Giveaways rock!   Thanks so much for all your comments in April – there were officially over 200 entries for the April giveaway of a  30-minute facial at Blue Heron Wellness! (Value: $50) If you need some pampering and wellness this weekend, they’re holding classes and have appointments for treatments this weekend.  Visit their site and give them a call at (301) 754-3730.

And the April winner was…Lori Nicholson!

For May, wow, this month I was too crazybusy to coordinate a local business as the giveaway sponsor. So how about some cold hard plastic for your wallet?  I picked up a $50 MasterCard Gift Card for one of you lucky peeps to use anywhere for literally any little thing your heart desires.  Does mama need a new pair of shoes? A date night or girls’ night out?  Gas? Groceries?  Your choice! (As they say on the commercials, “Choosing your own gift? Priceless.)

To be entered

• Leave comments on any and all the posts on A Parent in Silver Spring in May 2010 for individual entries.
• Subscribe to the A Parent in Silver Spring email feed (in which you receive new posts to the website in your email box, typically 5 times a week). 
• Subscribe to A Parent in Silver Spring in your feed reader.
• Mention this contest on Twitter with an @jessicaAPISS so I can thank & follow you too.
• Follow A Parent in Silver Spring on Facebook so you can receive new ideas for family fun when you’re logging on to wish your ex-roommate’s brother a happy birthday!

Here are the rules:

• This monthly giveaway is totally separate from any other giveaways that I may hold on A Parent in Silver Spring or APISS Reviews.
• This means if I write 30 posts a month and you leave a comment on each one, you’ll be entered in the drawing 30 times…and um, them’s purty good odds.
• When you leave a comment, please click the FOLLOW button directly below the comment text box.  This way I can notify you that you are a winner.  (I HIGHLY recommend simply clicking the follow button and entering your email for notification of replies to your comment, rather than leaving the text to your email address within your comment – this is how you get gross spam.)
• This month, additional entries can be received for voting in Washingtonian’s Best of Washington 2010 survey and subscribing to the A Parent in Silver Spring email feed, as detailed above.
• Constructive criticism, differences of opinion = completely fine.  Offensive comments or spam = will be deleted.
• Friends and fellow bloggers are eligible.
• All winners will be drawn completely Randomly.
• All winners must reside in the United States.
• Comments sent to me via email are always appreciated, but will not be counted for this monthly giveaway series.

Featured businesses may provide the gift certificates and gift cards and swag.  All giveaways in this series will be worth at least $50 each and require no further purchase of goods or services from the winner.  (Have a business you’d like to promote through giving a gift to gracious A Parent in Silver Spring reading parents?  Send me a line!)

So please leave comments, comments, comments galore!  Write what you like, what you don’t, what you think needs to be changed, events that are happening in your community, your own great finds…whatever!

Are you Racing for the Cure?  Please say yes  and save next Saturday June 5th for the annual Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure on the National Mall.

The work that the Race does to raise money to fight breast cancer right in the DC area is incredible:

• Last year, the race raised $4.7 million for local education and community outreach programs to assist vulnerable populations.
• Thanks to a Susan G. Komen for the Cure® grant, wait times between biopsies and surgeries at the Washington Hospital Center were cut by 17 percent.
• Another grant increased the mammography screening referral rate for low-income and uninsured women in Montgomery County from 40% to 80%.

But it’s still not enough.

Anyone can sign up for the race at www.globalraceforthecure.org.  You can walk or run the 5K, and even your kids age 5-12 can Race with you!  Heck, you can even Sleep in for the Cure!

You can also participate in the Kids for the Cure short course and activities especially for the kids beginning at 8:15am in the Kids for the Cure Tent.  At 10am is the Kids for the Cure race.

I have participated several of my 12 years since moving to DC and it is a powerful event.  It’s a chance to support the survivors, fight along with the fighters during that hour of walking, feel with the crowds of walkers and runners the magnitude of the war on cancer.

This year, I’m planning to do it with my oldest. Charlie and I are going to Race and participate in the Kids for the Cure together for Susan.  And all the Mothers With Cancer. Please join us.

The Red Balloon at the Adventure Theatre at Glen Echo is a feast for the eyes and ears for families, and the perfect way to spend a retro-fabulous Sunday. See the play + ride the carousel + play in the historic park = PERFECT WEEKEND activity with kids.

The whole experience felt like a day on a Parisian movie set – we rode the antique carousel, then headed to this children’s theater production based on the classic film Le Ballon Rouge. Then we ate freshly popped popcorn bought from a little red cart, watched a wedding happening in the outdoor dance pavillion and skipped around the restored streetcar holding hands.

This is my life?  I felt like we jumped into a sidewalk chalk drawing!

But back to the play – it had a little of The Adventure Theatre’s patented slapstick humor for kids, an important anti-bullying message (literature provided at the showing about the importance of eliminating bullying in schools and clubs) and captured the loneliness and happiness of a young boy. I truly wanted to comfort Pascal…and had to remind myself that was actually an actor in his 20s up there.  Yikes. Dirtyoldladycrisisbarelyaverted.

But my two four year old girl companions and I were mainly enraptured by the whole “transported into mid-century Paris” thing.  They kept asking about the costumes, the sets, the smattering of words in French.  They loved it.  They too identified with “little boy” Pascal.  They totally got it that the puppeteer operating the balloon’s movements WAS the balloon, and I was so impressed by their imagination and theater-savviness and sophistication.

The rest of the afternoon they pranced around like Parisian models in their Hello Kitty sunglasses, and once home Eve and I went Franco-phile crazy reading all of our Madeleine books. I even stumbled through Babar in French (scaryscary). We also added Le Ballon Rouge to the family NetFlix queue – I remember watching this in my kindergarten class in ’79 and loving it!

Again, the Adventure Theatre outdid itself in creating beautiful theater that does not pander to kids, but gifts the young attendees with an experience they cannot receive anywhere else: a kid-centric production of beauty, creativity, education and inspiration.  And AGAIN they brought us together in unplugged learning as a family!

The Red Balloon was my daughter’s favorite Adventure Theatre production so far, and she was pretty darn devoted to Go, Dog.  Go! and Goodnight Moon.

But seriously, how can you compete with Paris in Spring?

Upcoming Showtimes

Showing until June 13th – exact times and dates available here

ASL Interpreted and Autism-Friendly Performance – June 12 @ 1:30pm

Weekday Fieldtrips for Schools at 10:30am, schedule here

Tickets available for weekday 10:30am performances depending on school field trip bookings

You can book a birthday party performance viewing (or a LIGHT SABER birthday party, my son covets this big time) too.

Tickets:  Adults $15, Children 12 and under $12, all children must have a seat

All photos and review tickets provided by The Adventure Theatre, thank you!

I miss being pregnant.

And I wish that I had professional, beautiful images that captured that fleeting time in my life. I have some cute shots from my husband … taken against a door that show a dusty vent and a cat walking by.  But they don’t show me at my hot mama best, or convey how happy and special is pregnancy.

If it ever happens again?  I’m going straight to Mary of Love Life Images for her to style me, light me and shoot that cute belly.

If you’re expecting, take advantage of this special deal this weekend!  It’s a great, discounted price, though the images will be priceless.  And you’ll have your makeup professionally applied by Amie Decker too!

Contact Mary at info@lovelifeimages.com to make your appointment.

You lucky lady.  I wish you the best.  And I’ll grudgingly drink your beer on your behalf.

A new trail for families to enjoy!

Jennifer Chambers of Hiking Along, Northwood High School students and the Northwood Chesapeake Bay Trail project sponsors are celebrating National Trails Day, June 5th with a hike and 5K fun run.  The fun’s happening at 10am – noon at Kaplan Stadium behind Northwood High School at 919 University Blvd. West in Silver Spring.

They’ll also be unveiling  a new green space and nature interpretive Northwood Chesapeake Bay Trail for all of us in the community to enjoy!   At 11 am, walkers will hike the new trail that connects the school to Northwest Branch Park. There will be door prizes for hikers and runners and health, environmental resource and activity tables for families.

National Trails Day is the perfect time to celebrate the eight months of hard work that Jennifer and the Northwood High School students dedicated to restoring fifteen acres of new green space for recreation, physical fitness, wilderness watching, and environmental education. They created and designed nature interpretive signs, built a half mile trail, removed 50 pounds of invasive plant species, planted native vegetation and cleaned up 11,000 pounds of trash.

Sponsors of the project included a $7,500 grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and Northwood High School, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, Friends of Sligo Creek, Neighbors of Northwest Branch and the Maryland State Highway Administration.

Printable flier here.