Today is officially my fourth year of bogging! Hooray! Thank goodness it’s not a wedding anniversary, or I would have to buy you all appliances! Hey, I would if I could–Kitchenaid stand mixers for everyone!!–but I have a kid to raise and that would definitely cut into her college education (Note to self: start saving for Ana’s college education.) And since I am always planning ahead, I also coincided my blog-o-versary with my 500th post! Double bonus! Yea me!!

All kidding aside, I am so happy that I have been able to stick with blogging for as long as I have. It definitely takes dedication and perseverance to gather my thoughts and put them out there for all the world to see. But the positives far out weigh the negatives. I love knowing that all the important things (whether they seems so at the time or not) are being preserved and cherished in a way I could never have imagined. So thanks for sticking with me all these years! Here’s to many, many more!

In all the excitement of the new site design (no, Lisa, you didn’t break it!) I forgot to mention a couple of the “new features” we added. For those of you who haven’t looked around much, I now have a Twitter widget in the upper right hand corner. It answers the question “What am I Doing?” That is, whenever I remember to updated it. You can also click on the actual “What am I Doing?” link which will take to you a list of all the recent things I have done. It gives a nice little time stamp so you can tell how current the post actually is. Pretty cool? I think so.

As for the new picture “header” on the top of my site, it is actually my most current ten or so pictures I have uploaded to my Flickr page. The last picture I uploaded will show up on the left. If you mouse over the pictures it will scroll along to allow you to see them all. If it doesn’t scroll, you are probably at the end so move your mouse to the opposite end and it should scroll away. This was my clever husband’s idea. He is just so sweet to build me fancy things. Oh and as always, if you want to see ALL my Flickr pictures you can still click on the Flickr badge over on the right hand side. It will take you to a separate web page with all my pictures that (generally) come from my iPhone. There I try to explain what is happening in the picture (if it isn’t obvious) and you can comment on the individual pictures. I love getting comments!

Just below the Twitter widget and my Flickr badge is a search box. If you are lazy like me, and don’t feel like going to Google and doing an advance search to find something specific I may have blogged about once upon a time, you can just type in whatever you are looking for and poof! it will appear. It’s pretty cool because it will show you all the entries that contain what you searched for, just click “read more” to get the full entry. I have wanted this for a looooong time, so I am really excited about it, even though its a pretty basic little tool. It’s the simple things that keep me happy.

What else? Oh yeah, all my links to sites I read are below that, but in a slightly different order. We have “Blogs I Read,” “People I know” (whose blogs I read, obviously) and “Photo Blogs.” Within the categories they are alphabetical. Gotta love the organization of that one. So sorry if your site took an alphabetical descent in order, but thems the rules, kids.

Then over on the left side of the site (I know, I am working backwards, sorry) we have the Categories. I had this section on the previous version of my site, but in a slightly different format. The little number in parentheses is how many entries are in each category. Basically a real quick way to see what is the most important to me when it comes to blogging, eh?

Finally, below the Categories section is the Archives. It goes all the way back to March 2004 when I created this site…which reminds me I have a blog-o-versary coming up! Cool! So you can go back to a specific time to browse through old entries.

That pretty much sums up the new site stuff. Little bit of old mixed in with the new. Just the way we like it. I hope you enjoy it as well. Happy reading!

Today is my three year blogoversary (blog-o-versary?). I have officially been publicizing my life to the world for THREE YEARS now. It’s funny, whenever I try to explain my site to people who don’t really “get” blogging it either sounds voyeuristic or narcissistic. I am sure there is a little of both in there, but mostly I do it for me. I find nothing more gratifying than looking back over old entries and seeing what I have done, where I have come from, and how I have grown. I don’t honestly sit and read my archives very often, but when I do I am astounded by how easily I am transported back to that very day. I can remember exactly how I was feeling and what I was going through. To me that is magical. My blog is like my own personal time machine.

All those things are only compounded by the fact that I am now a parent. I love that my daughter will be able to look back (maybe with more embarrassment than anything–but what good are parents if not to embarrass their children, right?) at specific milestones in her life and relive those moments. Whether it is through a video clip (note to self: put up more video clips), photos, or even just my little daily musings. After all, isn’t life in the details? To know that I am keeping track of all these things whether they seem important to me now or not, is priceless. Because really, EVERY moment is special and not to be taken for granted.

Ok, so now we know why I blog, why do you blog? And if you don’t blog personally, what are you waiting for?

Happy 2007! I wanted my first post of the year to be something special, but as the days passed and I still hadn’t come up with something, I just put more and more pressure on myself to write something fabulous. So Simeon and I decided it was time to update my site. What do you think of the new look? I wanted to point out some of the new features. Firstly (and the most obvious) I updated the photo header and background color. I am not totally sold on it, but I will have to give it a few days to grow on me before I change it. Sometimes I have a hard time with change. Then I added in little sprinklings of my favorite font-just to add a little whimsy and personalize my site at the same time. I also updated the “Blogs I Read” list; removed those who have stopped blogging, updated the links to those who have changed their URLs, and added a few more to the list. Oh and I got rid of the pregnancy script (the thought of being 43 weeks pregnant was just too much to handle!) over on the side bar and added in a Flickr badge, which is essentially a fancy little shortcut to the pictures I have over on Flickr. All the other changes are mostly administrative and things that shouldn’t change the site functionality. But bear with me in case things work a little differently than you are accustom. Other than that, I hope you all have a great year and I am really looking forward to 2007! Yea!!

Happy Anniversary!!

March 15, 2004 was officially the day I started blogging. I can’t even believe it’s been a year already. I feel like I haven’t really done much in the last year, but because of this very blog, I am able to go back and actually see all the things I have done. And the beauty of it is, so can you! So go ahead. Pull up a chair, dust off your monitor, and take a trip down memory lane.

And since I always feel better after a little freshening up, I thought why not throw in a new look to top things off? Make it all shiny and new again. You likey?