5 Favorites!

Linking up with the lovely Hallie this week for Five Favorites!

UNO

People who link their blogger accounts to their email addresses!

I'm just going to send you over to Grace's for the tutorial, because that's how I discovered my email wasn't linked.  (Also yes, I may be addicted to linking to Camp Patton lately...)

But seriously, I LOVE getting comments on this blog, and I try to respond to as many as possible and I didn't realize that tons of my email responses were just getting emailed into the noreply-comment@blogger.com abyss!  So if I ever didn't respond to your thoughtful comment, it's because I DID respond via email but I didn't realize your blogger profile wasn't linked to your email!

Do yourself a favor though, and link it up!  Because then you don't have to check someone's post that you commented on just to see, "Hey, did they respond?" because half the time you know you (I) forget to check and that poor little comment thread dies right there.

But if your email is linked, you can end up with a beautiful, 41-email-long comment extravaganza without having to check Blogger every 30 seconds!

You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

DOS

 

My Ergo baby carrier - I've been using it TONS lately to wear the babies on my back (one at a time :P) while doing everything else around the house.  Mary Claire almost ALWAYS falls asleep, and it helps free up space for Cecilia in the double stroller, since she's the slowest walker ever and we've been taking lots of walks lately.

 

 

I can nurse a baby in it while cooking, too!  And it's such a pretty blue and green :)  I was really a fan of the Mei Tai we borrowed when the twins were littler, and the sleepy wrap was good for that stage too but now that they're bigger I reach for the Ergo a lot more often because it's a lot more comfortable for me to wear.

 

Mary Claire fell asleep on my back while I was making taquitos from scratch.  Yes, twin moms, you WILL have time to cook again!

 

TRES

 

 

 

Books.  All of them.  I never understand how it has to be recommended that you read to your child for 20 minutes a day - I'm lucky if I can get away with only 20 minutes!

 

We love books a LOT in this house, as you can see from the children's early morning pre-breakfast choices.  Cecilia's?  Carl's Afternoon in the Park.  John Paul's?  Latin chant in Andrew's Missal.

 

And today I stopped by the library on the way home from work to choose some new books for the kids and you should have SEEN John Paul's face when he saw the stack.  "BOOKS???" he squeaked excitedly!

 

QUATRO

 

Consignment shopping

 

We hit up one of our favorite stores (check them out if you're in the Northern VA area) to pick out insane amounts of clothing for the kids at ridiculously low prices.  I LOVE it because everything's in style and sorted better than thrift stores and there's none of the intense craziness that you deal with at those seasonal consignment sales.

 

And I feel comfortable letting the kids pick out some of their own clothes when things really don't cost very much.  Cecilia's favorite pick?

 

 

Her new (to us) Gymboree pink polo shirt dress with embroidered frogs.

 

Those legs are a story for another day...

 

CINCO

 

Zulily!

 

Okay, if you're not already a member and you want to be, you can click my link and if you buy anything I'll get some credit (no extra cost to you, don't worry!) which will be awesome because they have SO much cute stuff!!!

 

But that's not the whole story - their customer service is AWESOME.

 

I bought Cecilia a pair of baby TOMS (pink with butterflies) and after they shipped they emailed me to say, "Oh shoot, the pink with butterflies you ordered was the wrong picture and you're actually getting THIS pair of pink with butterflies shoes that are PINKER with SPARKLY butterflies, but here's your money back and also $10 in credit and you can keep the shoes!"

 

So...  Free shoes because they were too pink?

 

Cool.

 

And we generally have really good experiences with the stuff we get from them, but recently I bought Cecilia a pair of dress shoes that ended up being WAY smaller than advertised.  They said, "Sorry, we can't control the sizing but here's your money back and also $10 in credit but you can keep the shoes!"

 

And on that same order the sandals I ordered ended up being way BIGGER than advertised and also not the brand listed...  So they refunded me that money!

 

I just can't get over how awesome their customer service is.  It can be a little bit scary to order things online but I feel so much better about it since they handle these mishaps so quickly and awesomely.

 

*Edit:  This makes it seem like they screw up all my orders...  I've been shopping there for years and have never had an issue until these two orders - none of these errors were due to any fault of their own, and they rectified the situations perfectly in my opinion!

 

Okay this was a LONG 5 Favorites post (I blame the babies not going to sleep until 10:20...), so go check out more at Moxie Wife!