***Bon Voyage!!***

I am so ready for this beach you have no idea.

I am ready, ready, ready to go!!!

But first,

I have been using Bloglines for long time to check the latest posts. My list started small, grew to average, then to large, and extra large. I was reading a lot of design blogs, craft blogs, idea blogs and just blogs I was interested in! I love most of the ideas I saw, did I do any of them? NO!

It became overwhelming when I would skip a day of reading and there would be like 120 posts to catch up on. Let's not even talk about how many there would be when I would go out of town. I know there is no way I will want to read over 1000 posts when I come home. So, I cleaned out my list. If you are on my sidebar I read your blog through bloglines, unless of course it is private. I will continue to do so.

To all those others, who really were a way to help me waste my time....GOODBYE!!! I do NOT want blogging to be something to weigh me down. It only felt right to clean out since this month for me has been all about Spring Cleaning!

I feel a great weight, obligation, and self induced pressure lifted off my commenting and reading shoulders. I will read your blogs when I return, but I may not able to comment on all of them.

Until then I am signing off!

Have a wonderful Weekend and next week for that matter!

Spacing Off a Bit

Happy Birthday to my blog....about a month ago! I swear I am not on top of things lately. I wanted to do a 100 things about me at 100 posts. I forgot. I decided to it at 200 posts. Nope. Forgot again!

I wanted to at least acknowledge the one year anniversary of all this wonderful craziness, we call blogging. Didn't do it. I guess for my real b-day I will post the anniversary montage I never got around to posting! Sheesh!!

This week I won't be posting a lot. I am packing, packing, packing. Did I mention packing? Oh yes I will be "leaving on a jet plane" and "sailing." Of course, I do like to blog most when I am wanting to procrastinate something I hate to do. Did I mention packing? For me. For Jeremy. For 10 whole days away. Packing for my kids. All the toys, clothes, and entertainment they will need to keep them occupied at J's Mom's house.

I can't complain a whole lot, because I know I will have a great time. It is just the major preparation that comes along with it all. I just try to think of all those undisturbed nights of sleep. No baby crying. No S crawling in my bed EVERY night at around 3:00 a.m. No M waking up at 6:00 a.m. wanting breakfast and a drink. To sleep in will be wonderful!

To answer what happened to my little one, M was helping us put the grocery sacks in our cart as the cashier filled them up. She turned around real quick and slipped in her flip flops. Before she could brace her fall with her arms, she smacked her face into the black shopping cart buffers on the side of the register stand. ( I guess you call it)

Why does a black eye look worse before it starts to get better? I got quite a few looks today walking around with my obviously bruised faced child. M was so funny! She kept saying, "Mom everyone loves my purple shirt!" Or purple eye I would muttered under my breath. Thankfully at four she is more intrigued than embarrassed by it.

This is Why...

...my kids will NOT be wearing any of these...

To one of these...

ANYMORE!

Those floors are way too darn slick.

It is 2008, right??

Last night it was the 1980's. Not for me, but for a lot of people. Jeremy was excited when a favorite band of his was actually coming to town. He bought 5 tickets. One for himself, Three for friends. One for me?

The band...Def Leppard!

I am not a huge fan, but I did exist in the eighties, so do know some of their songs.

I tried to get out of it, even up til the last minute. After a long day with kids, I want a relaxing evening. Not one filled with electric guitar. I just couldn't get out of it.

I went and it was actually fun! We enjoyed ourselves. The crowd was a bit older, but that made it more entertaining. You know how you can tell the age of the crowd? There were more cigarette lighters waving in the air than cell phones.

Definitely a blast from the past!

Ugh!

As much as I hate to do it, I have to put word verification back up on my blog. I have been known to occasionally get frustrated at attempting more than twice to get word verification right. I took it off to make commenting on my blog easier. But, I am tired of deleting the large amount of spam comments I have been receiving lately. Sorry for any inconveniences.

It's Springtime

So they say.

Some days it is beautiful and other days it is cold!

It is April, right?

We have been taking advantage of all the nice days. The girls were happy to pull out their bikes from storage.

We really need to work with M to get those training wheels off.

We need to help S get stronger legs, so she can pedal the big girl bike.

E is just fine on her Dora riding toy.

Needless to say, it will be a while before we take leisurely family bike rides.

Sand Dunes

M.I.A.

I don't think I have ever gone 11 days without blogging, but it is possible. We have been busy around here. Not too much of it is worth sharing. I have been Spring Cleaning!

It hasn't been the most joyful experience, but I feel so accomplished after the task is complete. It started off with the cleaning out of the kids closets. I had to put away the Winter stuff and bring out the Spring. To pack up winter I had to create a few piles. One for baby stuff that nobody can wear anymore (this pile we are saving just in case). One for clothes that can be worn in the future by at least one of my girls. Another pile for things that could be trashed. The last pile is the "Good Will or Garage sale pile. " Although this year, I have to say, I am thinking dumping it somewhere where someone else has to go through it and price it.

I have been cleaning out cabinets too! We have one area that is our catch-all. I dreaded going through this cabinet the most. It is where we throw anything and everything we don't want to deal with at the moment. The counter right below is almost just as bad. We throw everything there to be "taken care of later."

Here is the before pictures of our catch-all area.

(Sorry this picture is blurry.)

After some time of working together here is the after.

I also went through all my clothes, why do I keep so much stuff? I know there are things I will never wear again but still I hold on to them. I still had shoes from my Senior Homecoming. Why?!? I loved them, the perfect shade of Gun Metal Silver, but I know I will NEVER wear them again. We parted this weekend, I feel emotional freedom. There is only one closet left....My craft closet and it is not pretty. This one may take a while to clean out. For now I am feeling organized and proud for completing a post. WooHoo!

On a Lighter Note....

So my last post was depressing. I hate over thinking things. Just so you know, I have decided to stay public. I am just going to use my kids first initial instead of their names. I feel comfortable with this and I still get to stay public.

On a lighter note...We headed to Utah for Conference weekend. We got to visit my parents and Grandma. Would you know it?? I took all of three pictures without any of the people we came down to see. I was bummed when I realized this. I must admit it now...Jeremy is the photog in the family. He is way better at it than I am.

We spent some time Saturday at Gardener's Village, or The Old Mill (as we called it when I was little). It was chilly, but nice to be outside and spend time together. My Sister Corrine and friend Kim, who has a hilarious blog by the way, also came. Here are the three pictures I took all weekend. My kids, of course, were not cooperative.

We also attended a family dinner on my Dad's side. It was great to relax and visit family. I got to spend a little time with my cousin and her adorable kiddos. I have been busy trying to get in a little bit better shape for my cruise in May. The gym has been hogging a lot of my blogging time. Hey at least I am going!!

I really can't complain too much, life is good.

I have something to throw out there

I have noticed a lot lately that many, many blogs are going private. In the beginning I had thought of being private. The thing is I really enjoy the outlet of "conversing" with other women online. After having my blog for about two months I realized sharing ALL of our information was not safe for my kids. You will never see anything on here that gives away my last name or where my exact location is. Lately I have been wondering if that is enough. My kids pictures are on here and so are their names and our names. Sometimes I wonder if I am being careless.

My husband says that I am over thinking things because this blog is of no importance to anyone but me and my few readers. The problem is there are disturbed people out there who search for open opportunities such as a blogs.

So my question is should I go private or stay public? And if I stay public should I take my kids names off? I used to blog about a lot things other than my family stuff, but I have kinda done away with the other things so I know that this blog is not as interesting as it used to be. So no one may really care if I block it up. I am just interested in your opinions on the matter.

Oh and if I do decide to go private you all will be invited.