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For a couple of years I've been thinking I would start blogging, but the thought of getting that first post out kept me from ever starting. I mean, it has to be perfect, right? Something that just jumped out at the 2 people who read it, convincing them that I was cooler than everyone else that had ever attempted to string a couple of sentences together. But before I could come up with the perfect first post, everyone in the world started blogging, and since I've never wanted to be a follower, I couldn't start blogging based on principle. Plus "blogging" sounds dumb anyway. When someone is owning a guitar solo, they're "ripping" or "shredding" or some other really cool word. "Blogging" just doesn't have that same, look-at-me-i'm-a-pimp feel to it.

In fact, I'm sure if I told my buddies to check out my blog, they'd punch me in the nuts and ask me how much I like Oprah or whether I've sewn any more dresses lately. Blogging became a virtual impossibility, mostly because I was too busy sewing dresses, watching Oprah (she had Jenny McCarthy on again talking about how you catch autism from eating grapes or something - how can you miss that?!) and I really like not getting punched in my goodies. Then last night, when I was looking in the mirror checking out the sweet 'stache I'm growing, I realized I was just procrastinating. I've been doing a lot of living the last 16 years since I've been married and almost all those memories are just locked up (or lost) in my head. The procrastinator in me argued for a few minutes about how impossible it would be to catch up for all that lost time, so I should just give up and not doing anything, but I punched him in the "little Nelsons" to shut him up. Even if I just pick up from this moment forward, I'll still be much better off than letting all of this just get lost in the cobwebs of my mind.

So here we go! There are no guarantees that I won't completely waste your time, but at least I'll have something to do when my sewing machine breaks down.

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I think all posts should have pictures - especially because they'll distract you from my writing. I don't have our most recent family picture on this computer, so you'll have to settle for one from a couple years ago. There are two versions of it - can you spot the differences?

Blast From the Past

Since we've already established that I've virtually lost the last 16 years of memories to my fading memory, I thought at the end of each post I would drop a picture from the past for fun...

This is probably 6 years old from one of our great trips to the ocean. The house was in the sand so there was space underneath it for the girls (left-to-right: Lexie, Kenzie, Kayla) to play underneath it. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but this is just one of those pictures that completely captured the moment. I really love my girls.