Trike-A-Thon

Today the children had a Trike-A-Thon at school. All week long they studied safety, and collected money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

If you would like to host, or sponsor a Trike-A-Thon click on this link. You can also get more information about St. Jude Children's Research Hospital here.

Why Do We Have Leap Year?

Chaos, basically, without Feb. 29. Thank goodness for Julius Caesar, Pope Gregory XIII, and leap years to keep our calendar from misbehaving.

"If we didn't have leap years, our calendar would be totally scrambled," says Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., the nation's timekeepers. "Otherwise, the year would be totally out of sync with the seasons."

Why? Basically the Earth doesn't circle the sun in exactly 365 days. Rather, it takes 365.2425 days, instead of a nice round number, says physicist Dennis Duke of Florida State University in Tallahassee. Those extra digits add up to almost a full day, but not quite, every four years.

Since the Roman ruler Caesar first added a leap day to the calendar every four years around 46 B.C., "with some help from astronomers," Duke says, roughly 500 leap days have come and gone.

That still wasn't perfect, because the Julian calendar was adding too many days.

"By the 1500s, Easter was slipping back into winter, about 10 days off," says John Lowe of the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology's office in Boulder, Colo. So, the modern calendar used today dates to 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar, with its first leap year of 1584.

Under its rules, every year that is evenly divided by 4 is a leap year, except for turn-of-the-century ones ending with an "00" such as 1900 or 2100, that aren't divisible by 400.

"Without this extra adjustment, the seasons would gradually slip out of adjustment with the calendar," Duke says. "But at a pretty slow rate — about eight days every 1,000 years."

Today, about 5 million people worldwide share a Feb. 29 birth date, making them "leapsters" or "29ers," according to the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies.

"It's nice to be really different," says Bailey Cox of Merritt Island, Fla., who will be 2 or 8 today, depending on how you see things.

Either way, she'll be bringing cupcakes today to her classmates at Lewis Carroll Elementary School in her hometown.

Contributing: Britt Kennerly, Florida Today

Pinafore and Bloomer Sets

Ladybug Pinafore and Bloomer Set 0-6M

2 piece set. Trimmed in gingham ruffles, pinafore top features lady bug appliqué and matches gingham bloomers with ruffles on back.

Flower Pot Pinafore and Bloomers Set 0-6M

2 piece set includes printed bloomers with grosgrain-ruffled back and printed pinafore top trimmed in ruffles and embellished with a grosgrain flower pot appliqué. 

Cupcake Pinafore and Bloomers 0-6M

2 piece set. Seersucker pinafore top features seersucker ruffle trim and chiffon cupcake appliqué. Matching seersucker bloomers boast printed grosgrain ruffles on back.

 

Happy Valentine's Day

So far I have had the greatest day!

This morning I went to my granddaughters Valentine's Day party at her school. There were about twenty 4 & 5 year olds.

A couple of weeks ago she brought home two red paper hearts. Her assignment was to write on each card something that she did as a random act of kindness. One of her hearts said that she called her great grandmother almost every day. The other one was that she is very helpful around the house and loves doing the laundry. This is what they did with them.

Their room was decorated everywhere with hearts, balloons, streamers, you name it.

I took so many pictures, and couldn't figure out why they all looked so blurry. Half way through the party I realized that the kids had been playing with my camera and there were finger prints all over the lens.
None the less, we had a great time.

What's Blooming?

I love to garden, but since I was sick for a year I have not been able to get back into it like I would like. Everything needs fertilizer, and I need to replant lots of things. Hopefully I will get some of this done for spring.

I am most proud of my Orchid tree since I planted this from a seed. Too many of the leaves have brown on them, and there would be more flowers on it if I had fertilized it. This is not in full bloom. There are still lots of buds coming out on this tree.

This is what the flowers look like up close.

This is one of my baby rose bushes.

Poinsettias are still blooming!

Here are some of the Azaleas.

Hope you have enjoyed looking at my flowers. I would love your comments.

How Do You Get More Likes on Your Facebook Fan Page?

There are many ways to find pages to get likes on your Facebook Fan Page.

·         Type in “Facebook search” one of these keywords: like, likes, tags, tagging, ladder, ladders, or silent.

·         Find pages that are current and up to date and bookmark them. Keep building on this and get lots of sites. As you find the pages that work best for you drag them to the top of your facebook bookmarks. These will be your favorites that you use all the time. As you find the ones that are not keeping their pages up to date delete them from your bookmarks.

·         A lot of people will have shout outs with these pages. Go to them and bookmark them.

When liking on these pages be sure to read their rules. Most of them are about the same, but you want to make sure you are following that pages rules.

You will most always be asked to share their page on your page. This is important and helpful in two ways.

1.      This gets the word out that this page is now active and doing something to help you get likes. People that have already liked this page will hopefully join in. New people will see the post and become new likers for this page and join in the fun. The more likes they have the more people there are to post their sites for you to like. In return hopefully they will like your page too.

2.      Having this posted on your page helps you to easily return to the page later to see if the post is still active. You can check and see who liked you and return the favor. There may be new posts below yours you would like to like.

These are the most common steps to getting likes for your page.

1.      Select a page you want to like.

2.      Share the page on your wall.

This means hit the share button.

·         If you are using your fan page when you do this it will share on your fan page.

·         If you are using your personal page it will share on your personal page.  

·         You can also copy the address (http:) and put it in the “What’s on your mind?”  section of your personal facebook or in the “link” section on your fan page.

3.      Go back to the tagging page, and tag your fan page from your PERSONAL profile. LIKES ONLY COUNT FROM YOUR PERSONAL PROFILE.

To tag you will put your cursor in the box and click. Type “@” and without spacing start typing your fan page name. When you see your fan page click on it. It will go into the box and turn blue.

LIKE at least 10 pages above you.

To like a page put your cursor over the blue fan page link. If you have not liked that page there will be a “like” button. Click on it then click the blue “like” button below the fan page link. (DO NOT CLICK THE BLUE LIKE BUTTON BELOW IF YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY LIKED THAT PAGE.)

If you are still tagging and do not see your tag on the page you can usually tag your page again.  (Make sure you check that pages rules, or you may get banned from their site.) Each time you add your link to the chain like at least 10 pages above you.

I hope this is helpful. I would love to hear your comments. If you have any questions please let me know.

If you have a site that helps Facebook Fan Pages get likes please post your link in the comment and again where you can post your web site.

Comments are a good way to get a higher ranking in the search engines for your web page. There is a special place for you to put your link in the comment section.