Day One Without You

Dear Carl,

Yep. This is me, missing you. You left… I guess at like 12:30 this morning? I don’t know, I was half asleep. But I woke up at 7:15 and you were there and I was saddened. I was happy to get to talk to you for just a little bit but I really don’t know how these 11 days are going to go without me talking to you at all. I know others go through this and worse all the time, but this has me all concerned and sad – but I will make it! Don’t you worry about me!

Benjamin and I had a good day. We cleaned the house some before Mom and Dad came (they got here around 8:20PM or so), and actually you would be so proud because I got most all of it done BEFORE noon. I folded all the laundry in our room and put it away. Benjamin did not nap (no surprise there I am sure), so we went outside for a while and looked at all our dying flowers and stuff. Yeeahhh.

We had pizza for dinner, and watched “Princess”. Benjamin “fed” his pizza to that noodle person he made at VBS and I asked him who that was and he said it was “Daddy”. He misses you. =( He heard the door open and said that daddy was here.

Oh, and he’s also been crazy all day long.

But that’s not surprising either, is it? He went crazier when Mom and Dad got here and he danced around the livingroom for like twenty minutes (he got really sweaty – I’m not kidding you!), and he landed on his face twice resulting in his first-ever nose bleed. It was very, very minor so I wasn’t worried at all (I am sure that really is a shocker for you HA!). More like a blood booger. That’s all.

Tomorrow I think we might set up the pool. We’re going to eat hamburgers and corn on the cob and french fries.

I miss you quite terribly. I love you soooo much!

Always Yours,
Kristen

if it’s the beaches

If it’s the beaches,

if it’s the beaches’ sands you want,

then you will have them.

I could fall asleep to the sound of the waves gently lapping at the shoreline, rushing back and forth over the sand, erasing the footprints and leaving behind bits of seaweed to dry up in the sand as the hot sun beats down. I could dig my feet down into the sand to find where it’s cooler, and sit back and let the breeze dance across my face and listen to the gulls as they soar and dip overhead. I could breathe in the ocean air and think about how wonderful God’s creation is, how perfect His plan is, how beautiful this world truly is. The beach: a little taste of nature that I don’t normally get to visit. A breath of fresh, salty air. So peaceful.

ahhhhhh…

Growth Spurt?

I haven’t been blogging this week, not sure why, but I just haven’t had anything to say. We have hit a bit of a lull here. While we are ever-busy, it has just sort of taken it’s own rhythm. Benjamin still keeps me on his toes with his potty-training {some days are really, really good, and some days are really, really bad}. The weather has been super hot lately and just all of the sudden, too! But we are acclimating and enjoying ourselves where we can. Today was pretty stormy so it was a cuddle/snuggle/movie day and I gotta say I really enjoyed it. You gotta take your cuddles when you can when they are this age!

So, Spring has sprung long ago and we are knocking on Summer’s door. Benjamin is having a growth spurt I think and is getting some legs on him finally. He asked me for another pb&j today after eating one and I was like WHAT?! Two years old and already trying to eat me out of house and home!

what a sweetheart, anyway.

Welcome to Invite Only!

If you are reading this, huzzah! You accepted my invitation to read my blog when it went invite-only, or… I don’t know how to make it invite-only. Either way, at least I have attempted to make this invitation only for security purposes. And I know that anyone reading this would likely already know why I decided to go invite only, but for those of you who have been asking, here are some security tips:

1. Know who is coming to your site and how. SiteMeter.com is great for this. You can see exactly how people are getting to your site (such as, someone else’s blog, a google search – and yes, you can see what they search, or Networked Blogs… etc). You can see what their entry pages are and what their exit pages are. Stuff like that. Another site that I also use is http://whos.amung.us/
2. Know what content is being copied, if any is at all. I use the site tynt.com for this. This is how I found out that someone was copying photos that I had posted back in 2009. It tells you what page they are copying from and what they are copying. According to Tynt, I had 9 images copied from my site in the past 30 days, two of which were just blog buttons, but the remainders were of Me, Benjamin, and my old rabbit.
3. Watermark your photos, but do it in a place where people can’t just crop it out or do a good photoshop job to get rid of the watermark. Make sure to make it so that if they really wanted to misuse your photos, they would have to put a lot of work into it.
4. I have heard that you can disable right and left clicks on your page. This would be useful… if there wasn’t such a think as a screenshot. I’m just sayin’… if someone wants your stuff and it isn’t THAT hard to get it, I am sure it wouldn’t be a big deal to open up paint and just take a screenshot. Also, some computers have snipping tools, which is just like taking a screenshot, except easier because you can select which part of the screen you want to save. So I mean, this would be great… but at the same time it isn’t the BEST security, you know?

Now, I’m not generally a paranoid person. I don’t know who was taking my pictures or for what reason. I don’t even know that they meant any harm by it. However, in February of 2010, I received two comments on my blog that freaked me out beyond belief:

Scary right? It turned out these photos were actually taken off of my facebook by someone I knew personally. It was a giant fiasco, and really was not something fun to deal with. I have tried since then to monitor who I am friends with, but it is hard to think that anyone could do this… again. But people do. I should probably go through my friends list again soon.

Basically I am saying, be careful. You are responsible for the information you put out there and I have heard that if you put it on the internet, you have no way to ‘get’ anyone for taking something of yours. Just be careful out there on the world wide web.

Cons to Blogging follow-up.

I really appreciate all the input y’all gave on the “Cons to Blogging” post. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night because of all that being on my mind. I was pretty certain last night that I was going to start all over on a new blog and just have better security there, but I think what I have decided to do is have this blog email invitation only, that way I know exactly who is viewing my blog. One of the things that has really bothered me about this is I know that some people have come over from a blog that I guess linked me somehow, I dunno… anyway I tried going to the blog to see how people were getting to mine but the blog is invite only itself so I’m like … ookay?

I’m not a super paranoid person, but the fact that we have dealt with this before makes me wary about it happening again. I don’t think that everyone has bad intentions out there on the internet, but I do know that there are people who do take things too far and we are responsible for what we share and the information we give out to people.

So anyway, I figure I will just have this blog as invitation only. I’m going to make the transition … let’s say Saturday. So you can give me your emails, either in a comment, in an email (my email is at the bottom of this blog), or in a facebook message. If you are family or friend, or a blogging friend that I do trust, I’ll be sending you an invite, but for those of you whom I do not know and request an invite, please don’t be insulted if I don’t send one to you. I am just trying to do what is best for my family!

Thanks for all your input! Y’all are great!

Morning Glories: Rich

“I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.”
Isaiah 61:10

Have you ever thought about how rich we are? When you’re not blinded by worldly things that so easily and frequently get in the way, you can see just how rich we are in Christ. We are clothed with the garments of salvation that have been bought at the greatest price. All the riches in the world could not come close to being sufficient to the price that was paid on the cross for our salvation. We have been covered with the robe of righteousness, and all we had to do was become obedient to God’s will.

We are so very, very rich, aren’t we? I don’t know how much more I could say about this verse without being repetitive. I hope you all feel rich today as you remember what our Lord has clothed us with.

Cons to Blogging?

I love my blog, and I love to blog, but there are some moments with blogging that really … freak me out a bit. Call me paranoid, but I have these nifty little codes on my blog that tell me who is coming on my blog {I feel I have a right to know as it is my personal blog} by way of where they are from and where they are coming from link-wise. I also have a nifty little code that shows me more details about which pages are most popular and even what content is most popular, and with that it shows me what content has been copied from my page.

This is where I get freaked out to the point of wanting to put on the breaks and shut this thing down. There are folks copying photos from my blog. Some are oddly enough photos of me, and some are photos of me and Benjamin, and one of just Benjamin. One of my old pet rabbit… for whatever reason…

Some of you may remember when I had issues way back when with someone taking pictures from my facebook. I have since tried to be more careful in that way, trying to remember to watermark my photos {just realized the post I had put up earlier didn’t have watermarked photos so I took that down and saved it as a draft to post some other time…}, etc.

I wish I could import certain blog posts, such as my Morning Glories posts, stuff like that, to a different blog and just transfer my domain and start fresh. I’m considering it. I love this blog but I want my family to be safe.

What are your thoughts? Would you be freaked out if you found out someone was ‘copying’ your stuff? Also, if you are reading this and you are someone who copies photos, maybe even mine, please… just stop. I don’t know what reason you might have for copying them, but it can’t be right. I know I haven’t gotten any emails from anyone asking permission to use my photos. I’m just sayin’.