Our Babies Are Growing Up

Just a brief little update to explain where I've been. We are planting those 4000 blueberry bushes. They aren't babies any more, but teenagers. It is time consuming and back-breaking work. Not to mention that my hands will never be the same. We are planting in mulch, so the splinters abound. I am digging out splinters from all of our hands. I picked up some rubberized gloves tonight, so it should be better now.

I am also having computer troubles again. Yes, my 3 1/2 month old computer had a hard drive failure. I had to get a local computer guy (one of the Dads in our HS group) to slave the hard drive for me, to save some personal data. The computer is still under warranty since it's new, and they'll even pay for shipping (Hooray!!), but it's still a pain in the neck. I have been trying to get my stuff together for our taxes. We have a new accountant this year doing taxes for us (because of our businesses, I can't do them myself anymore like I used to). We had to file an extension for the new accountant to catch up, but now I am the hold up!

I got my sewing machine back and it's working nicely. What a little cleaning and new grease will do; it's amazing. I sneak a few minutes when I can, as I lost a lot of time on the sewing machine being in the shop for so long, and I also couldn't sew during our trip up North. So I feel like I'm behind on my project. Not to mention that I was having withdrawl symptoms.

Off to bed now, as we're going out early in the morning again. It's getting SO hot to plant in the evenings. The kids skipped school today, but for good reason. It won't last forever. It just reminds us of how the pioneers made sure their planting and harvesting took first priority. The rest of "life" had to somehow find a place around the farm work. Actually, my hubby stayed home from work today to plant all day. He took his sales calls as they came in, but otherwise, he took a "personal" day.

Catch you guys soon. I haven't been able to check any body's blogs.

A How-to Tutorial on Embedded Hyperlinks

You guys, this is so funny. It's not hard at all, but it took me how long to figure it out? And since a few have asked, here it is:

As you are typing along in your blog, you'll come to a place where you want an embedded link. This is another link to a neat online quilt shop, for instance. I typed that sentence just now, then highlighted the words I had chosen to be the link (online quilt shop). Keep it highlighted, then open another tab in your internet explorer. Go to the designated destination website (what are you linking to?) Copy the website addy, and bring that back to your blog post you're working on. With that "online quilt shop" still highlighted, go up to the blogger tool bar. See the little green ball looking thing? It's beside the text color box (capital letter T with color square).
Click on that green ball thing, and up pops a little place to paste your desired linked website addy into. You had already copied it before, so it should paste where you want it. And that's all there is to it! Now you can be all computer savvy too.

Where Have I Been?

It's been a busy few weeks, that's for sure. For one thing, I have been battling major computer troubles since about the middle of Dec. I am finally starting to get somewhere with it all. It's wonderfully nice to see progress. But it's taken up so much of my time that I didn't feel like I could spend any more time on the computer for "pleasure" by blogging. My kids were having mild withdrawls from me because I was so tied up on the computer lately.

Secondly, we have been spending SO much time working with the blueberries, and preparing the fields for the babies to be transplanted soon. I am definitely feeling the sore muscles of a farmer.

Needless to say, I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. Hopefully I can get several posts up in the next few days.

Blogging Quirks

Sometimes, this blogging program drives me nuts. I keep trying to create a break in between 2 paragraphs on the Strawberry Picking post. It appears right, and when I save it, it takes the break away!! It's driving me nuts, and rather than spend the next hour on it, I am just going to let it roll right off my back. That's the plan anyway. I know my typing teacher would never approve, but I can't seem to figure it out, try as I might!

Relaxing the Blogging, but Not Quitting

As with everything I do, when I am excited about something I jump into it full force. 150%, full-blown obsession. When I started blogging, it was no different. I tend to be a perfectionist, and over-do it on some things. I started reading several people's blogs all at the same time, and had to catch up with everything! And starting mine, it took a while to figure out how to do it all. Then the posting began, and I felt like I was posting a lot. (I know some of you told me that I didn't write much, but for me it was a lot since I am not much of a writer.) I realized that I could not keep up that pace for long, and you notice that this past week I didn't post for a while. I think I have just come off the "high" of the initial running start, and am now realizing that I want to keep blogging, just not let it rule my life. I will post as I feel like, and not pressure myself to write everyday (or every other day!), or to write about everything we are doing in our life. I didn't think I would have anything to write about, but this family never seems to have a dull moment after all! So, I will not be taking a hiatus this holiday season, but will probably step back somewhat to let more of our life "happen" around us.

I think another strategy for me will be to not agonize so much trying to polish my posts to perfection before posting them. It's taking me too long to publish a post. So I apologize ahead of time if relaxing a bit turns my posts into something more garbled! But at least I'll be writing. Hey, you might get a laugh out of the whole deal. I know I need to laugh more. My childhood situation did not lend itself to laughter. Things were far too serious and it affected me in a very big way. I am not dwelling on the past when I tell you this. I am simply explaining a little bit about why I may be so critical of myself. For a long time, I didn't know things any other way. But it's hard for me even now to open up and "be real". I think that is why I admire some of my blogging friends so much when they show so much of their real selves. We're all human, aren't we? We can judge each other all we want to, but we're really all so much alike it's staggering to think about.

I know this journal writing is therapeutic for me. It helps me to learn more about myself. It makes me really LOOK at life and what is happening around me. It helps me to appreciate the little things. Basically, it's got me thinking, pretty much about everything under the sun! I also like the fact that the blogging helps me to hone, or rather, re-learn my writing skills. Maybe it's sharpening my thinking skills even more than polishing my writing abilities. I don't know what happened to my intelligent brain. When I was in college, I never sat down to write anything in my spare time just for the fun of it. But when called upon to produce an essay on demand in one of my classes, I would amaze myself at what I could come up with. How did my brilliantly organized brain turn to mush? It's funny, but I realize my talking abilities have disappeared as well. I find myself using the wrong words all the time. I'll tell the kids to put their dirty dishes in the fridge, when I really mean the kitchen sink. I'll call the kids the wrong names (sometimes even using the dogs' names for theirs!), and say the wrong quantity when reading a number out loud. I try and talk to people outside our family and embarrass myself because I stumble and use the wrong words so much. It's even more embarrassing when I have to pause and think for 15 seconds before the word I'm looking for comes to my mind. But I guess that's the breaks of multi-tasking all the time. Or maybe it's old age setting in. Who knows. But it definitely has a way of humbling a person. Maybe I needed to be humbled.

Look how bad my brain is anymore. I am way off track. Another reason I need to blog is to share our family happenings with extended family. We have family living in several different states, all pretty far away from Florida. It's an easy way for them to see pictures of the kids, and to help them know what goes on in our world. It's much easier to write once and get it over with than to write the same email 5 or 6 times. I was very bad at writing letters, I know. Sorry about that. This way I am actually writing! So, I hope you guys are all enjoying the posts. I know several family members aren't leaving any comments, but I think they are reading. Okay, enough of a boring subject. I'm off to start composing a more interesting post, unless I get sidetracked with life.

Off to a Rocky Start

Well, after much difficulty getting started, I am happy to announce that I finally figured out how to enable the comments capability on my blog. Now I can invite friends to view my posts. I didn't want to lift the cover off if nobody could pipe up and tell me what they thought! So, comment away, and have fun.

Now, I have some catching up to do!