It’s been a busy couple of months. There was a lot of work. A vacation to Disney. A broken collarbone. Many dentist appointments. A baby blanket to finish knitting before the baby was born. Soccer practices. Soccer games. Rain, rain, rain.

I’m just about caught up!

Expect a lot of gardening posts in the near future. Gardening will be taking precedence over knitting in the next few months! Plus that baby blanket has caused this huge lump to form on my wrist, so it clearly needs a break.

We’re going to Disney World for a week over Spring Break. You know, along with everyone else on Earth?

Our plan was to fly to Fort Myers, stay at the In-law’s house for a couple of days, then we’d all pack up in their fancy new minivan and drive to Disney. There we would meet up with my parents who will be staying at the campground at Disney. All 8 of us (4 grandparents, 2 parents, and 2 kids) would then go to the parks for a few days, and spend a couple of days just at the hotels and campground. Then we’d drive back to Fort Myers, have one day to relax, and then fly home.

But for some reason, flights this year are over 4 times the price they were last year. We flew to Fort Myers last year, over Easter/Spring Break. It cost us about $600 for all 4 of us. But the same trip this year was going to be about $2500!

I figured up what it’d cost us to drive (over-estimating the price of gas, and how much we’d use, and factoring in 2 nights’ hotel stays on the way down & back). About $500-600.

Gee, can you tell which wins?

Pros to flying (cons to driving):
1. Longer vacation (since we’re driving, we’re just going to Orlando and back instead of adding in Fort Myers).
2. Less time having to listen to the kids whine and Sam talk non-stop.

Pros to driving:
1. The cost, obviously.
2. Our first “ROAD TRIP!” with the kids.
3. We can take anything we want with us: Any liquids, any foods, nothing has to be in 3-ounce containers, as many suitcases as we want, my Swiss Army Knife (very useful for cutting straws shorter for the kids in restaurants!), razors, extra clothes, and most importantly: our own pillows!
4. No having to stand in security lines, no having to take our shoes off and put them back on (not a problem for adults, but a pain for the kids), no having to carry everything like a pack mule and still hold the kids’ hands.
5. Did I mention we can take our own pillows?

We need to leave the Easter Bunny a note and tell him we’ll be at the Disney campground on Easter Morning, so he doesn’t hide eggs at home.

It’s my birthday!

And as usual, I’m not doing anything special. I even had to remind my family to wish me Happy Birthday this morning.

I may have even threatened the girls with no presents on THEIR birthdays.

Someone better bake me some brownies tonight, KEVIN.

:)

Yay! Last day of NaBloPoMo!

Tomorrow is my birthday.

It’s also the last day of NaBloPoMo.

It’s also back-to-work day.

It’s also the day I have to make sure all of my stash is up on Ravelry so Madalyn & I can compare what we have.

And I’m sure there are plenty of other things that will come up that have to be done tomorrow.

I don’t want to go back to real life!

Today is Madalyn’s Birthday!

Everyone go to her blog and wish her a happy one!

Quick post to get my one for the day in. I planned to take a picture of my sock-in-progress, but didn’t get around to it. Maybe tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the last day before my 5 days of being a single mom start. Ack!

Got the craft room cleaned up (whew, what a mess!). Got packed for the weekend. Got dad’s extra camera. Ate dinner at the restaurant where we had our wedding rehearsal dinner. The girls loved it (animatronic animals, and live fish).

Tomorrow we’re going to Oliver Winery, and I am sure we will come home with at least a case of wine.

The Big Bang Theory: I love it when Raj talks to his parents in India over the computer with webcams.

It’s time for the annual NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)!

Yes, it really started yesterday, but I had to post a cute picture of my kids in their Halloween costumes, right?

So, what’s in store for this month? I will be posting every day! Exciting for those 3 of you out there still reading my blog, right?

There will definitely be a lot of Thanksgiving posts. Hopefully some knitting. Maybe some deals that I’ve found in preparation for Christmas shopping. Hopefully I can come up with something of substance every day, but there may be a few of those late night “almost forgot to post!” posts as happens every year.

Let’s start off with a question though, see who is still out there reading.

What are your plans for Thanksgiving? Are you hosting? Going to a relative’s house? Going to a friend’s house? Having a quiet evening at home? What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dinner dish? Let’s discuss!

If you’re reading this in your feed reader, come visit the blog! It’s got a new layout, and it’s pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.

How about a tour?

Up top, there is a navigation bar. Here’s what you’ll find there:

• About: a page about the blog.
• Deals and Savings: a page that lists all of the sites I use to earn giftcards and cash! There’s also a link there to my posts in the Deals and Saving category.
• RSS Feeds: now this is pretty cool…Say you don’t care about anything else, you just want to know about the knitting? Well now you can subscribe JUST to the Knitting category! Or maybe you’re my mom and you only want to see what I post about the kids? Then you can subscribe to just the Kids category feed! Of course, there is a full feed too (also accessible in the upper-right-hand corner of the site) that will have all of the posts in all categories.
• Gardening: a link to just the posts in the Gardening category.
• House and Home: a link to just the posts in the House and Home category (includes cooking, deals and saving, and holidays).
• Kids: a links to just the posts about the kids (handy for the grandmas!).
• Knitting: a link to just the posts in the Knitting category.

Now, over on the left sidebar, you’ll find mostly Knitting-related things. Like my WIPs, my stash count (It’s almost time for the annual recount!), and my patterns available for sale or for free. And also my email and twitter.

The center column is the content! That’s what you came here for, right? I’m hoping that this new layout will spur me to post more. I really wanted to have a new way to break out the different categories, and I think this accomplishes that. Plus, it’s almost NaBloPoMo! So there will definitely be a lot of posts in November!

The right sidebar starts off with a rotating photo. Each time you refresh, you’ll get a new picture. Then the rest is all bloggy things: search box, category links, tag cloud, and archives.

Behind-the-scenes, there’s some new functionality too. Comments are now threaded, which means you can reply to someone else’s comment! I’ll also be replying on the site now. You’ll get an email if someone replies to you, then you can come back and reply back if necessary. There is a limit to only 10 posts per thread though, so if we ever get chatty, we’ll have to start a new comment after those 10. :)

There are a couple of things I’d still like to add, like a Folia widget. I’ll probably put that in the left sidebar.

I hope you all enjoy the new look and functionality, and I hope you’ll all leave comments (and reply to comments – because how fun is that?)!