See if this one rings a bell:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

They're the world's most fearsome fighting team!

They're heroes in a half-shell and they're green!

When the evil Shredder attacks,

These turtle shells don't cut him no slack!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Splinter taught them to be ninja teens!

Leonardo leads and Donatello builds machines!

Raphael is cool but rude, Michaelangelo is a part-y dude!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Heroes in a half-shell,

TURTLE POWER!

Yes. I do know the whole theme song to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

It may not be resume worthy, but it definitely puts me in a cool zone with certain 3 year old boys.

And in case you're wondering, my son is "Michaelangelo the Party Dude"- he even had me write it on his cup at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I'm Splinter but usually I'm April. Sean is usually "Raphael, cool but rude" The dog is usually Shredder, sometimes RockSteady or BeBop. We're all caught up on the names because I rented a season on DVD once. We'd let Calvin watch it for 10-15 minutes a day for a few days, but then quickly noticed that he wanted to play-fight a lot more. A little too much for my taste. So TMNT got the plug.

But I still get a lot of requests to sing the theme song while driving around town. And I do it. Repeatedly. And when we go on walks and see a sewer cover, Calvin shouts, very excitedly: "Look Mama! A TURTLE LID!" Once we even counted all the turtle lids we saw on a walk. Sometimes the small hose-sized ones even count. He also has a green puffy down vest that is appropriately named his turtle vest.

I love it. The blissful playfulness of childhood.

p.s. I've had considerably less time to post, but we do still exist and love to keep in touch. Don't give up on our blog yet!

September...in review, a little late

Have you ever seen a cuter 1st birthday girl? I think not.

On September 2nd, Mira had her FIRST birthday! Happy first birthday sweet heart! We invited some friends over for dinner and had a little celebration. She wore her party dress and had to bear crawl around in it. Then she smeared her cake around and only took a tiny nibble while we all drooled over its chocolate-raspberry-ganache yumminess.

She is the happiest baby ever and I am grateful everyday to have her in our lives.

On Labor Day we canned peaches for the FIRST time! We love working hard on 3-day weekends. It always gives us a sense of accomplishment. I was quite apprehensive about canning because I'd never done it before but it actually was pretty easy and fun, and of course the results are yummy!

Mira started to walk!

And then she started to climb.

And I knew my sleepy newborn days were far behind.

All I could do was wildly stare.

And exclaim, "Mira how did you get on that chair?!"

She turned to me and smiled,

As if to say, "Don't you know that I'm a little bit wild?"

How could I argue with that?

So I gave her head a pat-pat.

And grabbed my camera just in time!

Somewhere in the middle of all this we had our 7th anniversary!

I am so lucky to be married to such an awesome man.

Especially one who can sport a mullet wig and handle-bar mustache so well. This was our last Halloween before we had kids and we had fun scouting out the thrift stores for our costumes. I was supposed to be a gypsy but could have passed for a downtown Eugene hippie. Happy Anniversary sweetie! Feels like we just got married yesterday... Here's to 77 more years!

Sean's softball team also wrapped up their fall season. This has become one of our favorite summer activities, going to the ball field with the other moms and kids to watch our husbands/daddies play ball. And they ended their last game with a win! Yay!

We got our FIRST dog! I haven't mentioned that we've had a dog for the last 4 months. We inherited from Sean's parents. His name is Archie. He is an 11 year old Boston Terrier. The kids love him to death.

Archie was Mira's first word after mama and dada. We have the best video of her perfectly saying "Ahh-chee" and patting him on the head. Sometimes he'll try to sneak into Calvin's room to sleep. One night, this is how they both went to bed...and then we promptly put him back in the laundry room after Calvin was asleep.

Last but not least, on the last day of the month, September 30th, Calvin got his FIRST stitches, after he rode his bike off the front steps...with no helmet.

Yes that is real blood on his face. Let me tell you it was drama.

He was bawling.

I was bawling.

Every time I looked at his cut I would cry again.

His forehead was split wide open.

I was not a calm mommy.

But he was very brave for his 6 stitches (well, with me and two other nurses holding him down and him screaming)

and afterward I realized I was glad that we at least made it to 3 years old before experiencing head trauma like this.

I have to remember that he is his father's son so there may be many more dare-devil incidences like this to come. But it all ended well, complete with the "nee-nah" (fire engine) coming to our house and wrapping up his head. Since fire engines are his favorite thing in the world, it was the icing to a too-exciting day.

(Don't even ask about the leak in our front lawn that was spouting 2,900 gallons of H20 a day into the lawn)

The month was also filled with lots of rides in the laundry baskets, especially as Mira perfected her ability to climb in and out of them.

I'll forever remember the morning I played a kids' version of "Thriller" and they danced their little hearts out. Kids have natural rhythm.

Cal says way too many cute things every day for me to remember them all. Sometimes he'll tell me out of the blue- "Mama you look pretty!" My current favorite is when he calls the air conditioner the air confreshener.

Life is good.

Happy Halloween!

This one's for the DC-Team

Last week, Calvin had to say good bye to one of his best friends. It was a sad day for us all.

These two had the click factor from day one. People would comment on how cute they were, giving hugs and playing together. They both had a love of sports, just like their dads who played softball together. At our houses, they each would talk about the other one frequently.

See how cute they are each holding their respective sport balls? I didn't even tell them to do this, this is just how they are together.

But I think their relationship can be best described with this photo story from our last hike.

Friendships like this don't come around every day.

Wisdom Bites

Whoever said that teething doesn't hurt was wrong.

They obviously never crowned their wisdom teeth.

Cuz, let me tell you- it stinkin' hurts!

And not just a wussy hurt: it hurts like you can't sleep in the middle of the night because your jaw is throbbing with pain.

That kind of hurt.

I, unlike those expert baby book authors that indicate babies are just being babies when they're teething, have been fortunate enough to experience this wonderful wisdom pain. It first started right after my first pregnancy and comes and goes. Usually I feel nothing, but periodically they do, well, hurt.

I am also fortunate enough (can you feel the sarcasm oozing?) to have room for these babies which is why they haven't been pulled yet. Theoretically I could go get them pulled but then I would just be paying for pain and I don't see any sense in that.

The silver lining and the wisdom (pun intended) in all of this is that experiencing this pain has given me more compassion when my kids are teething. I know how they feel. I still may not always know what to do, but I know their pain is real baby, their pain is real.

And the winner is...

How is it, that in a house filled with toys, that some simple sticks and mud out-trumps them all?

Would somebody please explain why we even bother buying toys? I guess I should've figured this out before I went to Target for their birthday presents.

Could've saved some serious cash.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just be out back getting another stick off the tree for my kid. Oh, no, he broke it?

No problem, we've got about a thousand more.

And if we run out for some strange reason, we've got enough dirt to play in until his fingernails turn permanently black.

The cost for these gems?

$0.

The best things in life really are free.

Campaign for Less Pictures

This won't be nearly as witty as I would hope because I'm really tired.

But---what do I do with all these dang pictures that I take?!?!

My Picasa album is filled to the gills, organized by day of all my pictures, most containing my kids in various "must capture" moments...blueberry covered faces, climbing on the fireplace, in a favorite outfit, smiling so cute...whatever...you name it. And as I am 2 YEARS (TWO years people!) behind on printing and placing all these pictures in albums, I've started wondering

"why do I even have these many pictures?" I have more pictures of my kids' short lives than of my childhood combined.

Who is going to have time to look at all these pictures, let alone catalog and scrapbook them?
I survived my full and happy life with only a handful of baby pics of myself, enough to know what I looked like & that my mom took me to the portrait studio with the orangey rug for me to rest on...and you know what? I'm good. I don't really need much more to tell me about myself as a kid.

Ok, maybe a select few home videos would have been fun to hear my voice and personality, and maybe a few entries in the baby book (I was the 5th kid, I got handed an empty book for me to fill out) about my favorite food and color-- and then really, I would be done. I would read/watch them, smile and think "that's nice," maybe associate a trait or two with one of my kids, and be done with the whole thing. If that's all my kids need then I have well exceeded these demands. I think we have 2 hours of home video just from Calvin's first 10 months alone!

This all being said, I am on a slow and steady race to take LESS pictures, if I take a video I try to limit it to LESS time, like 20 s. It is all part of my plan so I can actually get caught up, because as my friend April said, I need a system. And she is right, I am totally lacking a system. I think I'll do something about it, someday. But I'm not really sure what, so, uh, that is the end of my rant.

p.s. the silver lining is that blogging helps me feel like I'm "publishing" my pictures so they don't all go to waste, so here are a selected few for your viewing pleasure:

This makes me think of dreamy childhood summer days

Going down the slide on Calvin's 3rd birthday!

Our tomatoes have taken over our front porch, literally

Our sweet almost 1 year old in her party dress!

My Dream Babies

5 years ago I had a dream about a sweet, perfect 10 month old baby girl named Mira...and here is the first picture of her of the day on her 10 month birthday. We were in the car at 5 am getting ready to drive to Boise. Would that I could freeze this moment in time for eternity, but like all days, it came and went, and my little baby is just shy of a year now.

Meanwhile, my dream baby boy just turned 3 (!)- he was throughly enjoying his party hat, cupcake/ice cream cones (I baked the cake batter directly in the ice cream cone and then scooped ice cream on top) and being sung to by his friends. This picture really captures his happy, energetic spirit.

Like most mothers, I am in awe of how quickly my children are growing before my eyes. I don't know if I'll ever recover over the "but I just delivered you yesterday" feeling...and yet these pictures give me a bright hope of what is in store for the future

So You Wanna Hear About My Trip? Part II

One of the most memorable parts of our trip was the spontaneous family history detour we took. There we were, in the middle of California when that witching 5 o'clock hour came. The kids and I were all dying to get out of the car and stretch our legs. I pulled off at the next decent looking town and instead of finding a park/playground within minutes, I drove all around town for a long time. I got further and further from the freeway and finally, barely found a school with a small playground. When we had gotten our fill and wanted to get back on the road, my gps tried to re-route me through San Francisco during rush hour. I was, in a word, lost.

Very lost.

Which was weird because up to this point I'd been eerily well navigated.

But alas, we were lost in San Lorenzo. So lost I didn't even know what town I was in until I asked. We stopped and played at the school for a while and decided to get on our way. The theoretical plan was to be back in Oregon that night.

After several attempts of trying to get back on the freeway and find our way and getting uber-lost repeatedly, I decided that this could not be a coincidence. I finally pulled over to look at a map.

(The back story behind this scene takes us back a few months to where I met my dad's cousin and found out more about the Rapley lineage)

Lo and behold, we were a mere 30 miles from my grandmother's old stomping grounds. Once I realized this, it all came together and I knew we were going to Redwood City for the night. It was such an exhilirating feeling. I knew everything was coming together...

Well a long story short, the next day after more searching, and rerouting, we finally found the Rapley Ranch. It was one of the coolest moments in my life. I'll never forget the feeling of smelling the same air, touching the same earth that my grandmother touched and smelled. Even Calvin talked about it for weeks afterward.

Isn't this a beautiful, haunting scene? The trees were like this everywhere

My grandmother's great-granddaughter on her old stomping grounds...

A Day in Our Life...

On June 29th, I got new cloth diapers that I LOVE...
Calvin visited his friend Elephant for the 3rd time at the local fireworks stand... And Mira discovered that a wallet is a very important thing in a girl's life...

---And that was our day!

(The back story is that I ordered these diapers on eBay from China, and I love how much our garbage has decreased and I can't prove it but I swear a month of wearing these made my older kid decide to wear underwear...)

Look it has a mustache!

These were Calvin’s first words upon seeing the first crawdad we captured. His next words were, “are we gonna eat it?”

Three years ago, our hometeacher Sam, told us some stories about eating squirrel stew and crawdad ala mode. You see, Sam was from Louisiana and grew up hunting squirrel and pretty much anything that could move. Being an adventurous sort of family we decided it would be fun to try both. We didn’t think the squirrel was very tasty, so last night we decided to give the crawdad a try. One thing we learned was that crawdads are more slippery than snot on a glass doorknob.

Our travels took us to Whitaker Creek, which is about halfway between the Oregon Coast and Eugene. After an hour of wading through the creek we were able to capture 3 crawdads, one of which escaped shortly after capture.

Overall our trip was a success, a Southernor might say the experience left us smilin’ like a goat in a briarpatch. By the time we loaded up the family car we were hungry enough to eat the south end of a north bound skunk.

Need I Say More?

You had me at "nectarine."

A Little Piece of Heaven

Mm-wah! Check out Mira giving the baby in the mirror a kiss. That is some serious lippage!

Mira cracks us up- she can full blown crawl everywhere and had started pulling herself to standing. She has 4, going on 6 teeth- her 2 bottom and 2 uppers on the left side. She can say "dadada" and "mamama" in her sweet, soft, girly voice and almost always will flash a huge grin if you just smile at her. I had to list her favorite things to eat in her baby book, I am not making these up:

1. Paper (do not leave in her vicinity if you wish it to remain whole)

2. Shoes (she will hunt them down)

3. Plastic bags (I know my safety conscious friends are cringing- but we do take them away)

4. Keys (nice and germy)

--other "foods" like her rice cereal, banana, broccoli etc. are tolerable but not sought after.

Heaven for Mira would be to be left alone with a phonebook to destroy and ingest. Go figure.

Our little paper eater.

Meanwhile Calvin has figured out his full name and has been stating it repeatedly for the last month. Here is an example conversation:

Calvin: Mama?

Me: Mh-hmm?

Calvin: My name Calvin -------- --------. What your name?

Me: Nice to meet you Calvin- my name's Anna -------- --------.

Calvin: You say nice to meet you mama?

Me: Yes Calvin, nice to meet you!

Calvin: Mama?

Me: Yes, Calvin?

Calvin: What Mira's name?

Me: Mira ------ ------

(and so on)

This happens many times a day. Repeatedly. Driving in the car, eating lunch, you name it. It has been slowly tapering. We also talk about other people's full names like Grandma, Grandpa, the dog (Archibald Jughead the Third in case you were wondering), the neighbors, the neighbors' dog. He know our family's full names on command. It probably is cuter in person but it just makes me smile. Childhood is filled with a lot of repetition- choose your mantras well.

Calvin loves working in the yard with Dada and being a helper. Give him a job with some tools and he's in heaven. I think he raked the dirt for an hour straight the other day.

He is also our future Olympian, the other day when we went to the beach he sprinted up the dunes at least a dozen times, I don't know where he gets the energy, I got sore just from watching him!

Sean's softball season has officially started and that is his little piece of heaven. This is the third year he has done city league softball with friends from the ward. We are his biggest fans unless the games start at 9 pm and then he is on his own. We have fun getting together with the other moms and kids and making sure no fly balls hit us.

I don't even know what I've been doing with my time. The kids and I were in Idaho for a while visiting family, and then Sean's brother Cameron left on his mission to Brazil...my days are filled with changing diapers and picking up toys and then its time for bed again. The only way I'm even getting this post done is because I'm staying up waaaayyyyy past my bedtime.

Ok, I've got one exciting thing. Last weekend, after a hard day of working in the yard all day and hauling stuff to the dump I got to soak in a long luxurious bath with scented bath salts, an Enya CD, some candles and a good book (the last in the Narnia series if you must know) and let me tell you, it was heaven.

So You Wanna Hear About My Trip? Part I

Our fun family we visited!

I ventured the impossible and made it possible. I took a 13-hour (pshah! more like 19!) car trip with the kids, sans husband. The trip took us two days of driving each way. Yes, as many people wondered, I probably was taking crazy pills. But you know what? We did it. And we survived. And we had a lot of fun.

I'd actually been planning this trip in my head for a year- way back when I was pregnant with Mira and Sean's sis-in-law Jeana told me that their family would be moving to So-Cal and would be up for a visit. I had only two words in my head: Road Trip!

The kids enjoying a brief pit stop.

Granted my husband had reason to be nervous. I do have a history of falling asleep a lot in the car. Once I couldn't even make a two hour car trip without pulling over to rest- in broad daylight. But this was 10 years ago, and I was well prepared to douse any amounts of caffeine if that's what it came to. Well, believe or not, I had super stay-awake-and-alert powers the whole time I was on the road, day or night. I only drank, like, one diet dr. pepper. I had major adrenaline to just go, go, go. (I won't go into detail at how it took me days to recover from the missed sleep and adrenaline charges.)

And the kids did really good too- thanks to some lifesaving gadgets called: "DVDs." My friend Jen lent me her car player and it definitely made life much more pleasant in the car when Calvin wasn't sleeping- which he didn't do much of. I was just planning on sticking it out- but am so glad I didn't. During our travels, he averaged about 2 movies/day and I had no problem with it whatsoever, because there was no screaming, crying or thrashing in the car seat. Mira did really good too. She slept a lot, would sometimes play with toy or two or watch a little Baby Einstein on the screen I put in front of her seat. Poor thing got a little post-traumatic stress afterwards though: every time I put her in the car seat she would cry thinking she'd be stuck there for another 4 hours. It took us over a week of being home to convince her our car trips had gotten much shorter again.

I also packed a lot of snacks: basically anything that wouldn't leave crumbs everywhere. Lots of pretzels, some animal crackers, Gerber fruit snacks, yogurt covered raisins, even gummy bears. One day when I was desperate, I kept feeding Calvin as many snacks (read- junk) as he wanted. He was so thrilled at the time but then complained that his tummy hurt for the next 36 hours. I was much more strict after that.

Abbie (5) was in charge of holding Calvin's hand going places so this was a common scene.

So what did we do? Once we got down the LA area, we did the Mom-thing but together instead of 1,000 miles apart. We schlepped our kids to playgrounds everyday (and basked in the warm California sun!), we went to the beach once and the harbor once, we bought and watched Twilight- including all of the deleted scenes and directors takes, we went to the Santa Barbara zoo- one of the best zoos I've ever been too! (more on that later), we let the cousins play together and if you're my family- we finished one cold and started a new one while we were there- must've been the stress of traveling or new germs or something. We saw lots of celery and strawberry fields while we were down there- yum. And did I mention bask in the sun?

Sliding down the grassy turf hill.

Let me tell you about the Santa Barbara Zoo- it is all about selectivity and manageability. It is not the biggest zoo I have been too, nor does it have the most animals. But it was the first zoo I've been to that I wasn't totally exhausted at the end -AND- I felt like I had gotten my money's worth. One of the coolest parts was the play area in the center of the whole zoo. It had a slippery turf hill that we had a blast sliding down. Across the way it had lots of grassy areas that you could sit and have a picnic- which we did, just uphill from the cool cactus garden. Another cool thing was it not only had cool animals, but cool plants too. I enjoyed the foilage, no- foliage, dang! There were some people there with serious, professional, long-lens cameras just to take pictures of the plants, like this spindly number. There were no zebras or a huge array of monkeys, but there were flamingos, a lion and lots of cool birds (sorry Lindsay). There were only two downers to our otherwise sunny day- 1. We didn't get to ride the cool train around the zoo due to a scheduling conflict -and- 2. I felt really bad for the sad gorilla who was all alone and sad. However, I highly recommend this zoo. If you are ever in the Santa Barbara area- Go! Plus it is right next to the ocean- what's not to love about that?

The last thing I will comment about in Part I of our trip log is the Many Milestones that Mira Met in our new environment. Its like she grew at hyper-speed. Within a few days of arriving to So-Cal, Mira:

1. Cut her first two teeth

2. Started sitting up on her own

3. Started eating solids

My widdle girl is getting so big!

Mira chillin with the cacti.

Johnny loved baby Mira!

Part II will come later!

Signing-Cries

Am I the only one who cries every time I hear the "Signing Time" songs??? Ever since I first saw the DVD a few years ago, I can't help but tear up every time, "it's signing time with Alex and Leah..." comes on. Call me a sap, I guess. The funny thing is I'm not usually a crier, but "Signing Time" has a special place in my heart.

p.s. I'm baaaaacccckkkk and will update with lots more posts very soon!

Dude...

Where's my new car?

We've been mini-van shopping lately. I for one have never had a problem with the idea of driving a mini-van. They're very comfortable and practical and easy to drive and lately they have become very stylish too. I'm not even very picky. The only one I'd put my foot down on is a 1989 wood-paneled Dodge Caravan- how did that ever make it past the drawing board?

In my searches I found this awesome website called edmunds.com. It gives third-party reviews on cars, has a loan calculator, talks about how much insurance you need, they even paid a journalist to work undercover as a car salesman and write what he learned. Don't buy a car without checking out this website!

Speaking of insurance, my rates with Allstate keep rising even though we haven't had any tickets or accidents. They've been sneaky about it and as they probably correctly assumed, I haven't noticed until I started comparing bills. Sup yo?! SO- I'm on the hunt for new car insurance. Dun-dun-duh! Any of you have car insurance that you LOVE?

It looks like a new mini-van is not in our immediate future, but I sure had fun car hunting and thinking of all the ways I could outsmart the car salesman.

I Think, Therefore I Post

This is going to be a whole bunch of posts rolled into one because I've had a lot on my mind to share to the blogging world. You can even think of the subtitle as being: "Anna's Top Ten (things to share)."

These next few items are inspired from a post that my friend Ilene did a little while ago about mommy-tips. I decided to share of few of my tactics.

1. I use the kitchen timer for just about everything. Here are a few examples: When two kids are fighting over a toy, I set the timer and say one can have it until the timer beeps and then it's the other one's turn. It has settled many a quarrel. I've also set the timer for how long I'll play with Calvin or how long until we leave on our walk or when its time for breakfast or how long he stays in time-out or how long he needs to sit at the dinner table before he can leave.

The timer has been an awesome & concrete tool in our household for a little tyke who can't tell time yet and doesn't know a minute from a mile. Calvin lights up when it goes off and excitedly exclaims, "Timer beep! Time to go out!" (or whatever it's time for). It also has helped me manage my time better and keep me focused on the task at hand.

2. I've started playing kid movies in Spanish. Let's face it- kids' brains are sponges. Why not pick up a foreign language while being entertained? (I'm hoping I'll absorb some too along the way.) For instance we recently rented Toy Story from the library (which we now get for a whopping 3 weeks!), and it has played in Spanish almost as much as English. I nickel and dime my kid's tv time, so he'll only watch 10-15 min at a time. He is as equally mesmerized with both languages playing and I feel like it is more "educational." Win-win.

3. I stain-wash everything that remotely has a stain on it. Most of my stains these days come in the form of baby-poo or dried oatmeal (okay- that was only once). My favorite stain remover is the Fels-Naptha bar. It works really well and I like that it is a bar instead of liquid- just try not to touch it with your bare hands because it is strong. My "Baby Barcode" post about Mira's onesie is stain free because of this magic little number. I also use oxi-stain remover occasionally, but I really like the Ecover stain remover because it has a built-in plastic scrub brush that works really well even when all the soap is gone.

4. I'm reading this book that was introduced to me last year that is all about how to dress for your body type. I didn't give it much of a fleeting glance then, probably because I was pregnant and my shape was changing daily. But now I am clearly on the other side of that mountain and I'm having a lot of fun reading about how to dress me perfectly. My biggest hurdle is the lack of time I have to go shopping and find all of these perfect items. Until then I may be less than perfectly perfect, darn!

5. I've been having a huge inner dilemma about what to do to back up my photo storage. I have most of my pictures on my computer and some film negative sleeves sitting in a box and I'm scared to death my computer will crash and I'll lose all my pictures. This is my posterity we're talking about! I'm behind on printing my pictures so the last 1 1/2 years would be totally poof! gone! except for what I've posted on here and such. I have sometimes lost sleep worrying about this. Plus I feel guilty for not being so organized- can't one of those tv organizer guys come and do it for me?

So anyways, about back-up storage, so far I've come up with buying a mini portable hard drive and saving everything on there -OR- saving my pictures online for an annual fee like SmugMug where they go on & on that putting your pictures on their site are apocalypse-proof and so on.

I'm just stuck, plus the problem seems to be getting bigger and I can't seem to make a decision. I need help! Any of you have suggestions? What do you do for photo storage/backing up? Have any of you found the perfect solution- please give me your tips! I'm also thinking it would be cool to make all my scrapbooking pages online and then pay a company to print my photo album. I haven't looked into this yet but I'm sure there are several companies that do this. Any of you found favorites yet?

6. This is separate but slightly related: I decided to start our own family journal blog. You won't ever see it because it is taking the place of my journal but I really like it because:

A. I haven't been writing in my journal anyway, and

B. It is a lot easier to include pictures in a blog-journal, and
C. Typing is much faster (although less personal) than writing.

It has been really fun to write about things in my life that would be too detailed or personal to share on my world wide blog. I highly recommend it.

7. Did you know that you could change the date of your post to whatever you want? You just click on "Post Options" in the bottom left corner and it has a box on the right for "Post date and time"- so theoretically you could post-date your post if you didn't want it to show up right away. Handy tool!

8. My new favorite show is Kath & Kim, they are totally my new BFFs. I LOVE this show- so cheesy but hilarious and fun! I've sloughed off Survivor and American Idol and all of the other "hot" shows this season, but I watch Kath & Kim religiously. It's the first time I've been really excited about buying a show's season on DVD. Oh and BTW, I haven't taken the quiz but I'm pretty sure I'm a Kim. Ok, UPDATE: I just took the quiz and I'm actually a Kath, but Kim totally cracks me up. Love her!

9. I just made homemade vanilla pudding for the first time tonight and it was really good! All of the ingredients were on hand and it was super easy. The most tedious part was how long I had to stand there and stir it, but it was so yummy and totally worth it.

10. One final thought: I keep thinking that if Emily Dickinson were alive today she would be wildly famous because there is so much technology available that even a closet person who never left her home could publish her ideas to the world via blogs etc. Something to think about.

There. It is out of my brain and into the world. Do with it what you will.

P.S. I was hoping that everyone who reads this post (or my blog in general) will post a comment. I just want to get a better sense of who my audience is. Readers, show yourselves!