Cute T-shirt contest!

Five Minutes for Mom just added ANOTHER cool contest to their July 4th contest offerings! Go check out these adorable T-shirts and enter to win one!

And then we wonder what went wrong with kids today......

Here's the current headlines on my local news site:

* 10 Year Old Fondled Waiting In Line For Boardwalk Ride

* Investigators Learn More About Abandoned Baby's Father

* Officials Say Funeral Director Stored Babies' Bodies

* Former Guard Kept Runaway Student in Basement for 10 years

* 12 Children Injured In School Bus Crash

* Kids Discover Decomposed Body

* Girl Dies On Ride at Disneyland Paris Ride

* Wrestler Strangles Wife, Smothers Son


What is happening to our world??? ALL of the top news stories involve children being hurt, killed, traumatized, victimized and wronged!!!! I'm going to hug my kids even more tightly than usual when I see them. What a depressing news cycle!

Another contest to enter.....

I promise I'll post an actual, real-life, honest-to-goodness bloggy post soon, but in the meantime, here's a link to a great contest over at Five Minutes for Mom.

I LOVE Lands End and I especially love their bathing suits which are stylish, comfortable and actually swimmable!!!! The lovely ladies at FMM are giving away a gift certificate for a custom-made Lands End swimsuit!!! Wouldn't that just perk up your summer???

Click on over and check it out!

Do you LOVE movies?

Five Minutes for Mom is running another great contest! Hop over there to enter for a chance to win a 6-month subscription to Netflix.

In honor of that contest, and the fact that it is (or at least was until about 45 minutes ago) Thursday, I'll list 13 of my favorite movies as a Thursday Thirteen:

In no particular order:

1. Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell. I love this movie!!! It never ceases to make me laugh and cheer for Auntie Mame. I discovered this movie when I was in college and one of my friends called me Mame for years after she decided that I was a lot like the main character. At the time, and to this day, I take that as high praise!!!!

2. The Shawshank Redemption. A nearly perfect movie! The casting, writing, directing, editing, music and sets are all perfect. I've seen it so many times and still go back and watch it again. I always tear up at the very end when the camera pulls back from the reunion on the beach.

3. and 4. The Godfather I and The Godfather II. Also nearly perfect movies. So quotable! So exciting! Just make sure you NEVER EVER EVER watch Godfather III -- a movie so bad that everyone associated with it should be ashamed of themselves!

5., 6. and 7. The Lord of the Rings series -- The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King. When I first heard that someone was making a live-action version of Tolkein's epic story, I was upset. I thought that they would screw it up for sure. In my mind, there was no way to do it justice. I've never been happier to be wrong!!! Peter Jackson edited out some of my least favorite story lines (Tom Bombadil, anyone????) and concentrated on the important parts (Frodo's struggle with the power of the Ring, Sam's dedication to his friend, Gandalf's regret for burdening the innocent Hobbit with the dreaded task of destroying the Ring, Aragorn's ambivalence in accepting his destiny, Gollum's sliver of humanity (Hobbitity?) which makes his story so compelling, etc...

8. The Blues Brothers. Great music, wild actors, funny lines, car chases, neo-Nazis looking like idiots, get-up-off-your-chair-and-dance choreography -- it's got it all! Everytime I watch this movie, I see something new in it or find a new joke that I'd missed before.

9. The Breakfast Club. The funny thing is, I saw this movie when it first came out and I was the same age as the characters. I think that it was too close to my daily life, so I didn't have enough perspective on it to appreciate it. I enjoyed it, but it didn't really get to me. Now, 20 years later, this movie really hits home. After all those years, I have friends who were in each of the groups represented by the five kids in detention in the movie. My older son is on his way to becoming a jock. One of my best friends was the "popular girl" in her high school. I guess I always though that, after high school, I wouldn't have to associate with the "other" types of people. What I've found out is that high school may be the only time in your life where you can sucessfully separate yourself from "other" people. It's harder to do so when you get older and the lines aren't as clearly drawn and you just can't get away with isolating yourself. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I associated most with Anthony Michael Hall's geeky character.

10. Anything with Danny Kaye, but especially The Court Jester and The Inspector General. I can't tell you how many bad moods these movies have pulled me out of! Danny Kaye was a genius!

11. Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan. Yes, I'm a geek. This is one of the touchstone Sci-Fi movies of all time! Perhaps Trek's single greatest accomplishment, except perhaps for.......

12. Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home (aka "The one where they go back to the 1980's and find whales to bring to the future"). This movie contains what may be my all-time favorite movie line:

Dr. Gillian Taylor: Don't tell me, you're from outer space.

Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

Well, it's funny in the movie, anyway!

13. I'm blanking on a Thirteenth right now, so I'll have to come back and fill this in at another time. Sorry!