Shop in-store and get that warm, fuzzy, springtime feeling when you…

Buy One – Get One at 50% off!

Our Spring Ahead sale starts today and is giving you 50% off your second regular-price item, with a purchase of a first regular-price item.

Click here to find your nearest store location.

Do you shop online at StrasburgChildren.com? Starting today you can take 25% off your entire purchase.  Please remember that the prices shown are the discount price…we always like to do the math for you in advance!

Buy one get one 50% off sale runs in-store only from 3/10/11 – 3/21/11. 50% discount only applies when a first full-price item is purchase along with a second full-price item.  Discount will be taken on the lesser-priced item(s).  Online 25% off your entire purchase offer runs from 3/10/11 – 3/21/11 with discount already reflected in online prices.  Shoes, accessories, jewelry, promotional priced items, and Clearance are all excluded from both sale formats.

Just for you (so don’t tell the general public just yet)…
Shop our Spring Ahead sale 6 days sooner than everyone else!

Starting today through Wednesday, March 9, when you shop in-store and buy one regular price Strasburg item, you’ll get your second at 50% off!

Simply print out this blog post and present it at checkout.

Everyone else will be extended this offer starting next Thursday, March 10, so shop early for the best selection. This is an in store only promotion (there will be a web related sale starting March 10th)!  Click here to find your nearest store location.

Regular price item must be purchased to use 50% off discount on second full-price item.  Not valid on Clearance, shoes, accessories, or promotional priced items.  This e-mail must be shown at time of purchase in order to have discount before March 10, 2011.  Store promotion code is:  Sooner11

This past weekend, we ventured to the coast for my "little" sister’s wedding! It doesn’t matter that she is 23 years old and married; I will always call her my little sister! My sister, Kylie, and I are seven years apart in age but have always been extremely close. There have certainly been times when we struggled to understand exactly what the other one is going through just because we were frequently in different life stages. She wasn’t even old enough to drive when she was the maid of honor in my wedding!

It was so exciting for me to stand up as her matron of honor (and, boy, did I feel like a "matron" compared to her young sorority sisters!) and see her take this all-important next step in her life as an adult. She married her junior high sweetheart, so it truly was something she had been waiting for all her life! They had planned a beautiful ceremony and an incredibly fun reception! I was lucky that my in-laws came to help with the kids, so my sweet husband and I could actually enjoy the band and all of the yummy food…think shrimp and grits, macaroni and cheese hushpuppies, mesquite grilled beef tenderloin…mouthwatering!

Kylie asked my daughter, Anna Kate, to be her flower girl and my son, Connor, and our cousin, Miles, to be her ringbearers. As a sister, I was completely honored that my little family was going to be so highly involved in this momentous occasion. As a mother, I was just keeping my fingers crossed that the kids would all just walk down the aisle and make their exit as they were supposed to! Anna Kate is potty training, so I kept imagining her getting halfway down the aisle and deciding it was time for a potty break. Connor gives new meaning to the term "mama’s boy", so I thought he may throw a complete fit when he saw my husband coming to get him after he had made is grand entrance. Rehearsal went beautifully! All three kids walked in a single file line down the aisle (which was way longer than I had pictured) and were all smiles and surprisingly, quiet. Rehearsal dinner was lovely, but all of the kids ended up going to bed after 11:00 that night which made me very nervous about what was in store for the wedding day!

My precious husband, Brent, had the kids all by himself on the actual wedding day while I participated in bridesmaids’ activities. What a great man to take a 2 1/2-year-old girl and 17-month-old boy to the beach, to lunch, to the restroom, and get them down for naps. He did every single bit of it without calling me and without complaining! While he was doing all of that, I was steaming their adorable Strasburg outfits for the wedding and anticipating how adorable they would all look!

Finally, it was time to wake them from their naps and get them ready for the big event! My husband took Connor for pictures with the guys while I took Anna Kate for the girls’ pictures. We met up afterwards to get a few more photos of the kids. By the time 7:00 rolled around and the wedding was starting, I was becoming more anxious about the kids’ big walk. As I took my place next to my future brother-in-law, I turned to face the congregation. Shortly after, I heard a collective gasp from everyone and saw three perfect angels making their way down the aisle just as they had rehearsed. Connor, our son, was leading the group carrying a small white Bible and began waving and saying "Mama" as he approached. Our daughter, Anna Kate was next carrying her kissing ball of flowers looking like she was born to be in front of an audience, and precious Miles, our cousin, was last, but certainly not least, carrying the ringbearer pillow. As soon as he saw his mom, Miles, tossed her the pillow and shouted, "Mommy!" They did a magnificent job, and their entrance was priceless!

Seconds later, the big double doors in the back of the church opened to reveal the most beautiful bride I have ever seen in my life! I couldn’t take my eyes off of her except to look at her adorable love to see his reaction to the beauty making her way toward him. When I look at them, I sometimes see the eighth graders that they were when their love first began. Seeing her walk down the aisle, I saw no eighth grader; I saw an incredibly strong and loving woman who was about to become someone’s wife! I looked at him and saw a man who was going to make a wonderful husband and who loves my baby sister more than anything in the world! This man was finally going to be "Uncle Clay" to my babies after my husband had always jokingly insisted that he be "Just Clay" until they were married!

Within minutes, I had seen those sweet babies walk down the aisle, watched my dad give my sister away, heard her take her sacred vows, heard my mom sniffling a little on the front row as she tried to hold back the tears, and thought of all of the special moments that had led to this occasion. A quote by Gail Lumet Buckley came to mind, "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future." The future is bright, and life is good!

I’ve been interested in photography has a hobby for as long as I can remember; at least since I was in elementary school (that means 20 years). Thinking back to my first camera, can you believe how much cameras have evolved since then! My first camera was a Mickey Mouse camera that you had to buy separate flashes for. The flash mounted to the top of the camera and you were able to use it about 5 times and then it needed replacing. Of course there were also actual rolls of film that had to be processed and cared for. Then, in the year 2000 I bought my first digital camera. It was the first time I had heard of digital cameras, and it was pretty neat to actually see my pictures instantly. I purchased a 2.0mp digital camera, and it was not cheap! Today, the camera phones have higher megapixels than that! What’s so funny, as a kid I thought for sure we would be using flying cars by now (like the Jetsons), but I would have never thought about such advancements in cameras and phones! Now we have a phone, with no cords, that we can carry around everywhere, with its own camera in it, and even access to the internet! To this day I still have a love for photography. There’s something magical about the way a machine can click a button and a moment is frozen in time, and passed on for many more generations to see.

My Grandmother has her 72^nd birthday this week. Despite a bout with cancer 6 years ago, she is in good health and has virtually no problems. I talk to her on the phone, usually once a day or something several short times throughout the day. When I was younger, she was the one who kept me until I was school age. After I was school age I would still usually go over to her house on Friday nights (along with a whole contingent of other cousins) and spend the night or bring some cousins back to our house for the weekend. Our little girl is actually named for her.

As I get older, and especially since having the children, she is always offering me wonderful advice. Last week she was telling me that, whether I knew it or not, that these were the best years of my life. That I had a good relationship with my husband-we’ve been married 10 years as of last month. We have 2 wonderful children a boy that is 4 years old and a little girl who just turned 2. She was telling me about all of the different things as they get old, and that although time seems to go very slowly sometimes, that it reality it will go much faster than we could ever imagine. She often tells me stories of my mother growing up and different Aunts and Uncles. Then sometimes she’ll tell me different stories of my growing up and stories about my cousins.

We were talking on the phone the other day, our little girl came up to me with a book calling “Up up, read please.” My grandmother heard her, and told me she would let me go so that I could read to her. I told her I would get off of the phone and read to her in a minute. Then my grandmother stopped and said “One of these days you’ll turn around and she’ll be all grown up. You’ll look at her and try to figure out where that little girl went that used to want to spend all day on your lap. You long for just one hour more to sit with her and cuddle. Realize that you have that hour, right now. Read the book one more time. Sing the song again. Do all you can so that when one day comes, and you wish you had that hour back, that you made the most of all the hours you had. You have that one hour while she’s still so small now. Go spend it with her.”

When I hung up the phone I ran to the children calling “Who wants to sit on the bed and read with Mama?” Thankfully, I heard 2 little voices calling “Me do!” I was so thankful to hear that I still had time with them, to hold them for just one more time.

~Jenny

Wow – we had some great entries for the costume contest! We wish we could give everyone a prize (and we do plan on having a special Facebook only discount soon)! In the true spirit of this election season, some people really had a great "Get Out the Vote" strategy it appears. Although with a lot more class and dignity than maybe we see from some of our friends in the political arena.

Again – thanks to everyone for playing, we plan on doing more contests real soon. If you have any ideas please pass them along in the comments here, on Facebook or on Twitter.

But please continue to share with us, even when no contest is going on. We love hearing from all of you!

Without further delay, our winners are:

3rd Place with 124 votes $25 Gift Card Unnamed Link	2nd Place with 156 votes $40 Gift Card Lola Link

1st Place with 179 votes
$50 Gift Card
Stella Grace
Link

We will be in touch with our winners over on Facebook immediately. Thanks again everyone for participating. We loved seeing your little ones in costume.

- Strasburg Children

Let’s have a Facebook costume contest! Winner gets a $50 gift card.
 
Upload pictures of your little ones, in costume, to our Facebook page and let’s all vote on our favorites. Simply share/post the picture on our wall, then tell all your friends and family on Facebook to “Like” it. The one with the most Likes is the winner!

We will allow uploads through November 3rd. Shortly after, we will announce the winner with the most Likes.

And there is no limit to how many different pictures you can like, so be sure to spread the love around to some other cute costumes, besides your kids. Although you can like as many individual pictures are you want, you can only like an individual picture one time (Facebook rules, not ours).

So start uploading as soon as you get that perfect picture!

Rules

First, please keep in mind this is supposed to be fun.

While you may upload as many pictures as you want, remember you may be spreading your “Likes” across many pictures. We will not be adding those up. The winner will be based on the one picture with the most “Likes”.

While comments are encouraged, they do not count as a vote.

You can direct friends and family to facebook.com/strasburgchildren to upload and vote.

Facebook requires you to be a fan of our page in order to upload or “Like” a picture posted on our wall. So if any family members are having trouble voting or uploading, be sure to tell them to be a fan (or like) the page.

Since we are using Facebook’s “like” system, there is no way for us to shut off voting. After we tally up the votes on the morning on November 4th, it is possible for people to continue “liking” pictures. So we may announce a winner one day, and then a couple days later another picture may have more likes. You will just need to trust us that on the November 3rd deadline the one we declared winner, had the most “Likes”.

How to upload a photo

Just go to our page (facebook.com/strasburgchildren) and click on the share photo icon at the top of the page as seen below. 

Then just follow the instructions to upload it.

How to “Like” a photo
There are two ways to vote for a photo. You can either click the “like” button under the picture on our wall or you can click on photos at the top of our page to enter the entire album of all the wall photos. From here, you will see a “Like” button under each picture you can click on.

Feel free to leave comments on any photo as well!

Good Luck!

Every year, the park close to our apartment hosts a huge Medieval Festival. This year we headed there early to avoid crowds and have some fun before our daughter’s naptime. There is so much to see and do at the festival including listening to music, watching performances of medieval singing, dancing, magic shows, and theatre productions, watching jousting matches, eating tons of delicious foods and of course, a favorite of mine, people-watching.

My daughter also really seemed to love the festival this year. Some highlights for her were watching a blacksmith work, meeting a red-tailed hawk, dancing to some lovely harp and flute music, watching the horses rehearse, making her very own crown and wearing her own medieval cape. She also enjoyed visiting with some of her little friends. The weather couldn’t be beat that day- it was sunny and warm. A perfect day for a wonderful festival!

We have lots of birds that build nests and raise their babies in our yard. We have had baby Cardinals, Mockingbirds, Robins and even Hummingbirds.  The latest addition is a family of Carolina Wrens.  Their home is in a birch tree outside our bedroom windows.  Each morning for the last few weeks, we have heard the mother and or father singing a beautiful song.  Unfortunately, they choose to begin this serenade very early in the morning.  Despite the early hour, their sweet song manages to blend into our morning dreams and when the time is right, it becomes our wake up call.

I get the first cup of coffee for the day . . . doesn’t the first cup of coffee always seems to be the best? . . . and make my way out on the patio.  Even these last few weeks of temperatures 95degrees and up with heat indexes of 101 and up, the morning air smells sweet and new.

The rabbits must get up with the Carolina Wrens, because the Schnauzers have their noses to the concrete patio, sniffing every inch to make sure they know where each tiny paw stepped in the early hours before we made our arrival.  Even though we live in the city, an occasional possum or raccoon makes its’ way into our yard and give the dogs a really exciting start to their day.  It makes for lots of running around with their noses to the ground, back and forth, running then stopping, trying to find out exactly where it went and what it was.

But, back to the Carolina Wrens. This afternoon when I came home, my husband was on the patio.  He loves to watch the wildlife in our back yard but this afternoon he was quite amused.  He has anxiously been waiting for the babies to make their appearance.  They have been chirping for several days.  Their house is so full of sticks, we don’t know how the mother manages to get in to feed her babies.   Yesterday, we thought they might be “stuck” so my husband gently attempted to remove a stick or two.  The sticks wouldn’t budge so he quit for fear of upsetting the parents who were watching from a nearby tree.

Today, the babies were peeking out of the hole in the birdhouse, but would not come out. Mama and Daddy were in other trees in the yard, chirping, singing, fluttering around, doing everything they could to coax their babies out of the nest.  Nothing worked.  We watched and waited, eager to see them as they made their appearance, but they never came out.  They chirped, sang and cried for the parents to come back and feed them.  Mama or Daddy even came to the house, peeked in the hole made some loud chirping noises fluttered around and then flew off in disgust.  It reminded me of how much we humans are like nature, even nature sometimes has trouble getting their young to leave the secure, safe, familiar home where they were born and all their wants and needs are provided. This parental “urging”  by the mother and father Wren lasted another couple days.

Finally, the young ones emerged from the safety of their birth home. The nest is now empty and the mornings are quiet.  The parents are now flying about the yard proudly watching the young ones spreading their wings and learning to fly.

Like the Carolina Wrens . . . parents have to sometimes “dance and flutter “, giving words of encouragement to the young ones who are about to leave the safety of their parents homes.  Don’t worry parents . . . the nest isn’t empty for long!  They come back and bring more with them.

July is a month of celebration for us as it brings our daughter’s birthday.  This year was her 2^nd birthday and we have been celebrating almost nonstop since the month arrived.  We started the celebration the weekend of July 4^th when we celebrated with one set of grandparents.  This year, we even had our own local celebration on the roof. 

Lillian was ready for her zoo/animal themed party when she woke up from her afternoon nap that day.  She had been talking about her requested chocolate birthday cake all morning and was excited to see her little friends.  She loved getting dressed in her Strasburg Children Day at the Zoo Bloomer Set.  We headed up to the roof to celebrate and it was a great afternoon, despite some rain showers that made us retreat back to our crowded apartment downstairs for cake and ice cream.

Next weekend we head to visit the second set of grandparents and celebrate once again.  Yippee for July and yeah for 2^nd birthdays!