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- Welcome to one of the happiest days EVER – it’s actually snowing outside. And by “snowing” I mean actually SNOWING. We are predicted to get 3-6″ of snow today, and we already have about 2″.
My children are in heaven. Not only is it snowing in “significant” amounts, but it’s really good, wet, packing snow. Braelynn has already built a 6′ tall snowman (4 “levels”!), a baby snowman, and an igloo! (As I write this, there is a lull in the snow, it’s supposed to pick back up in about an hour and drop another 2-3″ hopefully!)
We did get just barely an inch of snow on New Year’s Day (which was enough for Braelynn to scrape two small snowmen out of. I swear, she’s a snow wizard!) But this snow we’re getting today is so much MORE! It’s fantastic! - So yes, my “traditional” first Abby’s Saturday of the year is typically Abby in some sort of hat – but I had to make an exception with our lovely snow!
- Happy New Year! It’s officially 2024 and that means we’re back to our regularly scheduled “programming”! Derrick went back to work this week, the kids went back to doing school, and I went into “New Year” overdrive, creating all sorts of new schedules, charts, and lists in an attempt to streamline and make things more efficient. (For example: I created a 4 week dinner-plan rotation with complete menus and grocery lists – this way, I can use that as a “base” and instead of “re-inventing the wheel” every 2 weeks when it comes time to go grocery shopping, I can just use my pre-planned menu and list, make any tweaks or adjustments needed, and there we go!)
I also created a new “chore” chart for the kids – complete with colored boxes, velcro, and incentives – and so far, it’s worked fabulously (I know that for us, “chore/responsibility charts” tend to run out of steam by Week #2, but I’m really hoping we can keep this momentum up a little further than that!) - Last night, we attended my friend Tiffany’s Christmas party – she and her husband host a big Christmas party every year and typically, we are traveling and end up missing out. We went to one party, like 6 years ago, but haven’t made it back since. UNTIL LAST NIGHT – we finally got to go back and everyone had a blast. Braelynn is not typically very shy, but she got out of the car and said, “Mom, I’m so nervous,” as we were walking in. It took her a grand total of about 30-seconds to shake those feelings off and join the fun though! There were SO many kids there – most around her age! Leander had fallen asleep on the way there, so it took him a little longer to warm up to things, but needless to say: we had to drag them away at the end of the night.
And as we were leaving, Braelynn asked: “Does Ms. Tiffany have this party every year? I can’t wait to come back!” - Derrick and I have been on a roll recording new episodes of “ERT with Derrick and Kara” this “second season” – and this week, we decided to upgrade some of our setup! We got a new table, new mic stands, added a secondary light source – I’m really excited!
- Speaking of YouTube content, I have finally arrived at the very end of our Florida trip in my Adventuring Abbeys vlogs! I feel like I’ve been stuck creating Florida content forever, and I’m finally at the very last video! I can’t wait to move on to new things! (I still have a ton of vlogs to create, but it will feel SO GOOD to finally be done with our spring Florida trip!)
- SO I’m having issues with my website.
It’s a long story – the nutshell version is: I’ve lost access to the back-end of my website (something I knew was going to happen eventually) so I am now starting the process of re-building my site on a new server.
The longer version is: I originally built my website back in 2012 via a builder called ProPhoto. It was a service you could buy into with a one-time fee. I had extremely limited funds, so after a ton of research, this was the most in-expensive way I could find to have a website.
Over the last 12 years, I’ve paid to upgrade to the new versions of the ProPhoto builder 2 or 3 times.
Then in early 2022, ProPhoto announced that they were moving to a “subscription” model (like everyone else in the world – groan) and while their current version would continue to work, they would no longer offer support on it after December 31, 2022. I was annoyed. I did not want to pay their new subscription fees – they were high. So, I just figured I would stick with the current version for as long as I could.
Fast forward to this week, I tried to jump in and make a few updates to my website, and it will not let me. I just keep getting errors no matter what I try to do (I’m literally crossing my fingers that this even posts!)
So, I’ve started the long process of moving my site to a new, more reliable, better, still-subscription-based-but-less-than-the-Pro-Photo-subscription, server.
If you can hear me heavy sighing through the interwebs – I am. Re-designing my site is a monumental task, and even though I had already planned to update a lot of my site this off-season, I hate being forced into it NOW. - It’s January and that means I have to start the process of combing through my hundreds of thousands of files to pull my favorite images from the year. I literally go through every single folder of images on my hard drive from the year and pull my favorites – both personal and professional. Me pulling these images provides photos to fuel my social media for the year & then I can take my personal photos and create our 2023 family yearbook! It’s a mountain of a task, but one I look forward to doing every year! (I just wasn’t planning on a huge website re-build at the same time!)
