You may have noticed that I’ve dressed Pepper Scraps up in pink and red. This is not only for Valentine’s Day but also for Wear Red Day which is February 4th. So don’t forget to pull out your red to wear on Friday!

I want to send out a big thank you to a very lovely lady, who cam up with a great idea that blossomed into a big wonderful community! If you are joining me from #31DBBB then you will know exactly who I’m talking about, Nirvana_Mamma! You can find her on twitter, tweeting along with us, or you can check out her wonderful blog, NirvanaMamma.com !

If you haven’t come from #31DBBB let me tell you about NirvannaMamma, or also known as Erin. One day had an awesome idea. She wanted to do Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better blog. But she also wanted to not do it alone! So she decided to see if anyone else wanted to join her. She now has over 500 people that have joined in this great event and I even saw more people joining today.

Not only did she come up with the idea but she has been working like a crazy woman on it. She has just been amazing. She has been busy on twitter and on blogfrog, but what you may not realize is that she has been doing so much on the behind scenes also. I know because I tried helping her out, though Lynda from Digital Woe ended up being a much bigger help! She has been working on keeping the database of users going and been trying to make tweepl lists going and getting rss feeds set up for people to follow everyone. She has been trying to event games to help out the participants that haven’t received very many comments. And while doing all this she has been trying to do her 31 day challenges, and if you are like me you are just struggling to keep up with those, let alone doing everything else she is doing!

As you can see she is one amazing woman and I wanted to send out a wonderful big thank you to Erin! So please join me in a big BIG THANK YOU to erin! Please let her know how wonderful she is in the comments because she has to see them all anyways, because she decided I should be blog of the day for her new game and she will get to read them all!!

THANK YOU ERIN!!

MAKE SURE AND LEAVE YOUR THANKS TO ERIN IN THE COMMENTS TOO!!

My 4 top new fave bloggers:

• From Dates to Diapers
• Amundsen House of Chaos
• ChristyKlein.Wordpress.com
• LifesTiniestMiracle.blogspot.com

My 5 top twitter finds:

2 vlogging resources:

• Say it Face to Face
• Monday Mingle

Women of WordPress

WoW is a new community both Jenny @ Just Jennifer and I will be opening up. If you have any interest in this community you can follow us on twitter or you can follow WoW on twitter:

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My name is brandy. And I have a blog.

And a plea.

I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.

He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.

The holidays have hit us hard. He’s recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He’s the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.

As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren’t sure what’s happening. He’ll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what’s going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as ‘brandy’s hot awesome dude’). If you don’t pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.

I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven’t seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).

I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making- but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you and if you know anything regarding MM- please email me (my email is on my blog). This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be with the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next. Maybe it is silly, but I really do believe that positive thoughts can make a huge difference. Thank you for reading this and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.

I did.

This is a wordle made with my current feed. Make your own wordle at wordle.net

My mother moved across the country from us a few weeks ago. This is the first time I have liven so far away from my family. I had received a call on Sunday letting me know she was very sick from the flu, most likely N1H1.

I received a call from my aunt this evening to let me know that my mother is in the hospital with double pneumonia. She is in the ICU sedated on a special ventilator because her lungs are filled with fluid.

They do not know if it is N1H1, flu or bacterial. They are going to take a sample and find out if they can take out some of the fluid.

It was really scary for me when my aunt was asking if I had power of attorney.

Please be praying for healing for her.

One thing that even as a new mother I can highly recommend for your sanity as a mom. Find a ladies group that you can go and be with other mom’s and women. Someplace just for you. You can find this helpful to vent, get great advice and just have a grown up to talk about that knows what you are going through.

I am part of a Ladies Game Night and it really helps me get away and just relax and talk to other women. I’m rather shy and it’s hard for me to make new friends. And I’ve found it’s hard being the first one in your group of friends to have children. So this is a great place to meet new women and make new friends.

We are a group of twelve women and we have a large group of ladies that sub when the main members can’t make it. I started subbing for the group three or four years ago. At that time they only played Bunco, hence why I always call it Bunco. I call it that even though we have now started playing three games, rotating through the year. This year we are playing Pictionary, Bunco and Apples to Apples.

When I got pregnant I became a permanent sub and put in that I would like to be a permanent member. There is a $15/month due that pays for dinner and prizes. TJ offered to pay my dues for me as a Christmas present to me since we live on such a tight budget. That december some openings came up and I got one of the positions. I love being a member.

In December we also choose which games we play and one month to host.

This year July is my month. Since I like going with a theme I’m going with a Americana theme. (Once you really get to know me you will learn, I over do everything! And I love themes.) I am going to have mini hamburgers, potato salad, and apple pie. I’m going to decorate with Red, White and Blue. I still can’t decide on snacks for the snack dishes, so if you have any ideas of candy or munchies that are americana let me know. The prizes are pinic bags with plates, silverware and cups inside. And on the handles I’ve attatched a little “romantic pinic” coupon and a gift card for Trader Joe’s.

We are going to be playing Apples to Apples this month. We have played Apples to Apples twice, but we have always played in one large group. Which isn’t bad, but it takes a while to get someone to pick a card from a stack of twelve. I have decided to try breaking up the group into tables and do a rotating system like Bunco. This way the game will be more fun and quick and we can still chat with everyone.

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