Be a Hero. Save a blog. Use Bloggled's Blog Backup and Win an iPod or a CRICUT

Have you ever had this experience? You are posting to your blog, click the publish button, and the very next thing you know the screen is blank. So, you click back to your drafts and nothing is there, then you click your published posts and nothing is there. At this point you are starting to think to yourself…oh no, what just happened? As you continue searching your blog admin for information you see that all your uploaded images, videos, files, and everything is gone.

Living through this situation would be enough to devastate any blogger. Knowing that years of data about your person, family, or business is gone can be difficult to overcome emotionally, but even more difficult of a problem to solve. If you haven’t backed up your blog recently, or ever, chances are your posts and everything else are gone for good.

This is the kind of situation that led Brent Ramey to the idea of creating Bloggled.com, “and to honestly save anyone in that situation the act of going insane.” Bloggled.com is a blog backup company that is allowing bloggers to backup their blog for free as an introductory product to celebrate their official launch out of beta and as a holiday gift this season. Bloggled is also offering multiple prizes to those who participate in their “Be a Hero, Save a Blog Contest” that is running through the day on Monday, December 15, 2008. Winners can choose from either a 16GB iPod Touch, or a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter Machine and it’s quite simple to enter. All you have to do is one of the items below, but if you do more you get entered more times into the drawing…but you have to enter on Monday 12/15 to qualify so act fast, or should I say slow so I have a better chance of winning.

1. Join Bloggled. Register and sign up for a Bloggled account (http://www.bloggled.com).
2. Friend or follow Bloggled on one of the following social network profiles:
1. Twitter: http://twitter.com/bloggled
2. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Brent-Ramey/1002883214
3. Subscribe to Bloggled’s RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bloggled.
4. Blog about the Blogger Contest on another blog then notify Bloggled about the new blog post by commenting on their blog.

Anyway, as you can tell from my post here, I have met the criteria and will be hoping I’m drawn as a winner today. You can find the full contest details by visiting www.bloggled.com.

born again blogger :)

ok, so it's been a month since I have posted any pictures. Yikes! I finally got my computer back and running, much thanks to my wonderful friend Jeff Knight!!! Ok, here is our complete month of November... Keagan lost his first (supposed to come out) tooth a day or two after Halloween. He was super excited for the tooth fairy to visit him again and couldn't wait to get more "cash." (that isn't blood on his hand, it is marker in case you were wondering... gross)

Colby had a big old birthday bash at his new house and the boys were very excited to go. Keagan told me that Colby had finally earned his way up to being a best friend by inviting him to his birthday. Oh how lucky Colby is :)

my men after church. I love Casen's pleasently plump expression.

Kaiden must ask me to hold Casen about 100 times a day. This is both frustrating and wonderful. He definitely loves his little brother!!

Kaitie had her 8th birthday party at Classic. Oh let me tell you, we had some fun!! We went in the middle of the week and had the entire place to ourselves. Lori and I rocked the rink!! Adam and Megan stopped by to wish Kaitie a happy birthday too.

My little mini man

This is my newest niece Julia. She belongs to Stephanie and Brandon. When I found out I was having my 4th boy and she was expecting her 3rd girl, I told her we could work out a swap.

My cute little buddies fast asleep. I love it when they play nice!

Camden and Addie are special children!! Their minds think unlike most children's! On this most special day at Lori's house Addie painted Cam's face twice with Lip Gloss, Camden dumped out an entire bottle of Caladryl lotion, a whole bottle of Ajax, and half a bottle of goo gone. Yea, so fun!! Doesn't he look so pretty!

After all the fun that I have with my creative children, I was read for a break. Heather, Lisa, Summer, Stacie, and I went to Park City for the weekend for some girl time. Casen came too, but he was really good and it was so nice to just be able to have some one on one time with the little guy. We missed Janet, but I understand that Twilight weekend was also important :)

Me and Stac chillin on the couch

How can you not build a tower of phone books and purses and take a picture on this cool stair way?? Yikes!

On the 15th my sisters and some very special friends had the oh so special opportunity to see New Kids on the Block. Ok, I know it sounds lame, but seriously it was like going back to your favorite childhood playground and reliving the fun!! I had a total blast!!! It was such a fun night!


The crowd was insane!! I can't say I had very high expectations for the show, but they sounded great and it was probably one of the most fun shows I have ever been to.
Rachel and Lori

Janet and me. I had to temporarily rock the side pony tail. So hot right?? Jordan K, I'm with you all the way!!! (Ha ha!! Love you forever Janet!)

I found this larger than life button on one of the seats behind us. We couldn't resist a picture with it. Janet, Lori, Me, Rachel, MaKell, and Christy. Thank you ladies for an unforgetable evening!! (ps, if anyone feels the urge to check out their new cd, I strongly urge you to skip the track entitled "Grown Man" that is only if you don't like throwing up in your nose!!)

We had the family over to watch the very sad and dissappointing BYU vs U of U game (the one where Hall thought he was on the red team). Camden so proficiently displayed his ability to open soup cans. I think the final total of cans was 15. Wow! We have been eating a lot of Cream of Chicken soup around here lately! Once again, so special!

During the game it got too quiet, I went looking for the kids and found them in Grandma's laundry room having a puppet show. It was hilarious!

All of my boys!! I am one lucky mom!

This is Keagan the pilgrim. Oh so handsome! I am loving that collar!

Every year we go to breakfast on Thanksgiving day. My dad started taking just the kids when we were little so that my mom could get all the food organized. He used to take us to this little restaurante and buy us gabage pail kid cards. So cool! As we got a little older and could help my mom more, she started coming too. We always go to the same place and always take a family picture after breakfast. It is so fun to see how much the family has grown.

The wild ones

Keags and Ethan enjoying their hot chocolate, a Thanksgiving day must!

After breakfast we headed over to Kelly's parent's house for the rest of the day. This is Cam getting a head start on dinner. Yummy Jell-o from Auntie Diana

This is Kelly's brother Chris and his new wife Connie. They just got married the day before Thanksgiving. She is super wonderful and I am so happy to have her as a sister-in-law!

Casen, Keagan, and Piper

I walked Keagan out to the bus stop the other day and came back in the house and found Kaid reading a story to Cam. I love to see my boys being sweet to eachother!!! I had to take a picture

Keagan and Kaiden were playing together the other day when Kaid said, "Mom, Keagan's tooth just fell out!" Ok, that was easy enough! Now he has three beautiful gaps in his mouth! I am so excited for some of them to start filling in! It's cute to see my toothless wonder. Keagan was SO excited when the tooth fairy brought him five quarters instead of one dollar bill. He thought he was so loaded! It's fun when they don't really understand the concept of counting money.

The other night we were watching the Polar Express and all the boys piled on Kelly to see the show. It is crazy to think that all these guys belong to me! I am one lucky girl!

Kelly went to check on the boys in bed last week just to make sure they were warm, but he couldn't find Kaiden. He looked all over and finally started to get nervous and started calling his name. Finally noticed that the closet door was open a little so he went in and this is what he found. That shelf that he is so soundly asleep on is about 4 ft. off the ground. When I asked him about the next day he said that he climbed up and read a story to himself and fell asleep. Of course, why not? Kelly quickly carried him back to bed. So funny!! (Sometimes I actually clean this closet, and sometimes it actually stays clean for 5 minutes, but not very often).

Lori and I took the kids to the gingerbread house on Friday. I couldn't believe this house, it was huge! They said it took over 40 hours to make it. It was completly decorated inside and out! Wow!

Keagan really liked this gingerbread house. This is my kind of house!

After we looked at all the houses, we had to decorate some gingerbread men. I love Addie's super cute cheese-a-rific smile.

Just an idea...

Before everyone goes nuts with all the early Christmas shopping tomorrow morning, I just thought I would share an idea that we have used for a few Christmases now.  It is so easy to go overboard with gifts and forget why we even give them.  I heard this idea from a neighbor and thought it was so smart.  So, here it is...

Three Gifts; The idea of giving three gifts reminiscent of the three wise men.

Gold

The gift of wonder 

Wrapping paper color: Gold

This would be the one gift that your child can't live without.  This could be a toy, a planned outing, a season pass...

Frankinsence

The gift of meaning

Wrapping paper color:  Red

This would be a gift that expresses meaning.  This could be a scrapbook, a quilt, a special heirloom, jewelry, new temple clothes, treasure box, etc.

Myrrh

The gift of usefulness

Wrapping paper color:  Green

This would be a gift that is truly needed.  This could be a coat, new shoes, something practical yet worthwhile.

Kelly and I have tried to do this for a few years and I have been so grateful for this idea.  You can interpret the gifts however you want.  For example, last year Kelly gave me a new phone for my green gift.  I gave my boys their own journals (for me to write in about them) a couple years ago for their red gift.  You can go however big or small you want with each gift.  In the past I have used this as a shopping guideline and  we haven't actually used the colors of wrapping paper, but this year we will.  I look forward to explaining to my kids why the colors and what they are reminiscent of now that they are getting a little bit older.  I want them to know that we exchange gifts to remember that Jesus was given gifts, not just because Santa brings them.  I told my boys that we would write Santa a letter and tell him that we have a lot of toys already and that he could bring us stockings with some toys in them and to take the rest of the toys to some other kids houses.  It will be nice to have a more simple Christmas and think about the real meaning of Christmas.  The economy isn't exactly great right now and that makes this program even easier to follow :)  

Anyway, I just wanted to share...  Happy Thanksgiving and happy shopping!! 

tagged!

I got tagged by my cute friend Michelle, so here goes...

The rules

1. post the rules

2. Answer the six "8" items

3. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 Favorite TV Shows:

1.  The Office

2.  Arrested Development

3.  So You Think You Can Dance

4.  Extreme Makeover

5.  America's Next Top Model

6.  Biggest loser  

7.  I can't really think of anything else...

8.

8 Things I did yesterday

1.  cleaned my house

2.  made broccoli soup

3.  shopped at the outlets with the kiddos

4.  hung out at Lori's house

5.  went to the grocery store

6.  asked my sweet husband to clean out the vapo rub from Camden's hair  (for the 2nd time)

7.  watched Kung Fu Panda with the fam for a special treat show

8.  went to bed without doing the dishes :(

8 things I am looking forward to

1.  Rocking the NKOTB concert tomorrow

2.  seeing my cute sister from out of town

3.  Next weekend

4.  Casen sleeping through the night

5.  moving to a place with no snow

6.  the hollidays with my family

7.  Angie and her cute family coming to visit

8.  Camden being potty trained

8 favorite restaurants

1.  Fresh Choice

2.  Cafe Rio

3.  Bajio

4.  Tepanyaki

5.  Pizza Factory

6.  Olive Garden

7.  Hogi Yogi

8.  Mimi's Cafe

8 Things on my wish list

1.  Happy and obedient kids (Forever Family)

2.  Kelly to be done with school and have his own company

3.  To be comfortable financially, with no debt!

4.  lose 30 pounds

5.   A car that doesn't make regular stops at the shop

6.  To be a better teacher to my kids

7.  To have more patience

8.  To be more organized

8 People I tag

1.  Lori Muse

2.  Angie Haynes

3.  Deanne Hanson

4.  Jessica Howard

5.  Megan Iloa

6.  Diana McKee

7.  Kendra Price

8.  Tami Greene 

casen's blessing (a few weeks ago)

a week before Casen was to be blessed, I realized that his blessing outfit was going to be a little snug on my quickly growing baby. Auntie Lori agreed to come take a few pictures of him in it just in case he outgrew it completly before the blessing. I asked Kelly to dress him while Lori and I got ready to do pictures. When I came down to get him, this is what I found. Kelly was confused why my mom had bought such a plain blessing outfit. Hmmm, I asked if he usually wore his tie going down his back, probably not! Lori and I decided this would be a great outfit for Thanksgiving day, lots of extra tummy room. Thanks to Kelly for trying :)

Auntie Kellie came from St. George for the weekend. She is recovering really well from her eye surgery and we were so happy to have her here!

Amber and her family came from Lake Havasu (sp?) for the weekend. We miss them so much and were so happy they could make it!!

Sue and Jonny also came for the blessing, we are so blessed to have such wonderful friends!

Grammy Dee, Gary Ronald, and Casen Gary

Grandpa Jim and Grandma Sandra with Casen.

Great Grammy Lois with great grandchild #21! (and four more on the way by April!) Casen is sending out a message of peace, word up!

All the Ladies of the family. We had such a wonderful day! Kelly gave Casen a beautiful blessing and then we got to enjoy the boys in the Primary Program. After church we ate some food with fam and friends and then later celebrated Tyler's 24th birthday. I am not so sure why I don't have any pictures of the birthday boy? Big thanks to everyone who came and supported our little guy on his special day. (Thanks to all of you who would have come if you could have, we still felt the love!!)

Not exactly rated G, but so funny!

My sister showed me this video and I was totally cracking up!! It's is a bit more racy than most of my posts, but if you are feeling a little more on the wild side, I suggest you watch!! :)

If this video is offensive to you, I am REALLY sorry!

Friend Recipe Blog

Ok, many of you know how much I HATE to come up with menus! I have a recipe blog with my family that has been great, but I was thinking that as friends (especially since we have kids to feed) it would be fun to have a place that is fast and easy to share recipes with each other. So, if you are interested I have created a blogger account for this very purpose! Please ANYONE with a yummy recipe contribute! The address is www.feednthefam.blogspot.com and the username is feednthefam@gmail and password is lovetoeat. Anyway, if we can share the yummy stuff that our families like to eat and that aren't too complicated to make, life could be so much easier!!

Don't forget to use your right to vote today!! We are so blessed to have so many freedoms at the cost of brave American's lives, use your freedom for good and VOTE TODAY!!

Party, party, party halloween style

We started off the Halloween party times at the boys "library school" halloween party. Yeah, I'm a good mom and I don't have Kaiden in preschool right now, so library time is part of his feeling like he has a cool place to learn like Keagan. The party was awesome! There must have been about 75 kids all dressed up so cute. The kids had a blast and Casen was looking oh so chubbaliscious in his cow/dalmation hybrid outfit!

Princess Miss Sally was having a little trouble with her not so beautiful teeth, so the dentist came to save her and teach the kids about dental hygene during the hollidays. So cute! (The kids all got toothbrushes as one of the game centers too)

Kaiden rocked the beanbag toss! He threw the beanbags in the hole every time! Go Kaid!

On Thursday we headed over to the school district carnival. I couldn't believe how huge it was! The kids were so excited! Tickets were .50 ea (one ticket per booth) so we bought enough for the kids to play for a while, not a single booth asked for tickets. Nice, well at least we contributed to the school district right? :)

Camden and Kelly leaving the haunted house

Keags and Kaid getting off the huge shark bouncer slide.

Keags and Kaid rockin the cake walk, they only won smartie consolation prizes both times, but had lots of fun anyway.
Hurray! Finally it's halloween day! What better way to start the day than pumpkin pan-ko-pakes and green scrambled eggs! YUM YUM!

I was lucky enough to spend the day at the dentist making my week and a half grand total of dentist time 13.5 hours! Yeah crappy teeth! Huge thanks to my mom and lori for helping out so much with my kiddos!! Luckily I got home just in time to head over to lori's for a spooktacular halloween dinner! She made these super cute skull bread bowls complete with spagetti hair and bone chunk soup, and super cute chocolate covered marshmallow spiders. Keagan refused to eat for a long time, finally he confessed that he wasn't sure what it was and that's why he wasn't eating. i assured it was real food, and just potatoes, then he was ok. :)

For dessert, because you definetly need dessert before you go trick-or-treating right, I made martian treats. Yum yum!

After our fabulous dinner we got ready to head out when Keagan announced that he would not be wearing his costume! Great! This, we figured out, is the reason he was up half the night with nightmares. Yeah, I am a good mom buying super scary and disturbing costumes. Anyway, luckily Ethan was a super good sport and made a last minute switch for batman. Thank goodness for Ethan, he saved Halloween!

Kelly decided he would be a busted up BYU football player. Nice. Too bad my dad took all the football pads and helmets to the dump the day before. Oops. Still, it was pretty funny! He couldn't find a byu shirt, so he decided to make a stencil and spray paint byu on the shirt. It obviously didn't work, but we were all getting high from the paint fumes in his shirt. He opted for some white tape and just made a Y.

This is my last minute attempt at dressing up, and my sleepy little froggy

Here is Ethan in Keagan's costume. Can't imagine why Keagan was scared of it, can you??? It's just so cute ;)

Keagan as batman. Whoever made those bat ears is my hero!

The boys of Halloween. Kaiden kept taking off his blue mask because he didn't like how it kept getting spit in it. YUM! Too bad we didn't have a Michael Jackson costume for him.

Cam getting high on Daddy's shoulders

After some knocking doors, the kids were all done and we headed over to the ward trunk-or-treat. Did I mention this was the first halloween that I was actually sweating carrying my kids. It was wonderful!!

Someone in our ward brought the coolest haunted trailor. It was so funny to watch Camded realize there was a creepy little jason guy right in his face. I love halloween!

Some of our friends brought a cotton candy maker to the trunk-or-treat. Yeah for spun sugar! The kids were loving it!

We ate some yummy chili and corn bread and finally headed home

When we got home, Grammy Dee had a fun little scavenger hunt for the kiddos to do. Yeah for a fun week of sugar and costumes!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!