… For the JulieApple Getaway Giveaway winner announcement ( with a surprise! ) early tomorrow. I am having computer issues tonight. But can’t wait to share the winning getaway with y’all.

Have I mentioned to y’all that G is a very ACTIVE baby?

A few weeks ago, something very sad happened in our family – something so sad that I had a hard time bringing myself to blog about it.

We lost Thor.

Thor (AKA: “the poodle”) was Dr. Neighbor’s dog, and a real member of our whole family for the past seven years (which is how long we’ve known Dr. Neighbor). My kids loved him a lot, and the cousins, and me too. But of course, our love of wonderful Thor wasn’t in the same stratosphere of how much Dr. Neighbor loved Thor, and how much Thor loved his human in return.

It was really sad. I cried and cried.

Now Dr. Neighbor is back on the road in his van (Walden), but without sweet Thor. He’s in Missouri now, I think. If you get a moment, please check in with him, leave him a comment or message, and maybe invite him to park in your driveway for a day or three.

Aunt Betsy took J and the cousins shopping yesterday at the Mall while I was at work. They hopped the mall train

Left to right: J, Cousin El, Cousin NC

I have had it pointed out to me by two helpful blog readers that in the photo of me holding G that now occupies the header for my blog (the photo at the top of this page), the sun shining against my cheek has illuminated a great quantity of fuzzy blonde hair – hair that I never before realized existed so prominently on my face.

Oh…dear. Maybe I need to run my face through Photoshop and then re-publish the sanitized, hair-free version of my cheek… Or maybe I need to try being less vain

UPDATE: The giveaway is over, but we’ll do it again soon, pinky promise – Katie & Julianne

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Lots of other blogs do giveaways all the dang time, but I’ve never done one before. (I’M A GIVEAWAY VIRGIN! BE GENTLE WITH ME!)

I’m so, so excited to announce my first-ever Mamapundit giveaway event …..

The JulieApple GREAT Getaway Giveaway!

As regular readers know, one of my dearest girlfriends is Julianne Kinkela Applegate, mama of three and entrepreneurial wunderkind. Julianne is the brains behind JulieApple, a fantastic new line of bags for women.

In her former life, Julianne was a designer for the handbag company, Le Sportsac. Several years ago, Julianne took a huge leap, left her VP corporate job in Manhattan, and moved the family here to Knoxville, TN, where I also live. And this is where she’s launched her own company – JulieApple.

Julianne’s goal was to create a line of bags for women – ranging from small totes, to handbags, to yoga bags to carry on luggage – that are hip and look great, but that are also created with truly green manufacturing processes. And she wanted the entire manufacturing and sales cycle to be based on fair trade principles. And she’s succeeded

More about Julianne and JulieApple:

• Here is a local feature about JulieApple’s launch (plus a cute photo of Julianne working in her home design studio).

• All of Julianne’s bags are made of a really revolutionary fabric called Repreve.  The fabric is created using fibers that come directly from recycled plastic – mostly bottles. That means that if the day ever comes when you want to get rid of your well-used and loved JulieApple bag, it’s totally recyclable. You could just throw it in your plastics recycling bin. I think that’s pretty neat.

• The original (and awesome) fabric designs that Julianne creates or licenses exclusively for her bags are printed using something called the AirDye process. AirDye is the first fabric printing process that uses no water, meaning it does not pollute water during manufacturing, nor does it divert water needed for other more important uses.

• Even the wood she uses for handles and grommets has a sustainable (and kind of fascinating) source.

• The JulieApple manufacturing plant in the Dominican Republic, which Julianne visits frequently to work directly with the folks involved in actually putting her bags together, is organized around transparent international fair trade principles

Julianne’s accomplishment in designing a brand new line of gorgeous bags from scratch, and then starting up her own company to manufacture and market them is pretty damn amazing. Plus, I love her. She’s very special to me.

So I am SO EXCITED to be announcing this fantastic JULIEAPPLE GREAT GETAWAY GIVEAWAY.

Here’s how you can win your very own JulieApple Getaway Bag in the Ipanema Fabric pictured below (retail price $130.00 ).

To be entered in the JulieApple GREAT Getaway Giveaway, share your personal getaway story in the comments below this blog post. Your entry can be sweet, funny, scary, surprising, amazing, heartbreaking, or just plain compelling. The only rule is that it has to be a true story about your very own getaway, and you have to submit it before midnight EST on June 29th, 2011. Also, you need to enter a real email address (which won’t appear publicly on the blog) when you submit your comment so that I can contact you if you win.

I will personally choose the winner of the Mamapundit JulieApple GREAT Getaway Giveaway based solely on the fabulousness of the winning getaway story – it’s all about my discretion as your reader. That’s it. That’s the only rule.

If you win, I will announce your win here on Mamapundit sometime on June 30, 2011, and I will contact you via the email address you used when you submitted your getaway story. You will email me back with a physical mailing address, and JulieApple will then ship you your very own JulieApple Getaway Bag in the Ipanema Fabric.

So that’s it. I want to hear all about your best getaway ever. Tell me about it in the comments below before midnight EST on June 29, 2011 to be entered to win some JulieApple wonderfulness.

So start writing!

I am really dependent on my mobile device, both because of the nature of my work, and because I have a passel of children who have to be managed in various ways, and the texting/calendars/email/phone combo helps me do that. And I’ve wanted an iPhone since they were first released, what, five, six years ago now? But the stars have just never really aligned to make it happen. We were on the wrong plan, or I already had a corporate-provided Blackberry Storm (UGH), or something.

Most recently, for the past two years or so, I’ve been using a Google Nexus on TMobile -an Android gadget. I think Google actually discontinued that one, but I just kept using mine because I already had it, and it worked pretty well.

There are many things I liked about my ‘Droid. Mostly, I liked it really well, actually. My main problem with it was that the phone part never worked that well. Like, I’d have to tilt my head a certain way and hold my phone at juuuuuust the right angle, or people couldn’t hear me. And honestly, I had no problems with TMobile service whatsoever, although you sometimes hear people slag them.

But just over a week ago, I accidentally dropped Ye Olde Droid one too many times. And it wasn’t in the Otterbox that had saved it in previous catastrophic events. The screen TOTALLY shattered. It was a goner.

Well, at this point, various things worked out so that after all these years, I was finally able to switch to an iPhone, which arrived yesterday. So far, I like the new gadget a lot, although the screen is definitely smaller than the one on my ‘Droid, and given that I am blind as a bat and seemingly getting blinder with every passing month (I now have to push my glasses down my nose, close one eye and squint in order to read most small things), the smaller screen is proving a bit challenging.

So how about you? iPhone person or non iPhone person? Why or why not? And what iPhone apps do I definitely want to get? I already added Instagram – I am kgranju there – in case any of y’all want to follow my photostream. And E downloaded Fring for me so that he and I can now videochat with one another, since he has it on his phone.