NEW AND LOVELY

Have you noticed my blog lift?

I would like to personally thank Cindy Bradwisch for pimping my blog. Gotta love Facebook for brining old friends back together.

Wanna know a secret?

I don't know html code.

I can't design my blog.

People call and ask me to help with blogging, and I say, SURE! Just sign in to blogger!

Maybe someday I will actually learn it.

But not when I have people like CINDY to bail me out!

I am going to send her something lovely from The Pampered Chef as a sincere THANK YOU SO MUCH for creating my new blog headers HERE and HERE. See how everything is all lovely and uniform now? THANKS CINDY!

Plus, she made me blog buttons for my new sites too! You can see them over here. -------------->

Guess what, you can hire her. Since she does graphic design for WORK! Ha! I am glad that she will let me pay her in Pampered Chef. But if you need her, go by and say HI!

"Why I" week.

Don't you love it when I do "Weeks" on my blog.. and they turn into one or two posts? Yeah. Me too.

But I always have good intentions! I have ideas. And then I start them, and then... well, life happens. You know?

So, I am going to do "Why I" week. In which, I will answer questions like,

Why do you do Pampered Chef?

Why do you work out?

Why do you care about what you clean your house with?

And if you care to ask me some other "WHY" questions. I will consider answering them. :)

I have already answered the:

Why do you blog? HERE. And HERE kind of.

Stay tuned! Oh yeah, and a winner for my GIVEAWAY soon too!

ENTER TO WIN! :)

Peek A BOO! I see you!

So I have left blog land. Kind of. Actually, I am still keeping a close eye on all of you. After all, when you are packing your life away, you still need to take a break now and again. . . and my FAVORITE nursing past time is reading blogs. Sorry if I am a little shy on the comments these days. I am visiting your blog and having fun too!

I am also keeping busy with all of the screamin' deals out there! Kmart is doubling coupons this week, and I have already done my diaper run. They had an AWESOME diaper deal scenario, and if you haven't added THIS BLOG to your reader yet, you are MISSING OUT!

I also hit CVS this week for a few of their deals. Although their diaper deal didn't work for me, it might work for you! I DID take advantage of the Candy deal though. There were some M&M coupons in the mail lately, and I got 6 packages of candy for $1.66 each. (not that I need any more candy-- HEY! BTW! I have lost a few pregnancy lbs. . .FINALLY! But still have a long way to go)

The other thing I have been doing is getting back to my passion for cooking. I LOVE cooking. Have I told you that? Oh, and one other thing. . . I have found a site that fuels my LOVE FOR COOKING like no other. . . I had visited a few times before, but now SHE is on my reader baby! I was looking at the site the other day and ooooooohing and aaaaaaaahhhing over all of the stuff on there... Peter decidedly declared the website "foodie p@rn" . . and rightfully so. So far, I have made THIS and I am GONNA make THIS, THIS and THIS! If I could have Pastor Ryan over for just a short minute . . . OH BABY!!! Moving on. . . . (Just read the blog, ok?--- Consider it my foodie gift to you)

I have another cutie pie friend who just started a blog! HI CASSI! I love love love it when people from one of the MILLION places I have lived start blogging. I love it as a way to peek into their lives and see how they are doing. I just STINKIN' LOVE IT! Anyway, she put a great recipe for bagels on there. I know, BAGELS? Yes, and they are fast and easy and fun! Open up a bagel shop with your kids. . .just for today. They are gonna love it and so are you.

Here is me. . .checking back out. LOVE YA!

Blogging BRUNCH

There is NOTHING better than eating good food with great ladies... AM I RIGHT? Seriously, I am. I had THE WORST DAY yesterday, and it was all forgotten today when I got to meet with Jessica, Kara, and Adrienne!! I know Jessica from my old hood (actually, we met each other through blogging before ACTUALLY meeting in person--even though we went to the same ward building) but she dropped me a line saying that she was going to be in the land of the sun and wanted to do LUNCH! I would never pass up an opportunity to do lunch, especially when she said she was going to bring Kara and Adrienne.



Kara lives here and I have never met her personally until today and of course our lives twine together in an odd way. I dated guys from her high school, she had cousins that went to mine, we grew up in the same area and weird, I know, now we meet via blog land! I even went to Jerusalem with one of her cousins! This world is getting smaller all the time.



To make the visit a little sweeter, besides great conversation, Kara Jayne brought me a little gift! Wanna see?

I have LONG been coveting Kara's creations from her blog. I have to admit, when I saw what it was I was completely GIDDY! I have been wanting one of her hand made necklaces FOREVER! The shorter one is hand-stamped disks with all of my kids names, and the larger one is an "L" on one side and a picture of a cute bird on the other! Double sided! Kara. . . seriously, you are super talented, and I LOVE IT. I need to add her to the LIST of super talented people who live by me! Oh, and Celia, Yeah, that is your same shirt.. . Jessica informed me that you wore it on her last visit to you! I knew we were connected in more ways that just blogging. . . shopping power, unite.

Thanks Ladies, for bringing even MORE sunshine to my day! Oh, and if I beat you all to the blogging punch, it is because I am doing a WHOLE LOT LESS THAN YOU!

And to finish this post, I need to post a few pix of little K- Just cuz they grow so fast. If you see her with that polka-dot background a lot, that is because it is the sheets on my bed, and that is where we hang out, you know. . . when she is nursing, and I am on the FB.

Mom, those were for you! ENJOY!

Blogiversary

My Blogiversary is coming up! That is right! I started blogging 1 year ago on
July 15th. I can't help but think about how my family (and my blogging) has changed over the past year. Wade has gotten one year older (which we all know that first year of babyhood is PACKED with milestones)... Abby started First Grade, Jaxon ...well, he was Jaxon, and we packed up our life and belongings and moved to Arizona! In the middle of summer! (We crazy)

My blog originally started as a way to keep in touch with my family that lived out of state and keep them up on our family life. I also loved posting recipes (I just haven't been cooking new things lately folks..come on, I just moved) as a matter of fact, I posted SOOOOOO many, I started a different blog just for that! Then I found the "blogging" world and a whole new way of expressing myself emerged. It was at that point that my husband claims my blog became all about ME... yep.. It is.. because I am writing it.. so there. He claims that he is going to start his own "our family blog" but you know.. that will happen when pigs fly, so, until then, I still post from time to time about my cute, adorable FAMILY!

As part of my celebration... I will be doing a GIVEAWAY.. But we will have to wait until the 15th for that. Until then I had a fun time looking over my blog and picking out MY favorite blog posts... Here are my top 10.

**I loved calling out the lurkers and even got some new blog friends out of it!

**I love it when randomness happens around the house and you get to catch it for posterity... I mean, I would have never even THOUGHT of that before blogging....

**Being unable to sleep NEVER happens to me.. but when it did, this is what happened...

**I have a few obsessions and I enjoy blogging about them. Here is my favorite obsession.

**From time to time processing my feelings on-line really helps. On this one, I about had a nervous breakdown. I am glad I could share it with all of you.

**Blogging about Jaxon is just inevitable. Here was an epiphany I had about him.

**I have a house full of artists...really.. Abby is my favorite budding artist and here is why.

**Here is all of my deep dark secrets. Betcha didn't know I am best friends with Justin Timberlake, did ya!

**For those of you who think that miracles no longer happen on earth, I am here to prove you WRONG.

**I LOVE the funny things my kids do and trying to capture those moments. This and this are my favorite on camera and this and this are my favorite videos...

Which are your favs?