Now that the snow is here, I am actually kind of enjoying it. I snowblowed the driveway twice in the last 24 hours.

What I didn’t enjoy about the snow was getting stuck on I-80 last night. I was on my way home from Scott’s hockey game with the kids. It was a blizzard. The roads were snowy, but not too bad. As we approached our exit off the freeway, traffic started slowing down. Then it came to a complete stop. I could see my exit up ahead, but there was no way I could get to it. All lanes of traffic were blocked and there was no shoulder. We ended up being stuck there for an hour and a half. I think that Parley’s Canyon was closed due to an accident. The traffic backed up and there was nowhere to go. The worst part was that if I had taken the frontage road, we never would have gotten stuck. Luckily I had stopped at Taco Maker on the way home. The kids ate in the car and then watched a movie. They were fine, it was mom who got impatient.

Finally, the traffic started moving and we got home. By the time we got home we had almost 10 inches of snow in our driveway. I wasn’t even expecting it to snow, and we got dumped on!

I haven’t made any changes to this blog at all and for some reason my header isn’t showing up!

I tried deactivating the plug-in that makes the photos change, but it still didn’t work.

It always seems to take hours to fix one tiny problem.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have more time to try to fix it. Today was crazy! And it is my birthday;-) Thanks, by the way, for all the nice birthday wishes from everybody on Facebook!!

Another photographer in Salt Lake has generously set up a donation page for her. Hopefully we can spread the word and help her replace her equipment. Please go check out his blog and donate if you are able.

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The good news is that my brother decided to go to rehab. He has been there for a week now, and things seem to be going well. The hard part is the emotional toll hasn’t gotten much easier for me. On top of that my dad was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. It is in very early stages and should have a very high cure rate. But everything together has just been weighing on me.

For some reason today was just an especially hard day. Nothing in particular happened. It just feels like some days I feel stronger and I am able to cope better. Other days things just seem so much harder to deal with.

I finally decided to just get my workout clothes on, grab a lighthearted book, and jump on the elliptical trainer. I knew it would help, and it did. After I was done I just felt better. I know that there is long road ahead for Bryan, and for all of us. The good part is he is in a great place and is leaning a lot. He has a supportive family and supportive friends. We are all pulling for him and I know that we just need to take it one day at a time.

I can’t really say what it is, but I feel like I need to write something just to help me process things. I feel like I am on a roller coaster lately. A few weeks ago I had an incredibly stressful week. I was so emotionally spent. I spent every waking moment thinking about the problem and talking to people trying to figure out how to intervene and help improve the situation. It was unbelievably stressful.

I found myself constantly on the phone. That means that I was neglecting most of the other things I needed to be doing. The house was a mess, dinners were not planned, and the kids were incredibly grumpy because I wasn’t able to do the things I needed for them. I was a lousy mom because I was so stressed out about the other things going on. I found myself breaking down crying, alternating between being sad about neglecting my kids and worrying about what was happening.

Things kind of came to a head, and then I calmed down and had a few days where I could breathe and things started to get back to normal. The problem is, things aren’t normal. Everyone is just pretending they are.

The emotions just keep creeping back in. I get a text, or a phone call and the whole issue just gets opened up again. I get blamed for being the bad guy, when really I am just doing the hard things that need to be done.

I am trying to keep my distance from the whole thing. I know I can’t really do anything. I have done all that I can do. The best thing for me to do now is to just sit back and wait. I have to concentrate on my little family and my kids. I need to keep being a good mom to my kids and a good wife to my husband. Sometimes it is just hard. I find myself driving down the road thinking about it, and sometimes I just can’t help but burst out in tears.

I’m sorry I can’t really open up more. I’m sure this left most people even more confused. But this is my blog and it is about my life. I just needed somewhere to vent and to try to help me deal with some of my emotions. Thanks for listening.

I know she is my third child, and I should be expecting this. I have been through this with 2 other kids, right? Funny thing is I must have amnesia or something because I swear I just don’t remember it being quite like this. I remember Ian being crazy and active, but I don’t remember him doing things specifically to push my buttons. I am sure that both he and Emma both acted like that, but I just don’t remember right now.

I also don’t remember how to deal with it. I watch her do things and I just feel powerless and flabbergasted sometimes. This morning was particularly difficult. She woke up about 5:30am and started calling for someone to come get her. Her yelling woke Emma up, so Emma went and got her out of bed. The first thing Nora did was come into our room and ask for “yummies”. When we grunted at her and rolled over an went back to sleep she broke down in tears. The same thing happened over and over for about an hour, until I finally got up and made her breakfast. She ate a few bites and then proceeded to throw her entire bowl of cereal onto the floor, milk and all.

Next she grabbed Emma’s box of crayons, looked straight at me, and threw the whole box onto the floor. Emma’s new crayons went all over and many of them broke. I was so angry at her. I asked her to pick them all up. She looked at me and said “No mommy, I not pick up the crayons”. UGH! I picked her up and plopped her down next to them and told her not to get up until they were all picked up. While she was picking them up she kept saying “Mommy, you are stupid” and “Mommy, I hate you.” After some prodding she did finally pick them up, but I was so angry at her.

Today was her first official day at school and I was so glad to drop her off. I felt bad after I left for feeling that way, but she just pushed my buttons this morning. I feel bad for losing my temper with her and yelling, but sometimes I just can’t help it. I know that this is a phase, but for now I just need to figure out how to deal with her.

I had a talk with my good friend Vicky today. I really value her parenting advice. She gave me some good tips. She reminded me how I dealt with Emma when she had some of these defiance issues when she turned 6. I realized that she was just rebelling because she needed more independence. I think that Nora is trying to tell me the same thing. She isn’t a baby anymore. She has been ready to move out of her high chair for a while. I think now is the time to move her. She is a great sleeper, so she is probably ready to start getting up when she is ready. It is probably time for me to move her to a bed, or at least take the side off her crib so that she can get in and out of her bed. I think that these things will help with some of her issues, now I just need to gear up to make some of the changes.

OK, I’m cheating a little bit. I guess delurking day was actually on Moday January 12th, but I missed it. I am making today delurking day at Kerry’s Ramblings.

What does Delurking Day mean exactly? It means you comment here, and on other blogs you read regularly. You can comment even if you have never done so before to JUST SAY HI. Or whatever you feel like saying.

I have to say that the comment issue is something that I struggle with on this blog. I really don’t blog for popularity. I blog so that friends and family can keep up on what is going on with our family. I blog so that someday my kids can go back and read my archives and see photos and read stories about what our lives were like. But sometimes I can’t help feeling down about not getting any comments.

I read other blogs where they get hundreds of comments a day. I’m not hoping to get that kind of bloggy fame, but I’d still like to get comments and know who is reading my blog. I check my stats and I know that I have readers. But if you look at my comments you would think I am mostly just talking to myself.

I have to admit, I am not great about leaving comments on other blogs either. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say. But since I have started posting on my blog regularly, I have really made and effort to do a better job at leaving comments. I know how much I appreciate them.

So, today is the perfect day for you to let me know that you are a reader. You don’t have to write anything fancy or profound. Just a simple little “Hi” will make me happy.

I am extremely fussy about car seat usage and installations. I like to frequent car seat message boards and learn about new car seat models. I never let my kids ride in any car without car seats. I take tons of time installing my car seats. I want them to be rock solid when they are installed–like they are supposed to be. Why bother using car seats if you aren’t going to install them so that they protect the kids in case of an accident?

I also keep my kids in harnessed car seat much longer than most people. While lots of people I know are just itching to have their kids get to 30 pounds so they can move them to a booster, I still have my almost 7 year old in a harnessed car seat. Instead of buying a booster, when Emma outgrew her Britax Marathon (in height, not weight) I bought her a new seat that would accommodate her height.

Did you know that car seats expire? I never knew they did until I started frequenting car seat message boards. Most car seats have expiration dates on the seat somewhere. If they don’t you can check with the manufacturer. If all else fails, most car seats expire 6 years from the date of manufacture. I know it might seem like a waste to throw away a car seat that looks fine, but if you watch this video, you will never use an expired car seat again.

I also keep my kids rear facing much longer than most people. Emma was rear facing forever, mostly because she was so skinny and she was almost 2 year old before she got to the 20 pound minimum to face forward. With Ian, I had learned more, and just knew that it was safer. So even though he was 20 pounds when he turned one year, I still kept him rear facing.

Nora has been rear facing until today. I kept her rear facing more than a year than most people. Here is a great article about how much safer it is to be rear facing. I really planned on keeping her rear facing until she reached the rear facing limit of her Britax Marathon, which is 35 pounds, but I decided to turn her around today. The weather is what finally got me to do it.

Since we got back from Maui it has been snowing constantly. Nora has been wearing boots and walking in the snow. Every time she gets in the car her boots are full of mud and snow which melts all over her Marathon and the actual seat of the Sienna. I think it will be better to have the snow melting onto the floor, instead of all over her. Another benefit is that she will be able to watch the movie screen now too.

I know that I kept her rear facing MUCH longer than most people. But I still have some guilt about turning her around. I guess I just need to get over it. I have done everything I can to ensure that my kids are safe while driving.

Hopefully someone learned something about car seats by reading this post. I think I’ll get off my soap box now

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This is where the problems happen. Things just don’t look the same in IE as they do in Firefox.

Today I happened to open up Internet Explorer to view one of my favorite sites, peekaboophotos.com. It just doesn’t work in Firefox so I use Internet Explorer. I have my blog set up as the home page. When it opened, this is what I saw:

The font was HUGE in the body–both the title and the post.

The thing that made me want to scream was that I hadn’t made ANY changes to my blog theme settings. This lovely issue just showed up all on it’s own for no reason.

Any time I have a problem like this it usually takes hours to fix. The main problem is that I don’t know very much about CSS. I have learned a lot since I started this blog, but I still have a lot more to learn. I usually end up begging others to help me. Heather from Oh My Stinkin Heck has helped me more times than she should. This time I found the Wordpress Support Forums. I posted my problem there and I was actually able to solve it without having to stay up all night.

This is how it is supposed to look, and how it looks now:

I just wish I could get everyone to switch to Firefox so I won’t have any more of these wacky problems!