This morning started off pretty calm…I got up earlier than usual, made the lunch sandwiches, clothes were clean, backpacks were packed. There are only 2 days of school this week so even though it was Monday, I wasn’t feeling too rough.

and then it happened…

I find out that the 12yo wants to wear the pair of shoes that currently had one shoe outside with dog poo stuck to it. It’s 40 degrees outside and he wants to clean it off so he can wear that specific pair of shoes instead of one of his other pairs of tennis shoes. I tell him, no, he whines…he has “gym today and those are his athletic shoes!”…”I wiped them off last night, they’ll be fine!” Okay, bring it in, but if it’s too much, you’re not wearing them. He brings it in…there is still poo in 2/3 of the cracks of the shoe! Tell him absolutely not…he whines some more…puts on other pair of tennis shoes.

Crisis 1 averted. Crisis 2…

12yo tells me at 6:55am (we leave at 7am) that sister just woke up.

O.M.G.

Thankfully the teen is pretty quick when she chooses to be, we leave 10 min late, but crisis 2 is averted.

As I mentioned it was 40 degrees this morning. Mother eff’ing cold in this Florida girl’s mind. Do you think my kids thought it necessary to wear jackets today? Noooooo. I had to flat out demand that the one wear jeans instead of shorts and then they both got into the car with no sleeves! Hayden had gym so he didn’t get an option, he was taking a hoodie, but I may or may not have screamed, “I hope your extremities freeze off!” when the teen refused to get a jacket.

Thankfully, despite my short fuse and our crises this morning, traffic was heavenly so we left 10 min later than usual, but got to school at the same time we always do. The kids were in a great mood, I apologized for the things I said when I needed caffeine and we were all smiles by the time I kicked kid 2 out of the car.

Promptly headed to my favorite local coffee shop where their credit card machine was down, but thank God I had cash, treated myself to a vanilla latte and one of their new mugs!

Happy Monday!!

 

Not sure if there are any of you still out there, but if so

Hello lovely blog readers!

I’ve started this post at least a dozen times over the past 2 weeks.

I’m slowly coming back to blogland. My motivation and desire to blog, or to even READ blogs, left me for a bit, but it’s slowly creeping back in.

I have so much, yet so little to say.

So for now, while I find a way to focus my thoughts, we’ll just leave it at…

I have been desperately seeking a super slacker day since the kids got out for Christmas break.

You know.

The kind of day where you eat junk, sleep, watch tv, do nothing you’re supposed to do.

Just be a total slacker.

Today is that day.

Not completely, but for all intents and purposes, I’m calling it my slug day.

I’ve been sick for the past few days, but today I’m feeling almost well. There is nothing that HAS to get done today.

I actually slept most of the night. Which is a stark contrast to the last two nights where I tossed and turned all night and was constantly grabbing tissues to shove up my nose.

I woke up, surfed online, Hayden woke up, we watched The Polar Express (Caitlin woke up sometime in the middle of this), I napped, we ate lunch, watched an episode of Merlin, the kids went to chill by themselves upstairs while I surfed some more and watched my dvr’d reality tv.

It’s been a good day so far.

I still got dressed and am doing a few chores around the house, but it’s still been a pretty slack day.

The hubs called around lunch time and asked why I didn’t answer his phone call a couple hours earlier.

Uh…I was napping.

Totally busted. 😛

Now I’m about to grab a Starbucks and settle in to watch one of my favorite holiday movies…

ELF!

Three days before Christmas probably isn’t the best time to take a slacker day, but I’m doing it anyway.

Besides, there’s far too much stress this time of year. I needed a little down time.

Not recovering from a sickness downtime.

Not recovering from a teen sleepover downtime.

Just downtime because I don’t want to do anything and I want to actually enjoy not doing it!

Tomorrow craziness will commence.

Yay! I finished my Christmas book before Christmas!

The 13th Gift is the true story of how 12 anonymous gifts help a family through a difficult time. The author, Joanne Huist Smith, has been walking around in a fog of grief and sadness, barely parenting her 3 children, since the unexpected loss of her husband. When the first of the gifts arrives on her doorstep, she’s not too happy about it. In fact she’s pretty annoyed. However, over the course of 12 days (12 gifts), this family not only survives their first Christmas without the patriarch of the family, but they start to heal.

I loved this story! It was like reading Chicken Soup for the Soul, but better. It had heartbreak and sadness, but also some really great feel good moments. You could feel the author’s grief and struggle and then you felt when it shifted, and the fog started to lift. Overall it’s a sweet story that made you think about the real meaning of Christmas. It’s not about getting the best toy or latest electronic gadget, it’s about being kind to one another and reaching out when you see someone in need.

If you want to read an uplifting story this season, definitely check out The 13th Gift. You won’t regret it.

Disclaimer: I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review. All views in this post are my honest, unbiased opinions.

I feel pretty comfortable with this blogging thing, but I’m well aware that there is a lot I don’t know. I stumble upon things on my own all the time that I need to learn, but sometimes, I get surprised.

Like this weekend, when I got an email about my linkbacks to a clothing store.

Apparently there’s this thing called a “nofollow” attribute and Google (other search engines as well possibly) is cracking down on links they consider unnatural or manipulative. The clothing store emailed me to ask me to either change my links to add nofollow or remove the links all together.

Thankfully I only had about 15 links to change, but it was still a pain.

So, tell me, fellow bloggers, how clueless am I?  Have you heard of adding the nofollow attribute to your links?

I’m still a little confused to when I should add the nofollow part. Like, should I always do it when linking stores?  I thought it was good to link back to the original source, but maybe I should add nofollow to everything?  I’m not trying to get better Google rankings when I link, but if I like something and linking to it helps their ranking, then I would want to help.  Then again, if it hurts their ranking, it’s not helping when I link without the nofollow.  Geez louise, I just confused myself more.  😛

In case you haven’t heard of this before…here’s the link on Google about their policies and here’s a little infographic I found.