Blu Frog Energy drink is having a giveaway that you can enter to win!  For each of the following tasks you get an entry:

• Leave a comment on the BluFrog contest page,
• Tweet about the contest on Twitter
• Write a post about the contest on your blog linking back to the contest page.

What can you win?

• BluGamer: The Ultimate Gaming Package (XBox 360 Elite)
• Happy Blu-Year: New Years Eve trip to New York City
• Blullapalooza: A trip to the Lollapalooza in Chicago
• BluStreak: A Richard Petty Racing Experience
• XtremeBLU: A Trip to the Winter X Games in Aspen.

Which one would be the best one for you?  Having already been to New York City—and knowing how cold it can be in December, I don’t know that it would be my first choice.

I think that I would tend to like the BluGamer.  That would be a fun one to play, though I already have a Wii.  I’m not interested in the Richard Petty Racing Experience, but the Winter X Games could be interesting—a neat vacation giveaway.

Do you even know what a Lollapalooza is?  I’m having a hard time even spelling it!?

So what are you waiting for?!  If any of these interests you, it’s easy to get in and you can win!

In case you didn’t know, we’re expecting our fourth child, and with that comes all the changes—though I’m not going to spend this whole post talking about how eating out has effected my waistline!

One thing that’s really neat about the Internet is that it’s empowered more people to get out ideas for a business that never would have been profitable as a “bricks and mortar” shop.  This allows for all kinds of options and opportunities that they did not have even in the last generation.

Kiki’s Fashions is one of these places—their expertise is in maternity clothes.  They offer cute, unique and trendy maternity styles for those expecting a special gift!  They also have some pretty affordable deals!

While it’s true that some of their outfits would require layers or slight modifications, they have some great colors and concepts.  And best of all, if you use the coupon code “blogfriends” during checkout, you can get an exclusive 20% off your order!

So, what are you waiting for?  If you’re pregnant, or someone you know is pregnant, you should check out this store and their deals and see if you can find something that’s right for you!

You need to see this:

I saw this handy graphic the other day and just had to share.  You can click on the image on the right to see the original, full sized image.

The green represents income and the red represents debt.  Pardon the language in the 29 year old comment, but it’s very real.  The more income we have, the more debt we accrue because of the increased spending power.

The thing is, after we get into so much debt we find that we’re in a prison to debt—giving most of our earnings that are supposed to be working for us to someone else.

This nightmare has to end.

When a President starts to move through his agenda at a lighting pace and makes more press conferences, you can be certain that something is up—or down.  President Barak Obama is seeing his job approval rating slip just as he tries to take on Iran, Health Care and Climate Change all at a record speed.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded (see trends).  [Rasmussen Reports: Daily Presidential Tracking Poll]

This is newsworthy only because it’s beginning to indicate that the President is not as popular in his policies as he once was.  Though he may still be personally popular, the more this number goes down, the more the press will be able to feel safe in finding negative things to say about him.

The press is an amplifier.  While the polls are high, everything seems great and the polls continue to stay high.  As the polls fall, more stories about difficulties begin to emerge to drive them down further.

Look to see if the press starts to allow more critique of the plans Pres. Obama puts forth—one first step would be to get on the bandwagon of the current moves to force Congress to actually read what it votes on before it puts it to a vote.  I mean, it’s only logical, and would be an easy thing to get on board with, since it doesn’t mean you have to change your vote!

It used to sound so strange, but it’s getting to be more common.  Many people are finding their marriage partners online than at any other point in time in history.  Whether it’s someone that’s local or a distance away, people are looking to the Internet to find someone that matches what they are looking for at an amazing rate.

A Little History

During college, I was seeing a girl that I thought I was going to marry.  I met her at a summer music camp, and we dated (long distance) through my senior year and until November of the year I finished college.  I was pretty sure that I was going to marry this woman, and it was my advances (trying to arrange with her parents to talk about getting engaged) that separated us.

I was living in a small town in Upstate, New York.  Not many people that share my beliefs stayed in the area, and I was pretty much the only person left in my age group at my church.  So, what was I to do?

I was talking a lot on AOL Instant Messenger, and I found a girl that I asked out on it.  Two weeks after we had been chatting, we met.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Not Just Me

I’m not the only family member to find love online, however.  My cousin, the oldest on that side of the family, used eHarmony after trying courtship and other methods, and is now happily married.

The secret, I believe, is that dating sites allow you to find people that are more like yourself.  It’s like college, in that there is a big pool, and the bigger the pool the bigger the chance that you can find someone that you are compatible with.

Now, whether or not it’s better to find someone with variation so that you can be stronger through your differences, or to find someone with the same love for sock lint you do—that’s a topic for a different discussion!

How to Find the Right Site?

The neat thing is that there are sites that will give you the skinny on different dating sites out there.  For example, want to know more about Perfect Match or eHarmony?  It’s right at your fingertips.  They even tell you what kinds of people are on what sites, and what the highlights are.

Conclusion

In a society where marriage is falling apart, and being attacked, it’s important that you take the whole courtship or dating process seriously.  Make sure to take your time getting to know someone before committing to them for the rest of your life.  If you’ve spent more time researching what car to buy than you have getting to know a potential future spouse, then you haven’t spent enough time!

We’re having our June New Creation Apparel Skirt giveaway over at Is This Modest—and today’s the last day to write a comment, Tweet on Twitter, and or write a post and get in on this great Giveaway.

New Creation Apparel is a big sponsor of Is This Modest, and they have great quality material.

The giveaway is not just for U.S. based readers—it’s also for those from out of country.

So, what are you waiting for, click on the skirt on the right to read all the contest rules, and then get in for a chance to win!

I cannot wait.  My father recently purchased a computer to replace my sister’s current pc, and I’m getting her hand-me-down!  Why am I excited?  Because sometime last year I was able to get a 120-day evaluation copy of Windows Home Server, and I’ve been dying to try it out.  I just haven’t had a spare pc that met the minimum requirements.

Every home needs some sort of backup.  Computers will fail, they are subject to “the curse” as much as the rest of the world.  The question is, will you be prepared when they do?

For me, so far I’ve been blessed.  I’ve either upgraded, or have been able to get the stuff I’ve needed to off before a hard disk was unreadable.  I don’t believe I’ve ever lost anything, but with digital photography and more documents being written on computer, I’m now starting to wonder what I’d do in a fire.

Now, the most secure place to store your files in terms of location is to have some kind of Online Backup.  Online backup guarantees that you’ll have access to your files anywhere, and if something were to happen to your pc you’d be able to access the things that were important to you from another pc.

Online backups are great, especially for those of us with fast internet connection speeds—for you can be backed up in the background when you’re not using your computer.

IDrive has a full featured version giving you 2GB of space for free, and they bust that up to 150GB for $4.95/month.  That’s a small price to pay for peace of mind!

How are you backing up your computer?

One of the biggest problems that you have when you are in debt is worry.  All of a sudden you find that you have many things to worry about, especially if something doesn’t go as planned.

• You worry about having money to pay for X
• You worry about having money to pay off your bill
• You worry about how much interest you’re paying

The thing of it is, there are ways to get out of debt, and if you cannot do it on your own, there are people and places that can help.

Whether it’s reading a self-help book or getting help with debt consolidation, there are many avenues that can help you to get out of debt and lose the worry.

Debt consolidation companies abound, but should be well researched before choosing their product.  Many of them can cut the amount a person owes, negotiate changes in interest rates, stop creditor calls and actions against you and give you free advice.

The danger is twofold:

1. These services they have to make money, so they may negotiate one rate and charge you more, or their fee might be something that will hurt.
2. These services will effect your credit rating, because you’re not paying back the amount you promised per the terms of the agreement.

Now, while I would strongly urge you to consider using a method where you budget and plan your way out, if you need help then do your research and find the best company for you.

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When it comes to sex, America is considered prudish compared to the rest of the world.  The rest of the world sees itself as liberated, without the moral boundaries that some in the States still cling to.

From England, we read this shocking piece of news:

More than 450 teenagers below the age of 14 terminated pregnancies between 2005 and 2008, including 23 girls aged 12, the statistics from the Department of Health disclosed. Over the same period, 52 teenagers terminated four or more pregnancies before they reached their 18th birthday, as the total number of “repeat terminations” hit record levels across England and Wales.  [Telegraph – Scandal of the girls as young as 12 having abortions every year]

I would argue that a society’s attitude toward teen sex has a direct correlation to teen pregnancy.  Now, most people will say they are against teen pregnancy—hence why this article is titled “scandal”.  We all agree that we do not want teen pregnancies, both for the health of the mother as well as the child.

The problem is that we’re inconsistent in that the society glorifies and encourages a sex saturated environment in which experimentation and random coupling are seen as great things.  Our movies and television shows glorify this culture, and rarely show couples dealing with sexually transmitted diseases.

Society knows that sex leads to babies, but they also want the pleasure that’s involved with intimacy.  So they seek to justify their inability to practice self control with a panacea—they require sex education.  This is so that, instead of educating that sex outside of a monogamous relationship (read “marriage”) is wrong, they can feel good giving their children enough to make them dangerous.

It’s like giving a child a loaded gun, and saying, “Hey, here’s how you pull the trigger, and here’s the safety.  Now, this gun won’t do anything without the safety off, so don’t turn it off.  But feel free to go play with this gun with your friends.”  No parent would do this with their kids, but we’ll give them some birth control and let them go out and sleep around knowing that they’re “this close” to contracting an illness they’ll either have for the rest of their life or kill them.

Is that knowledge really that beneficial without the moral guidepost, or does it do more harm than good?

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