A Note About Blogging...

while pregnant...

while working...

with a three-year-old...

and a husband...

and two dogs and a rabbit...

So, just a quick note about blogging.  I used to blog while relaxing and winding down after a long day in the evenings.  I used to blog while watching tv at night after Katie Anne was asleep.  I used to stay up until 10:00 or 11:00 at night and get lots of things, including blogging, done.

None of the above statements is currently true.  I am too tired to do anything except collapse in a heap after Katie Anne goes to bed because a) she's going to bed a lot later - like 9:00, b) Saunders has had a lot to do in the evenings lately, meaning I'm on my own a lot of nights, and c) end-of-the-year kindergarten is an exhausting venture!

So, I am still blogging - and I'm still taking pictures of things as I go - but I may be a Weekend Updater for the next five weeks until school gets out!

An Apology...

... for my complete and utter lack of blogging!  

I have been so tired for the last two or three weeks that I haven't even opened my laptop most evenings after work.  Usually, I do all my internet surfing or projects or hobby stuff after Katie Anne is in bed, but for the vast majority of the last few weeks, I've been getting in bed as soon as - or even a few times before - Katie Anne does.  Don't feel like you, internet friends, are the only thing that's been neglected ... my house looks a little like a junk pile, we've eaten a whole lot of to-go food, I've got fabric that I bought over a week ago still sitting in the Hobby Lobby bag, my poor husband spends his post-8:00 evenings completely alone, KA and I haven't started our Valentine's projects, and the list goes on.  It has just been all I can do to get up in the morning, work all day, and take care of Katie Anne until bedtime.  By 7:30, I'm completely wasted.

This pregnancy has been very, very different than last time.  I've been much more tired - although I think a big part of that is just that I can't nap after work as I could last time.  Also, kindergarten is a much more energy-zapping day job than fourth grade was ... I am just on my feet much more with five-year-olds than I had to be when I taught nine and ten-year-olds.  Plus, having a busy almost-three-year-old to take care of at night significantly reduces my relaxing abilities!  :)   

I've also had some serious "morning" sickness, which I never had with Katie Anne.  Morning ... haha - what a joke!  It is a twenty-four-hour feeling that I could just get sick at any time, and it gets worse when my stomach gets empty.  That constant feeling of nauseousness makes me very worn out, and I do actually get sick - a lot of times in the middle of the night - about three or four days a week, so that's no fun.  Plus, I've had a horrendous cold for the last week, and I have just felt miserable, miserable, miserable.

But, I'm hoping that I see a light at the end of the tunnel.  I'll be 12 weeks tomorrow, and I am really hoping that- when this first trimester ends- they'll be some kind of bell that rings or light that shines from Heaven or something, and I'll feel so much better.  I am already feeling a little better - some of those beginning symptoms are going away, and I'm recovering from my cold.  So, hopefully a much better second trimester is on the way!

NaBloPoMo ... Another year in the books!

Well, one more November in blogging land, and I've successfully completed another NaBloPoMo challenge!  I posted every single day in November - actually, this will make my 46th post in 30 days.  I actually beat my post record for last year's NaBloPoMo month... 44 in 2008 vs. 46 in 2009.  However, nothing I did this November came close to the excitement of this time last November.

I am proud of myself this NaBloPoMo round, even though I didn't pass out or have seizures or anything.  I finished the drill despite sooo many internet connection problems... many evenings, I had to start a blog entry, and then "Work Offline" when the internet dropped its connection mid-post, and I would leave my laptop up and running all night to catch the internet connectivity wave as it rolled back through in the middle of the night.  Anyway, let's not go into all that... certainly not with my precious hubby, who says the internet always works for him and this only happens to me. Weird.

I will say that I've enjoyed the challenge... and I've enjoyed looking at all the frequent postings by other NaBloPoMo participants.  However, it will be nice to not feel the pressure of must ... post ... every ... day.  As I say that, I should also add that you shouldn't be surprised if I post 46 times this month as well ... our December is just jam-packed with holiday activities!

Regardless of all the idiosyncrasies of technology, I did it - NaBloPoMo #2 is one for the record books!

A Shameless Plug!

Today's NaBloPoMo post is simply a shameless plug for my secondary blog! 

 http://mrs-jones-kindergarten-blog.blogspot.com/

I have a classroom blog for parents to see pictures of my students doing fun things at school, going on field trips, and more.  I was hosting my blog through the school's website, but I actually filled up the photo size limit several weeks ago - yikes!  (I do take tons of pictures of my kids at school.)  So, I've moved the blog over to a Blogger location, and I'm much happier with it.  The problem is that Blogger is blocked by the net nanny at school, so I have to do all the posting on the classroom blog at home.  That does stink, but I think the parents and kids really enjoy looking at it from home and seeing all the fun stuff we do.

How to Get Cute Pictures of a Toddler

Take pictures at a 10:1 ratio. That's my main tip.

Are you wondering how to get cute pictures of a toddler?
(Assuming you think I take cute ones of Katie Anne ... and I do, so there's no arguing that.)

As Katie Anne showed with Hoppy, you've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince, and you've got to take a lot of silly and strange pictures to catch a good one. I take about 10 pictures of Katie Anne for every one I actually use on the blog or in her scrapbook. When she was a baby, people used to ask how I got all these great pictures of her looking at the camera and smiling. I would say, "You should see the 400 that I took that week of the back or side of her head!"

Or, the ones like this...

I have noticed that professional photographers just snap-snap-snap away, while most amateur photographers try to pose for the perfect one or two shots. So, I take a page from the pros' book and just shoot. I love to use the continuous setting on my camera. I also set up the camera to take a shot every ten seconds while we're crafting or whatever, and then I just leave it alone on the table while we work. Deleting is free!

There is quite a bit of charm in the silly ones, though. So, I got the idea this afternoon for a little photo illustration of the process I go through to get a few smiling-into-the-camera pictures!

Mom, seriously ... we're done here.
"Go, go -yes, I think go. The joyfulness is over."
(Who can place that quote?)

Boo... Our Internet Service Stinks!

Our internet service has been horrible these last two weeks. About two weeks ago, Comcast sent out contractors to dig around in our neighbor's yard, and our phone and DSL internet service has been spotty ever since. It magically cures itself from time to time for an undeterminable amount of time. Maybe an hour, maybe five minutes. I really haven't had internet access since Wednesday morning! So, I haven't been able to update my blog since Tuesday. Boo! I've got a big project to do online this weekend that has to be done by Sunday night, so I don't have time for an update now. But, I really hope to update soon!

Wow - The Thrifty Chick

One of my favorite blogs is The Thrifty Chick. Stacey, a stay-at-home mom of four, runs this blog, and I love her ideas, tips, and tricks. I originally found her blog while looking for personalized board games - she's got great tutorials on making personalized checkers, Yahtzee, etc. I've enjoyed reading about all her projects, and there are many things on her blog I want to try.

She hasn't posted much in the last two weeks because she has a new baby, Greyson, who's only 14 days old. Today, when I logged onto blogger, I saw she'd updated. However, when I read the blog post a few minutes ago, it wasn't a post from Stacey - it was a post from her sister, saying that she'd unexpectedly passed away on Monday after having a stroke. Even though I only know this woman through blogging, I am so saddened by this! The pictures of baby Greyson she posted only a few days ago now just break my heart - he got to spend less than two weeks with his momma! Her four children are all young- 8 and under.

For all you crafters out there, I recommend checking out Stacey's blog while it is still available. I'm not sure how long all her great ideas will be there now that she's passed away. I will really miss reading about her new ideas. My thoughts are with the Wolfley family!

A Note about Vacation Posts

My apologies if you're thinking, "Dear Lord, Katie's doing an overload of vacation posts! Multiple posts per day? Why doesn't she just do a summary Smilebox slideshow and call it a day?"

Well, dare I say it? I'm about... (...gasp...) ...8 months behind in my scrapbooking. That's right... eight. There's just no way I can stay caught up on all the pictures I take if I scrap them all, even by saving the time I do through doing them digitally. And, when you throw in other hobbies and chores and things, I am just woefully behind. I also have to consider how I'll ever keep up with it once I have another kid, too!

I hope to remedy this situation by changing my format a little bit and going with partial scrapbook/partial photoalbum option that Archiver's now carries. (I'm sure I'll go into more detail on that later once I start/buy the pages.) But, until then, I am using the blog as a pseudo scrapbooking memory record/event diary/list of pages to do.

So, feel free to scroll through my high volume of posts and just hit the high points if my over-blogging occassionally wears you out. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to follow every move we make and see every cute picture we take ... this is "Keeping Up with Us" after all ... but I can understand a rare day of blog-reading exhaustion, and I will forgive you for skimming. :)

My New Album

Kelly tagged me on Facebook to do this little activity to create my own random concept album. I'd seen a couple of other people's posted on there and thought it was neat! So, my new band is Charlottetown, the title of our first album is "You live, if you do...", and the picture is a shark egg. I tagged some of you on Facebook, but all of you should give it a try and post it on your blog!

Here's the directions...

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random” or click
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations" or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or another editing program to put it all together.

Google Says...

Okay, I got tagged in a note on Facebook that's "Google Says". I thought I'd do it on here instead of on Facebook because I thought it would be a funny blog post and because I don't want to tag a bunch more people who have to do it on Facebook.

The premise is that you put your first name, plus the given phrase, in Google and search it. You just type whatever comes up first in the search. Easy! Here goes...

Q: Type in "[your name] needs" ...
Katie needs hula lessons!

Q: Type in "[your name] looks like" ...
Katie looks like an oompa-loompa with t!ts. (Hilarious!)

Q: Type in "[your name] says" ...
Katie says "iron" in a funny way.

Q: Type in "[your name] wants" ...
Whatever Katie Wants. (True!)

Q: Type in "[your name] does" ...
This site provides a great overview of EVERYTHING Katie does. (This could also describe this blog.)

Q: Type in "[your name] hates" ...
Katie hates her hair. (Interesting how the random searches are bringing a lot of truth with them...)

Q: Type in "[your name] asks" ...
Katie asks Howard Dean about Green Video.

Q: Type in "[your name] goes" ...
Katie goes to Tokyo.

Q: Type in "[your name] likes " ...
Katie likes her Binkie.

Q: Type in "[your name] eats " ...
Katie eats a potato bug.

Q: Type in "[your name] wears " ...
Katie wears the trousers in our marriage. (Hahaha!)

Q: Type in "[your name] was arrested for" ...
Katie was arrested for peeing in public in Times Square in New York on New Years' Eve. (Hilarious again!)


I won't tag anyone so no one is forced to try it, but blog it if you want to! I'd like to see other people's results!

My Blog in a Nutshell

Through Sharon's blog, I saw a cool thing called Wordle. In Wordle, you put the url of your blog, and it will bring up a "word picture" of your blog. I thought this was SO NEAT! Some of the words are totally random, like copy or take or every. But, I did love it that the big words were our names and things like love, family, pictures (duh), and balance, work, play! I think this Wordle overall is a perfect little "picture" of what's important on my blog. Here's my Wordle for this blog... click on the little picture to bring it up larger.


I will admit I used one cheat... I removed the word "Sven" from my Wordle. It was DOMINATING the whole thing! I don't know why... I guess because it has so many comments on my blog right now or something?

Follow up- I just redid my Wordle to show Saunders, and it must have something to do with what you've posted recently, because "microwave" now dominates my Wordle! :)

Time to Party, Time to Celebrate...

NaBloPoMo is OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(a little song I'm singing in my head) - I did it, I did it, even with mono, I did it!

I posted every stinkin' day of November, and today's the final day! Jillian threw down the challenge, and I accepted, and now I've finished the drill! I've even posted twice a day sometimes... I think this is my 44th post of the month. I have enjoyed posting every day, but I will say that I'm glad it is over. I'll still post a lot, just like I did before the challenge started, but at least I won't have to do it every day if I don't feel like it.

So, to those of you that have posted every day in November - I think Jillian, Jennifer, and Kelly have done it - and those who made a valiant effort, here is an "official" NaBloPoMo completion seal that I have for you to put on your blogs!

We did it!

Says Yoda

Uncle Sam Says...

Every Day - Or Else...

Mayview Says...

NaBloPoMo!

My sister-in-law Jillian informed me that November is National Blog Posting Month (or, when it goes by its much more fun nickname, NaBloPoMo!). So, the goal is to post once a day for the entire month of November.

Jillian has thrown down the gauntlet, and I have accepted the challenge! We are going to try to make at least one post to our blogs every day during November. Luckily, I was just thinking this morning that I'm so behind on posting... I've got several little photo sessions backed up that I want to post about, so I'm good for the next couple of days!

So, I would like to challenge all of my blogging friends to take the NaBloPoMo Challenge and make one post per day this month! Instead of a walk-off ala Zoolander, let's have a blog-off! Woohoo- Let's do it!