I’m pretty doggone excited! Thanks to Scribbit for hosting, Annette Lyon for judging, everyone for your sweet thoughts and especially those of you who helped.

Also this week, I’ve gotten my first blog awards in . . . almost a year. Yikes! So a big thanks to Ever After — My Way:

Friend Award

and Traci Hunter Abramson:

‘The Symbelmynë Prize‘

So, to hand out my own awards—and since I’m doing this off the top of my head, I don’t want to do 14 (7 a piece), so please feel free to accept one or both of these awards:

• Elisa
• Brooke (who is also (An Aspiring Domestic Goddess)
• Jane (What About Mom)
• Lindsey (My Corner of the World)
• Deb (Mom Of 3 Girls)

Once again, thanks to all, and have a great weekend—back on Monday on the path to fulfillment!

Are you totally into blogging, or your kids? Take my quiz to find out!

Of course, this quiz is not to indicate whether or not you have children, nor is it to indicate whether you love them more than you love your blog. It is for entertainment purposes only. It doesn’t matter whether you’re more of a blogger or more of a mom according to this quiz, you’re a mom and a blogger—and that’s okay. We know you love your kids more than your blog.

Take the MamaBlogga Mom Blogger quiz!

Congratulations to absolutely everyone who participated in the 2007 BlogOlympics. You have all truly shown your mettle as community bloggers, striving to interact with the blogosphere, and you have my highest commendation—and, of course, my medal badges!

Some of you, upon reporting which events you completed, underestimated yourselves, so I went oahead and bumped you up a level . For those of you who completed more than one medal, congratulations! I’ve listed you here under the highest medal level you completed (besides, you didn’t want all three badges cluttering up your blog, did you?). So when reading these lists, remember that silver medalists also completed a bronze-level event, and gold medalists also completed silver- and bronze-level events.

Great job, all—and congratulations to our 19 20 medalists!

Bronze

• Papaya Mom
• Q&Q, Organized Homemaking Days
• Madame M
• Peppylady

Silver

• Dawn, Coming to a Nursery Near You
• Michelle, BearTwinsMom

Gold

• Summer, Summer’s Nook
• Corey, Living and Loving Every Minute of It
• Amanda Regan
• Toni, This Simple Life
• Deb, Mom of 3
• Micpro
• The Bitter Queen, The Bitter Ball
• Mommy Babble
• SingForHim, Real Life
• Jenny
• southerngirlmusings
• boogiemum
• Callista
• Chief Family Officer

The Medals
To insert the BlogOlympics medals in your blog, here’s the handy, dandy HTML code you can just cut and paste—you don’t even have to download & reupload the images!

Bronze
<a href="http://www.mamablogga.com/blogolympics/" title="Blog Olympics"><img src="http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/th_bronzemedal.png"
alt="BlogOlympics Bronze Medalist" /></a>

Silver
<a href="http://www.mamablogga.com/blogolympics/" title="Blog Olympics"><img src="http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/th_silvermedal.png"
alt="BlogOlympics Silver Medalist" /></a>

Gold
<a href="http://www.mamablogga.com/blogolympics/" title="Blog Olympics"><img src="http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/th_goldmedal.png" alt="BlogOlympics Gold Medalist" /></a>

Participant
<a href="http://www.mamablogga.com/blogolympics/" title="Blog Olympics"><img src="http://s192.photobucket.com/albums/z41/MamaBlogga/th_participantbadge.png" alt="BlogOlympics Participant" /></a>

Again, congratulations to all the medalists and participants! What a wonderful effort you’ve made to improve the blogosphere—and the blogosphere is truly better for it. We’re lucky and glad to have such Olympians among the ranks of bloggers!

I did my best to hunt down all the winners; if I missed you, please contact me!

My middle name is Rebecca. I’m named after my great-grandmother on my dad’s side (well, we think her legal name was just Becca, but anyway). I really like my middle name.

Now I’m supposed to come up with adjectives to describe myself based on each letter of my middle name. I can’t remember the last time I tried to do one of these writing exercises.

R – Random. I have a tendency to suddenly jump from topic to topic in conversation. And sometimes I just don’t have the patience to go back and explain my train of thought.
E – Excited. When I first get into a project, I’m super enthusiastic! Sometimes that enthusiasm wanes long before I’m done. Sometimes I manage to finish it anyway.
B – Blogger. In case you hadn’t noticed.
E – Eclectic. Like most people, I have wide-ranging tastes in television shows, music and hobbies. I don’t think my tastes are particularly diverse, but they’re an interesting combination.
C – Crazy. Before I met my husband, one of my criteria for a spouse was that he would be willing to dance to music being played by Brookstone in the airport. (It was “Twist ‘n’ Shout.” Come on, if there’s ever a case for public dancing, that’s it!) I don’t know if Ryan would really do that, though.
C – Clever. Speaking of Ryan, he submitted that one.
A – Assiduous. Dutiful. Workaholic. Committed. Should be committed?

I’m supposed to tag someone for each letter of my name, but I don’t think I even know bloggers with all those letters. So join in in the comments! I love names!

I’ve also received the Nice Matters Award from SingForHim @ RealLife (who was featured on ProBlogger this week!) and Jennifer @ The Life of a School Bus Driver. Thank you ladies!

Just about everyone that I’ve ever contacted in the blogosphere has been nothing but nice, so it’s hard to choose just three people to pass this award on to. But the people who’ve gone out of their way to help me is a little less hard:

1. Michelle @ scribbit. She was one of my very first blogging friends and fans; which was really exciting!

2. Jen @ Semantically Driven. She helped me with one of my first tutorials by writing instructions for switching to full feeds in TypePad.
3. Kailani @ Island Life. The Carnival of Family Life was one of the first ways I received traffic and comments on my blog, and Kailani always tries to mention my latest pet project

So thank you, ladies, for always being so nice to me.

Edited to add: Deb, Mom of 3, also kindly named me as a nice blogger!

Time for the grand finale of the June MamaBlogga Group Writing Project.

That brings our total count of submissions—all most excellent!—to 39 40 (with one late entry). Even though I got a little off in my count during the week, we more than doubled from last time’s number!

All entries
Here is the complete list of entries that qualify for the prize:

• Three Things I Want My Kids to Appreciate by Michelle Mitchell
• Spirit, Caution, and Love by Corey-Living and Loving
• I’ll Settle For This by Mama Zen
• THREE THINGS…… by Karen
• The Three Pillows of Wisdom by Kate
• Three things I want my kids to… by Ingrid
• Three Things I Want My Kids To… by Stacey
• Three Things I Want My Children To… by Robin
• Three Things I Want My Kids to Say by Mary McCarthy
• Three things I want my kids to… by Sara
• three things I want K to do by CamiKaos
• Three things I want my kids to… by Mary Ann Nelson
• 3 Things I want my Daughters to know by Kasie
• 3 Things I Pray My Sons Will Find in a bride by Mommy Zabs
• Three Things I Want My Kids To Know As They Grow by Joanne
• These three things remain by wesleyjeanne
• Blessed Trinity by Elaine
• MamaBlogga Group Writing Project by Kailani
• Three Things I Want My Kid to Learn Before 18 by Erica Douglas
• Three things by Deb
• Artists, Veterinarians and Vagrants by Janean
• 3 Things I want my kids to know about their parents by Michelle
• Three Things I’d Like my Kids to Believe by warillever
• Three Things That I Want My Kids To Do by Donetta
• Three Things I Want My Kids to… by Dawn
• Three things I hope my children will inherit by Daisy
• Three Things I Want My Kids to Remember by Believer in Balance
• Three Things I Want my Kids to Say to Me When They are Adults by Ashley Hogan
• As their mother by Lisa
• Three things I want my kids to… by Lori
• Three things I want my kid to…. by Jen
• Three things I want my kids to do by Christine
• Three Things I Want My Kids To … A Group Writing Project For Moms by Laura Spencer
• Three things I want my kids to refrain from saying on our upcoming road trip by Juggling Frogs
• 3 Things I Want My Daughters To Know by Jill
• Three things I want my kids to understand. by Jo Beaufoix
• Three Things I Want my Kids to Know by Kymberlyn
• Three Things for my son to know by Jordan (MamaBlogga)

Of course, we want to give a huge thank you to everyone who participated. I would love to know how each of you came to find the group writing project and decide to participate, and I hope that you’ll stick around MamaBlogga (and not just for next month’s GWP!).

Without further ado…

The winna!
Chosen at random, the winner of our a $30 Amazon.com gift certificate is <drum roll>…

Okay, Listen Up! by bellevelma

Congratulations, Bellevelma! The gift certificate is winging its way to you from Amazon right now! (I think it’s funny that the only person who specifically said what she’d do with the gift certificate happened to be the same entry randomly picked by the random integer generator, don’t you?)

One late entry brought our grand total to 40. Thanks, Diane!

• MamaBlogga’s June Writing Project by Diane

• Advice to Mom Bloggers: Stick it
• The Carnival of Family Life
• MamaBlogga Group Writing Project, June 2007 (and also the Finale of the May GWP, and June GWP days 1 and 2)
• Get your child to go to bed with a bedtime routine
• What’s for dinner?
• You’re an enabler, and I thank you for it
• Let’s Change the World!
• Why fulfillment?
• A hug, metaphorically speaking
• Connect with MamaBlogga!

And more news: I want to thank Michelle of Scribbit and MommyZabs for nominating me as a Rockin’ Girl Blogger! Thank you both, ladies!

Now I’m supposed to nominate five more rockin’ girl bloggers (I hope that being nominated twice doesn’t mean I have to make it 10!). Man, that’s tough (especially since Michelle and Elizabeth both would have been on my list if they hadn’t nominated me!).

1. Kasie Sallee, ~the art of life~. She’s on a mission to connect with other Artist Moms and offer support and encouragement. As a blogger with a mission, I love other bloggers with a mission!
2. Shawn of Letters to my Daughters, in large part because I stopped by today and loved what I read of her interview with Karen Maezen Miller. And Shawn—zen to me is pausing to think while tickling your children, “This is it.” (I’m actually posting on something similar this week, so check in again!)
3. Karen Andrews of Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum. I’m excited for your redesign! I just unveiled a new design on MamaBlogga today (okay, so I just changed it to a three column layout), so I know how you feel!
4. Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home, even though I’m sure she already knows she is!
5. And of course, my perennial favorites: like a clear blue sky by a good friend of mine and Leezy Lindsey, by another good friend of mine. (You should both post A LOT more. What? You have lives? Pfft.)

Thank you again!!

Here are your nominees for this week’s Hot Stuff. They’re each an example of the kind of parenting we think is important here at GNMP. So, pour a cup of coffee or tea [or water], slip into your comfy zone, and spend some time reading each of this week’s nominees. Then, vote. After that, maybe a nice walk with your kids.

Now, I’m not going to ask you to vote for me. It’s just now how I roll. However, I will ask you to go read through all of these awesome posts and vote for which ever one you like best. And if it’s mine, then great!

Not familiar with GNMParents? They’re all about positive parenting. Or, as they put it, “We believe parenting (that is to say, positive parenting) is the key to happiness, because it provides children with a base of comfort, which allows them to grow. Our focus on parenting has everything to do with creating a better, safer, more pleasant society.”

Thank you to whomever nominated me!

Inspired by Todd And’s Power 150, a listing of the top English language marketing blogs, I compiled my own set of ranking factors to create a list of Popular Parent Bloggers. Did you make the list? Here they are, ranked in order of popularity:

* indicates blogs that I have read quite a bit and/or subscribe to.

Download the OPML file to subscribe to all these blogs in a feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader. (While you’re at it, subscribe to MamaBlogga for a chance to win!)

Ranking factors
The Popular Parent Bloggers ranking is based on:

• Technorati ranking
• Number of blogs linking to your blog
• Number of MyBlogLog community members
• Number of Bloglines subscribers
• Google PageRank (just for the heck of it)
• The number of comments received in a week (weighted most heavily; I picked the last week in March 2007 to make it all equal).

Made the list?
Congratulations!

Feel free to take one of the badges below and add it to a post or sidebar. Please link back to MamaBlogga if you take a badge, and please save the picture to your blog.

Want to be included on the list?
Think your blog should be here? E-mail me at jordan (at) mamablogga.com (be sure to include your blog’s URI!).