect owl pellets for SO long!  Ahem.  Doesn’t everyone?

If you want to take a shot at winning some owl pellets too, you can enter here.

Here in Alberta where we have winter for oh…six or seven months out of the year, very few of us feel the need for Autumn AC. This is an Austin company though, where it is SO much hotter than it is here, so I can understand the pressing NEED!  We often have snow in October, so not a big need for autumn air conditioning up here .

We have a winner for our recent Rebecca St. James CD giveaway (I Will Praise You)!  Congratulations to Erin C.!  Erin won with her entry for putting the Quiverfullfamily.com button her blog!  I’ve emailed you Erin, please respond within 72 hours with your mailing address so I can get this great worship CD heading your way!

The economy in the US doesn’t seem to be turning around very quickly.  Here in Canada we have also had some economic downturns but things seem to be stabilizing a bit thankfully.  I think we can hang in there, but I know many of our neighbors to the south are just hanging on my a thread.  I can see why there is more and more of a need for Hammond Indiana bankruptcy attorneys. As a culture we truly need to turn away from ‘pretend money’ and spend in accordance with our earnings. THAT is the root of all these economic problems.

Here in Alberta we visit with a homeschooling facilitator twice a year and yesterday was our last visit for this year (our second registered year).  We love our facilitator from Education Unlimited, they specialize in traditional (parent-directed) homeschooling.  She comes, we chat, she asks Kaelynn some questions, she draws up her reports on what we have been doing since the last time she visited, and then she goes home (or to the next family’s house) .  I’m so thankful to be working with a board that can translate my verbal discussions of what we have been doing in our homeschool into a format that the provincial government can understand!  The girls always really enjoy her visits as well.

Everyone should have a good veterinarian business card in their pocket – especially if you live on a farm and have livestock.  Of course not all vets do livestock anymore!  The small animal market seems to really be where things are hopping these days, especially in urban centers (for obvious reasons).  Oh, JamesHerriott!  The world needs you now!  Ahem.  If you are looking for a small animal vet though, these Austin veterinarians have all the high-tech gear.

Frozen along with her parents in order to endure the trip to a new planet as settlers, Amy finds herself traumatically woken long before her journey is scheduled to end. Finding herself in a strange society run by a dictator, Amy struggles to adjust to shipside life and the warped mores of those surrounding her. Finding an ally in Eldest – the boy next in line for the guiding role of life on the ship – she seeks to uncover the identity of one who is thawing settlers prematurely, leaving them to drown in their stasis fluids.

Written in a brisk, contemporary style, Across the Universe maintains a thundering pace throughout the novel. Though it is a large book, there is a lot of white space on each page, few words, and short chapters that enhances the feeling of flying through this work. From the time I opened its first pages I zoomed through the novel – it is very compellingly written.

While written for young adults, Beth Revis’ work is just as fun for adults who long for a fun dystopian read of cryogenic stasis, deep space travel, and a totalitarian society. Though I can’t giveaway all of the plot elements, some of them were fairly predictable for the type of book this is. Though billed as a surprising read, I can’t say that there were truly any plot point reveals that I didn’t see coming a long way out. That being said, I have read much science fiction, giving me at an advantage over most young adults. If they are just getting started with the genre, this may be a more unique read for them.

Since this book is not explicitly Christian and published by a mainstream imprint, I was surprised to find some positive references to faith and God within the pages of this text. Normally I’ve found much mainstream sci-fi and fantasy to be somewhat antagonistic towards the faith, so this was refreshing.

Parents should be aware that there is an intense emotional/romantic thread between two of the teenage characters. It is kept very clean compared to most YA fiction but the emotional attachment and longing is vividly presented. There are also some disturbing scenes – an attempted rape that is somewhat detailed (though not obscene) among them – that should be kept in mind when determining whether your child should read this book.

The delicate romance, the struggle of the main characters towards a moral good that is not based purely upon utilitarian principles, and the battle to overcome the darkness within ones own soul are all well drawn out in this dramatic coming-of-age novel.

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