Bloggy Giveaways Carnival Giveaway: Walking With Angels: Aural's Gift!

I've won before from some of the great sites that work with Bloggy Giveaways, and I wasn't planning on hosting a giveaway until I had an idea... why not give away a copy of my husband's wonderful book as a prize?

Walking With Angels Volume 1: Aural's Gift is a book that details the story of a girl that can see into the spirit world... specifically angels and demons. I know that this book is purely fiction and a product of my husband's imagination, but the tale he weaves is extremely plausable... it really changed my thoughts about how the world of the unseen could potentially work. Do saved people have angels that follow them around? What part do demons have in the physical world?

Well, in this book, the ability to see angels and demons wasn't particularly a blessing. People start to think that Aural is a bit... nutty. Anyway, I won't spoil the rest of the story, but if you would like a copy for free, just leave a comment on my blog telling me either who your favorite Christian author is, or why you would like to read this book.

I will have to add, some of this book might be disturbing to young children. It is not the kind of book I wouldn't want my grandma or pastor reading... in fact, we have loaned this book out to people at my church, including the pastor, but some of the content is best read by older people. Here is a longer review that I wrote about the book.

We will probably end up shipping this straight out from amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com, otherwise I'd offer to have it autographed. If you really wanted an autographed copy, I could manage that but it would be smoke damaged due to the recent fire.

I will pick the winner randomly out of all comments received prior to 11:59 PM PDT on April 25th. Please only enter once or you will be disqualified. Also make sure that there's an easy way to contact you... if you leave an email I'll email you, if I can't find one I'll post a comment on your blog, and if you leave no email and no blog I'll have to find another winner :( . US addresses only please. I'll post the winner here next week, probably Monday or so.

Good luck! And be sure to visit here for more fabulous prizes!

How My Babies Got Their Names

And now, for something completely unrelated... a post about how my babies got their names (it's for a contest where you can win a $50 Amazon.com gift card).

My kids are named after characters in the Dragonlance books, written by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. The characters are brave, good, kind, and are the kind of people that I would like them to grow up to be... mostly.

Their middle names come from my family and the Bible (the family names just happen to be in the Bible). My mother-in-law's name was used for my daughter's middle name, and my dad's middle name is my son's middle name now.

If we ever have another baby boy, we'll probably give him my Grandfather's middle name as the first name and find a Bible name for the middle name.

Both ds and dd do not have names in the top 1000 baby names, for any year, but I have actually met people that have these names before. They are obscure but nice. My grandfather's middle name is a lot more common, but it is quickly dropping out of the list of top 1000 baby names in favor of all the Jadens, Kaidens, and Aidens that are out there now.

So that's their story. If you would like to try to win the $50 Amazon.com gift card as well, you can go here and write your own story on your blog. Or if you don't want to try to win a $50 Amazon.com gift card but you have an interesting story about how you named your babies, you can leave a comment here... but I'm not giving away any prizes.