Look, I'm (kind of) Famous!

When I wrote this post last month, Chris suggested I submit it to Feminist Mormon Housewives.  He usually has pretty good ideas, so I went ahead and did it.  I figured that, in light of all that's negative towards women in the world today, it's always nice to hear about programs that do good things for girls.

And I'm happy to report that this morning I am a guest poster on FMH!  You can click here to go directly to my post.

Enjoy!

Imagine Balloons and Confetti

Because this is my 500th post!

I've been writing this blog for nearly four years.  I started it as a way to keep far away family members updated on what we were up to.  Mostly what the girls were up to; let's be honest, the far away family members don't actually care that much about what Chris or I are up to.

Over time, the blog evolved.  It became a creative writing outlet for me.  I found out that people actually read what I write, and sometimes they like it!  Now I have followers I've never met.  Not too many, but a few.  It's fun.

I have plans in the works to, hopefully, reach a larger audience.  I want to write posts that people will enjoy reading.  However, I'm pretty sure I think I'm funnier than I actually am.  So even though I have my favorite posts here on the blog, I want to know what people who aren't me enjoy.

So, in honor of the 500th post here on Three is a Magic Number, I have a favor to ask of you, my readers.  Will you please leave a comment letting me know which post (or posts!) you've enjoyed the most?  Pretty please?

It would be a wonderful "Happy 500th Post" present for me (because, of course, an event as epic as this one requires presents!)

And it would go so well with the balloons and confetti.

Shamelessly Begging for Validation

Did you know that January 14 is National De-Lurk Day?

I did.  But I forgot.  Again.

For the past three years I've been trying to remember, so I could do a post and encourage all my lurkers (people who read blogs but never comment - it's less creepy than saying "blogstalkers") to leave a comment and say hello, but I keep forgetting.

So I'm declaring today, February 7, my own personal De-Lurk Day.

See, blogging creates insecurity.  It's sad, but true.  I started this blog back in 2007 as a way to keep far away family up-to-date on the girls.  But it didn't take long before I discovered that I really like writing.  I like having this creative outlet, and I also really like having a way to tell crazy stories about my children, for which they will probably hate me one day, and need therapy.  It's what being a parent is all about.  And it's fun.

But we bloggers start to worry when the comments are few and far between.  Is anyone actually reading this?  Do they like me?  Do they *really* like me?  There's something about getting comments on a blog post that make us feel validated, like what we're sending out there into the blogosphere is at least being enjoyed by someone besides ourselves.  I know some people view their blogs as an online journal, but that's not how I see this one.  So it sort of feels like a waste if no one's actually reading it.  Pathetic, I know, but true all the same.

So humor me.  Leave me a comment and say hello.  Let me know how you found this blog (especially if we don't know each other in real life), and why you read it.

As an incentive, if you have a blog, I'll visit you and leave you a comment!  Chances are I'm lurking there anyway.

And if you don't have a blog, still leave me a comment and I promise I'll love you forever!

Shameless Promotion

Shutterfly has a fabulous deal going on right now: 50 free cards for bloggers!

So, because I slightly overspent in one area of our Christmas budget (although the result will be awesome fun for our family), and am trying to make up for it in all other areas, I would love to get some fabulous-looking Christmas cards without having to pay for them!  I'm all over this offer.  Please bear with me while I tell you what, exactly, I like about Shutterfly's cards.

Last year we took our own Christmas pictures and had some cards made up quickly and cheaply at a local discount store.  They were nice enough, but after looking over the options available at Shutterfly, I'm really excited to give them a try.  While they do offer the typical photo greeting cards, they also have a selection of folded or flat stationery cards, which are printed on high-quality cardstock and therefore look more professional to me.  I'm excited to try these out.  With options for up to 6 photos, my biggest problem is that I don't actually have one decent picture of our whole family yet this year, let alone six.  I'm going to do some playing around with the camera in the next several days and see what I can come up with.  Hopefully I'll get some good shots in time to get cards out before Christmas!  If not, by New Year's, at least.  New Year's cards are good, too, right?

If you'd like a Holiday (covering all my bases) card from our family, send me an email (click the "contact" tab above) with your address and I'll try to get one to you.  Remember, though, I'll only have 50!  First-come, first-served, people!

I Have an Idea, and It Involves You

If you've read this blog for any period of time, you're familiar with my other blog, Project 365.

If you haven't and you're not, you should take a look.  Go ahead; I'll wait.

Are we all back now?  Alrighty...

Last year around this time Chris mentioned that, while browsing Flikr, he'd come across some groups of people who were taking a picture every day for a year and sharing them.  He thought it was a really cool idea, and since he knew I liked to take pictures, he thought I should give it a shot.

So I did.

And I almost gave up on the second day.

See, I decided to document all of 2010, but we were on vacation and January 2 was spent packing up so we could pull out and head home extremely early in the morning on the 3rd.  It wasn't until we crawled into bed close to 11:00 on the 2nd that I remembered I hadn't taken any pictures that day, because nothing interesting had happened.  I almost just threw the towel in right then and there (we were sleeping in the basement of my in-laws' house in Utah, and it was COLD!)  But Chris knew I'd regret it if I did, so he convinced me to get out of bed.  I figured if I was already out of bed, I might as well go outside, which is why my picture for Day 2 is this one.

Today is Day 309 and I've only missed three (assuming I take any pictures today, since I haven't yet.  But I will, dang it!  I will!)

But I'm not writing all this to brag about it.

I've noticed that people actually seem to think this is a really cool idea.  It's fun to document a year in this way.  I take a LOT of pictures, and I don't always post the one that tells the most about my day, but I will always be able to look back at this project and see what was going on in my world on any given day of the year.  And I think my photography skills have improved considerably, at least as far as composition is concerned.  (Although I still maintain that if I had a nicer camera, my photography skills would be nicer, too.)

So I'm proposing an idea, just to get a feel for it and see how many people would be willing to participate.

I want you to join me.

Yes, you.

I'm planning on continuing the project for another year (because I'm determined not to miss any days this time), and I'd love to have some company!  I thought I'd plant the idea now so you can be thinking about it for a while.  If there's enough interest, I'll organize some sort of "Project 365 Central", so that everyone participating can enjoy everyone else's pictures, too.  Of course, your project doesn't have to start on Jan. 1, but it's a good, easy date to remember.  I have a friend who started on her 33rd birthday and is documenting a year from there, and another friend, a teacher, who is documenting a school year.  Whatever works for you is great.  But I'll be starting over on Jan. 1, 2011, and I invite anyone who is interested to join me!

Think about it.  Let me know.  Have your people call my people; we'll do lunch.  Or something.

Moral Dilemma

We all know I love spelling and grammar.

I may be in a minority here, but we're a strong and vocal minority.  You can find snarky grammar blogs all over the internet.

Ever since I discovered The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, I've been spotting offenses everywhere.  You may even remember my delight awhile back when one I submitted was featured.

Well, when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.  I volunteer at the girls' school, and way back at the beginning of the year I noticed an offending sign in the art room there.  Because of Project 365, I pretty much always have a camera handy, so I took a picture.  Several months later I submitted it, along with three or four others.

Well, whenever I post on the blog, I link to it on Facebook.  And since the time I submitted those particular photos, I have become Facebook friends with a couple of the staff at the school.  And I know they follow the links and read this blog (hi there!)

So, what I'm about to do is essentially to make fun of my daughters' school.  But not really.  I love the school and the people who work there!  I don't have any idea who wrote the sign, or whether they even work at the school anymore (or if they ever did; it may have been a volunteer like myself, for all I know.)  So I hope no one thinks I'm mocking them if I go ahead and point out that this particular picture was posted on the "Blog" yesterday.

Enjoy.

My apologies to the school.  But don't forget to put it away.  Never, ever "dump it".

Being a Blogger is Starting to Pay Off

Yesterday afternoon the phone rang.  It does this from time to time.

I have a nine-year-old daughter who lives in desperate hope that the ringing phone will signal an hour-long conversation about, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing.  Despite my shout of "I got it!", she picked it up.

And then handed it to me with a very confused look on her face.*

It was a gentleman, with questionable English skills, wondering if I would be so kind as to participate in a "market research study".  Without so much as taking a breath, he wondered if the male registered voter in the household was available.  Unfortunately, he was not.

Not to be deterred, however, the gentleman asked if I was a registered voter.

And I am.  Lucky me.

Before I could express my disinterest in participating in his study, he went on to ask if anyone in my household or immediate family worked for any sort of media outlet.

After sighing in resignation that I was, in fact, about to participate in the study, I told him no.

Then he asked the question that saved my afternoon: "Are you a blogger, or do you frequently comment on blogs?"

Why, yes.  Yes, I am.

And he thanked me for my time but regretted to inform me that I did not qualify to participate in the study.

Ah, yes, I like this blogging thing.


*Vicki informs me that he asked if she was 18 or older. Why does that suddenly creep me out?

It's Friday But I'm Still Feeling Random

A former roommate of mine just posted the most hilarious take on the upcoming worldwide life-changing event that is the release of Eclipse, the third film in "The Twilight Saga".  If you're like me, and you enjoyed the books to a certain extent but think the world is going waaaay overboard, check out Danielle's post, Total Eclipse of the Heart.  You won't be disappointed.

I meant to put a link in yesterday's post so you'd know exactly what the new toy we got ourselves is.  I forgot.  This is it:

We caved and bought a dual screen DVD player for the car.  You strap it to the headrests.  Our single unit is good, but we have three kids.  'Nuff said.

I like reading the comics.  Particularly the weird ones.  This Bizarro has kept me laughing since Sunday:

Tonight Chris and I are going to see Josh Ritter in concert.  I'm so excited.  I loooove Josh Ritter.  Anyone who can sing like that, and write songs like those...wow.

Then, tomorrow, at around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we're leaving for Utah.  I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight.  Should be an interesting drive.

I really have nothing else to say, but I had too many things to share to do any sort of normal post.  I may or may not post while we're gone.  So if  Thursday comes and goes and there's no randomness from me, well, someone else will have to step up, I guess.  Happy summer, everyone!

Dear Mr. (or Ms.) Angry Anonymous Commenter Person,

Hi there.  Welcome to my blog!  It appears that a Google.uk search this morning for "kfc three is the magic number" led you here (I'm thinking England is running commercials featuring the "three is a magic number" song, although I thought they might be for McDonalds, given the other recent searches that have led people to me.  I could be wrong, though - it has happened.)  It deposited you on a Random Thoughts Thursday post from back in October, in which I happened to mention KFC.

You may or may not have read the post.  I can't really tell.  But I appreciate that you left me a comment letting me know how you feel about my blog, and, apparently, me in general.

I love comments.  Regular visitors here are well aware of that.  Comments make me feel good.  They make me feel like people are actually reading what I shoot out into the blogosphere.  I write for myself, but I wouldn't be blogging it if I didn't want to share it with other people, too.  In fact, I like comments so much that I didn't want to miss out on any that might be left after I've stopped paying attention to the posts, so I set my blog up to require moderation of comments on posts older than 7 days.

Which is how I was able to notice your comment so soon.  So I thank you kindly for your opinion and welcome you to visit again any time you'd like, although in all likelihood you're long gone and will never return.  Perhaps it's better that way, for both of us.  It would probably never have worked out between us, anyway.  I just wanted you to know, though, that I appreciate the irony of your comment and enjoyed a good laugh this afternoon as a result.  Thanks!

You may not care about my life, but I do, and that's all that really matters.

Still laughing,
Allison

In Which I Blog about Nothing

I can't think of anything to blog about.

Okay, that's not true.

I can think of LOTS of things to blog about.  I just can't get them to come out sounding right.

Like how I wanted to stay up late reading the other night and decided to be responsible and go to bed (relatively) early instead.

Or, conversely, how I should have done two loads of laundry yesterday but didn't.  I only did one, and then only because I wouldn't have had clean undies today otherwise.  It's all about me, you know.  But now no one seems to have any jammies.

Or how I'm loving Lexi's Brownie troop more and more all the time.  We had a great meeting yesterday, led by Vicki, who is trying to earn her Junior Aide award.

Or how Chris and I have watched two completely different but still both awesome movies the last two weekends: The Tunnel and Stranger Than Fiction.  One left us emotionally on edge for hours afterward (which is a great then when the movies ends at midnight) and one left us on a laughing high for hours afterward (much better, no matter the time.)

Or how I baked snickerdoodles on Sunday, and when Ellie told her sisters about it, she said, "We're making stickernoo... Um, we're making stickernoo... We're making cookies!!!"

But I can't seem to blog about those things in any coherent way.

Perhaps the universe is sending me a message: Put Down the Blog and Slowly Step Away.  And Nobody Gets Hurt.

Time to do some laundry and pick some kids up from school.  Possibly even in that order.

If I don't get distracted by the "stickernoodles" first.

FYI

I added photos to the post titled Over the River and Through the Woods.  Just in case you care to see what a 12-hour drive with our family looks like :)

Just You Wait

Our family of five got a total of four new cameras for Christmas.

Santa brought the girls each a digital camera (this is what, ahem, Santa was doing at Best Buy at 5:00 in the morning on Black Friday), and Chris's parents gave us a video camera.

Ellie has at least 400 shots of random blurry shapes.

Lexi has at least 400 shots of all her new toys, from every conceivable angle.

Vicki has at least 350 shots of various family members doing various things, and 50 shots of her grandpa's bald spot (which he doesn't believe exists - she's trying to prove it to him.)  She's trying to talk me into letting her have her own blog.

We have all kinds of Christmas morning present-opening video footage, as well as a rousing game of Guesstures with my family.  In addition to all the still pictures Chris and I have on both our cameras of all three girls skiing on Christmas Eve, playing in the snow at Grandma Y.'s house, and opening their presents.

And when we get home to our own computer, I'll be sharing them with you.  Probably not all of them, but probably a lot of them.

I bet you can hardly wait!

Drawing a Blank

I want to blog.

Or maybe just write.

I want to have profound and meaningful things to write about.  I want to leave my mark on the world.

I started a post tonight that wants to be all those things.  But I don't have the energy to finish it.  It involved pictures.  Lots and lots of pictures, and despite the ease of Blogger's new and improved picture uploader, it still takes effort, effort which I do not feel like putting forth.

I feel like the blog is being neglected.  I faithfully come back each Thursday, because I've discovered that Random Thoughts Thursday has some sort of magical powers.  It draws people in, and I like people reading my blog.  It makes me, in a very TAMN-like way, feel validated.  But the rest of the week doesn't have the same kind of draw, for any of us, and I've developed writer's block.

Either that, or mommy's loss of momentum.

Life is busy.  November and December are crazy months.  I love this time of year, but man, it's nuts.  I don't know if I'm at the point yet when I can say I'll be glad when the holidays are over, but a day or two of downtime would be nice.  (As long as that downtime is not in the form of another illness, thank you very much.  We're done with that now, okie-dokie?)

For someone who started this post thinking she had nothing to say, I sure do have a lot to say, huh?  I've got nothing to blog about, so I blog about nothing.*

I'm drawing a blank, and Ellie's drawing on the walls.

It's me, there on the left.  You can tell because of the short, curly hair.  I think she thought I wouldn't get as mad at her for using the walls as a canvas AGAIN if it was a picture of me.  The sad thing is, I didn't.  I didn't succeed in trying not to laugh, I took a picture and then I didn't even make her clean it up.

The way I see it is: at least I'm making a mark somewhere!

*10 points if you get the song reference

You found me!

Welcome to the new and improved Three is a Magic Number!  You'll find all your old favorite posts here.  Of course, I'm not sure if anyone even had any favorites, but I do, and they're all here!

As you can see, not too much has changed.  Same crazy household, same crazy blog.

Enjoy.

Maybe I'll throw a party

Two years ago I decided to jump on a bandwagon, and Three is a Magic Number was born. At first I thought it would just be somewhere to put pictures and tell silly stories about my girls, a way to share our life with our family, since we live 800 miles from them.

But over time it became less of a family update kind of thing and more of a creative outlet for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anything I write is profound, or, honestly, all that interesting to most people, but at least it gives me a place to write. Maybe one day I'll try something more ambitious, but this way no one can laugh at me. And if they do, I'll never know. Ah, the beauty of the Internet.

So when I realized that I was coming up on my "blogiversary" (I think the beloved TAMN coined that phrase, so I can't actually use it in any seriousness, not that I would anyway) I tried to think of something really cool I could do to commemorate that great day two years ago when I embarked on this adventure.

Aaaaaaand...I got nothin'.

But the wheels are still turning. I may just shake things up a little bit. For instance, I might put a different picture of the girls up. Or I might introduce a new weekly post topic, a-la Random Thoughts Thursday. Or I might redesign the whole layout. Or maybe I'll change the title (no, stop it all of you, I will NOT be changing it to anything with the number 4 in it.) You never know. But it will be something, and it will be awesome.

In the meantime, though, happy blogiversary to meee!!!

P.S. If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can celebrate, do share.

Because not everyone thinks blogstalking is cool

See below for today's installment of Random Thoughts Thursday.

Since I’ve caved in and joined facebook, I figure I ought to at least get something out of it in return. Besides everyone’s smug satisfaction, that is :) So I’ve put my blog on my profile in the hopes that I can get myself some more readers. But I have a lot of people’s blogs over there on the right, and it’s possible that not all of you will like the idea of who knows who being able to click on your blog from mine.

So if you aren't comfortable with that, please let me know and I will remove your blog from the list and just bookmark it so I can still find you but none of my crazy facebook friends can.

Under Construction

I'm sick of polka dots. So we're going with simplicity for a while until something else catches my fancy. I may change the colors around a bit, but not today.

Okay, to be honest, while I am getting tired of the polka dots, the real reason I'm making changes now, before I actually have anything to change to, is that I'm in the process of writing up a post on our cruise, and it's three full pages in Word. And that's before the pictures.

Yeah, I know.

I figured it wouldn't look quite so long if I had a wider text space to work with. Then maybe I won't scare as many readers away. And I'm trying not to make it too much of a travelogue, and more of just a list (with pictures) of why everyone should visit Alaska at least once in their lives.

So...yeah...stay tuned. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Or something like that :)

BEST link EVER!!!

Okay, so like you all know I totally have the best life EVER!!! My girls are seriously the cutest and sweetest kids IN THE WORLD! And Chris is the hottest, most FREAKIN' AWESOME hubby ANYONE could totally ever hope for!!! Right? You all totally know what I'm talking about. I'm, like, so dang BLESSED to have just the BEST life.*

But if my life is the BEST!!!, then this chick is a close runner up. This is one of the funniest things I've come across in a long time, so naturally I have to share. Enjoy!



*If I ever blog like this again, feel free to shoot me.

Ketchup

It really hasn't been all that long since I last posted, but man has it been crazy around here! I have a ton to blog about, but rather than do one insanely long post and cram everything in, I think I'll do a whole bunch of them and try to keep things in (sort of) chronological order. Hang on tight!

New look!

So...what do you think?

I've been wanting to do this for weeks, but it took me forever to first figure out what I wanted it to look like, and then how on earth to do it. I actually had to create a new blog just so I could mess around with it and not completely mess up this one. But I finally did it (spending WAY too much time on it, to be perfectly honest). I'm kinda proud of myself.