Something We Should All Think About

I just posted on my homeschool blog, which means that I wouldn't ordinarily make a post here tonight. But something came up over there that I think I should mention here, too.

This is important to me, and it's something that I take very seriously. Some of you guys are my friends, and I want us all to be safe. Some of you are people that I don't know but are probably lovely people. I know that there are several people who read this blog that I don't know. My site stats show that.

And the thing is, some of you (sorry) might not be lovely people. That's why I'm careful about what I post here--for example, why I don't use Little Boy's real name.

Microsoft has some good, straightforward information on blog safety. Scroll down to "Basic Guidelines for Bloggers." It's information that you're supposed to tell your kids, but these tips really go for everyone.

And here's a more personal take from a fellow blogger. Scary, but worth reading.

A Crisis of Textbook Proportions

So...I've mentioned a few (or a million) times that I'm finishing my bachelor's degree through BYU Independent Study. I'm sorry if you guys are getting tired of me blabbering about this all the time (unless you're not tired of it...in which case, you haven't been reading my blog often enough. ;)

Anyway, I just finished up a class on the New Testament and registered for a class on Creative Writing. Super excited about this one, because I'm a nerd like that. (I may have mentioned that nerd thing, too.) And I was also super excited to order the textbooks.

I needed three books for this class. Two of them showed up at my house within a week. One did not:

Isn't that cover gross? Just sayin'.

Anyways, I checked the mail every stinkin' day. I had to have that book to start my classwork--it's used right from lesson 1. One week went by, two weeks went by...

...and then I lost track of how long I'd been waiting. But it felt like fooooreeeeveeerrrr.

So then last Saturday, I woke up, sat up in bed, looked across the room at the bookshelf opposite my bed, AND THE EXACT SAME BOOK WAS ALREADY SITTING ON MY SHELF.

Well, not exactly the same. It was an earlier edition. I'd bought it when it was new, in 2003, for some class or other. And then I saved it, just in case I needed it for another class. Turns out that I DID NEED IT. Eight years later. After I'd forgotten that I had it.

I flipped through the course manual to see if my edition was close enough that I could get started with my classwork--and it was. So I did a happy dance and got started.

(Nerd.)

So yeah, that was Saturday. The book I'd bought arrived in the mail on Monday. Heh. And I really am going to need that one; it has some stuff in it that my moldy-oldy 2003 edition doesn't have.

So here I go, writing creatively...and it looks like this class might not interfere with my blogging time. More on that later. Because school is really all I ever talk about anymore.

The Women in Our Lives

I just want to take a minute to celebrate all of the women in our lives--I know so many women who, whether they are mothers or not, are so strong and faithful. We all nurture, and we all mother in some way.

Sweepin' the Clouds Away

Play time! We had a sunny-ish day (not today--this was a couple weeks ago), so Little Boy and I headed to the playground.

 

He's obsessed with slides. They're not as scary as swings.

 

 So Little Boy got some energy out...

 

 ...and I got to chill out. Good day.

Our Easter Eggs

I didn't take very many pictures of Easter this year. But I have a million pictures of the Easter eggs that we dyed, so...I'm inflicting them on you. Ha ha!

Anyways, every year I try to do something different with our Easter eggs. One year we did rubber bands, and we've done crayons...stuff like that. So this year, the first thing I came up with was natural dyes*--and, being the lazy girl that I am, I just went with it. Good thing it worked out, huh?

This isn't the greatest photo, but it's decent enough to show the colors that we ended up with. (I was kind of afraid we'd just end up with different shades of brown.) The orange-y colors were a bit orangier in real life, and the spinach eggs were a nice gray-green that doesn't really come out in the photo. Oh, and the egg in the upper right corner says "dandelion petals." Kinda hard to read that one.



Pretty, right? We got a way wider range of color than I thought we would. They were a bit more work than regular Easter eggs, and I don't think I'll do them again for a few years, but I loved how they turned out.

* I don't have anything against regular Easter egg or food dyes. Well, maybe a little. But really, I just wanted to do something different this year.

A Little Linkiness

So, I was gallivanting across the blogosphere this evening when I came across this post: Be a Force of Good I highly recommend it.

Twenty-Seven

{picture taken by my beautiful sister; edited by yours truly}

I turned 27 earlier this month. Two things about the photo: one, yes, those are bunny Peeps. Two, no, I'm not crying. I'm laughing at my family's terrible rendition of Happy Birthday to You. We kind of have a tradition of singing it more loudly and out-of-tune at every birthday.

Turning 27 has had a weird effect on me. It's kind of like, "Hey, we're not kidding here. Time to be a grown-up." Time to focus on the choices I'm making. Time to stand up for those choices after I've made them. Time to recognize that I'm not always like other people, and that that's not a bad thing. So...here's to 27, and focus, and courage, and...and I don't know what else. I'll get back to you on that when I turn 28.