The Traveling Toddler {Sponsor Highlight and Early Extra Entries!}

I believe I have mentioned the fact that our family will soon be heading south to Brazil. It's going to be quite an adventure, and our first traveling  experience with a toddler! I have arranged a couple of reviews and giveaways surrounding this trip.

One wonderful sponsor of this event is CSN Stores. CSN Stores has 200 + stores offering -you name it- from cloth diapers, to anything you might need in the kitchen, or any room in the house for that matter. Do you love the modern style? One of CSN's stores, ALL MODERN offers all kinds of trendy stuff for every place and occasion, including the oh so popular Eames lounge chair!

You may wonder what this may have to do with a traveling toddler....WELL, this particular toddler weighs just over 20 pounds, is not yet walking (but is *very* close), and LOVES to be carried! I've enjoyed our wrap style carrier, but now that our little one is much bigger and more active, I've been realizing that a soft structured carrier is in order, especially since we'll be doing lots of walking around in Brazil!

A friend of mine has an ERGO Carrier, which she let me try while we shopped at a consignment sale the other day. It was a great experience. I was so pleased with how well Lydia did in it. She was as happy as a lark in spite of the fact that she had missed her usual nap time.

Did you know that CSN Stores carries a great variety of baby carriers? Here's a sampling of just a few! Can you figure out what they are?

Can you look around my site and guess which one CSN Stores is going to be offering to GIVE AWAY in honor of our trip abroad? Which one will I be testing out on the trip and posting a review for afterward?

EXTRA EARLY ENTRIES

If you can identify 4 of the 6 baby carriers pictured above by browsing the baby carriers at CSN Stores and leave me a comment with your answers you can earn 5 extra entries into the March ERGObaby carrier giveaway!

Leave me another comment with a link to the baby carrier that CSN Stores carries that you'd most like to try and earn 5 more extra entries into the March ERGObaby carrier giveaway!

This is not a paid post. The opinions expressed are entirely my own. This is the second of a series of two posts including a link to CSN Stores that will enable me to offer you an exciting giveaway in March!

More Than This Monday: To be a Tree...

I've posted this poem before. I'm very slow to post my poems, as they come from my heart and are something that I don't feel like is always appropriate to make public, but I feel compelled to share this one again. It's something come back to again and again. We must abide, rest, remain, stay, be - IN Christ. Striving in our own strength may produce some "results," but only that which is the very life of Christ flowing through us will produce real, lasting fruit. It is my heart's desire to let Him live and flow through me. What sweet surrender to just yield and trust Him, and experience being what we were created to be...

I Just Want to be a Tree

I just want to be a tree.
But not just any tree, you see.
Bearing fruit in its season
with roots that go deep.
This is the tree I want to be.

For the fowl of the air
It's a cozy space.
For the victim fled
It's a hiding place.
And the weary lean
on its solid base.

On a scorching day
it's a shady spot
To the hungry it offers
the fruit it has wrought

For the weary mind
it's a peaceful scene
that calms the soul
with beauty serene.

With all of this,
there is so much more
that a simple tree
was created for.

It absorbs pollutants
that in the air abound
And breathes out clean air
to all that surround
It does all this
without a sound.

Without labor or strife
it lives its life
But from where does
the power proceed?

From beneath the earth
where the seed gave birth,
deep under the ground
a quiet stream is found.

There it firmly stands,
Raising its hands
Pointing to the sky
to God on high.

He is the source of the
light shining down
His life the cool stream
running under ground.

His life within and His
life poured out,
keep the abiding tree safe
from every drought.

Through every gust
The tree steadily trusts
Swaying, not breaking
Bent but not crushed.

And so the tree
not in words, but in deed
Points toward the One
who created the seed,
for all His glory to see.

And so my friend, I hope you see
Why I just want to be a tree.

Inspired by:

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he mediates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers."~Psalm 1:1-3


"...They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting from the Lord." Isaiah 61:3


"Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed." Isaiah 55:13

"I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener...Remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me..." John 15:1-2

*Image courtesy of The Graphics Fairy!