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- Welcome back to my “Abby In A Winter Hat” series! Typically, it’s my first Abby’s Saturday photo of the year, but since we actually got a few inches of snow last weekend, it got bumped to the second weekend of the year.
(If you like Abby’s hat this year – Derrick and Braelynn bought it for me for my birthday and I LOVE it! I’ve worn it so much already this winter!)
If you’d like to go back & see the other hats Abby has worn in year’s past, you can see those here: #437, #386, #332, #280, #181, #129, #21 (it’s a good progression to show our poor pup’s grey hair coming in around her nose – poor girl!) - New year – new updates have been made to my website! WOOHOO!
It’s been quite a journey to get here (if you want to catch up, I wrote about the issues I was having last week). So, earlier this week, I decided to reach out to ProPhoto (even though they no longer offer support for my version of the website builder any longer), just to see if they could help. I figured: What’s the worst that can happen? They say: “Sorry, but we can’t help”?
Well, I was THRILLED that they were able to help me!! They were able to get my site back up and running and restore my access to the back-end of things! I was so excited! I instantly got to work updating things and about 8 hours of work later – my entire website has been completely updated.
I hadn’t updated my website (in a major over-haul kind of way) since 2020. Four years is a LONG time in the digital world, so it was way over-due!
Of course, there are still some minor tweaking I need to do, some adjustments I need to make, but overall, I’m SO happy. I was dreading the multi-week project that was going to be re-building my entire site from scratch, so being able to use my existing base and just make the adjustments I needed to make has been such an enormous relief! - The kids have been sick all week – again. We had about 10 days of “health” after our last round of colds and coughs, and now we’re back at it again. The kids gave it back to Derrick again too – so he’s lost his voice again (thankfully this time, he’s been feeling much better than last time, but just no voice.) KNOCK ON ALL THE WOOD – I still haven’t gotten sick. I’ve been taking all-the-things, drinking all sorts of vitamin-loaded-drinks – and so far, I’ve stayed healthy! (I’ve got to stay healthy because my new little niece could arrive any day and I want to see her!!)
- Last week, I created a 4-week grocery rotation, complete with meal-plan and grocery list, and then a new chore chart/rewards system for the kids. Those two new things have been going brilliantly and so this week, I created a new “work schedule” for myself! I manage a lot of different things (to say the least) and I have a lot of new ideas I want to try out heading into the new year, but the only way I can work on NEW things is if I can continue to manage my “old” things in the background – kind of on auto-pilot. So, I created a schedule of what to complete on each day. As long as I get those things done (most days I can complete everything on my list in less than 60 minutes), then I can move on to the new, exciting things! It’s been BRILLIANT and I’ve loved not having to constantly remember if I scheduled new posts for Derrick’s Instagram or my Facebook page!
- Since I had that “free” time this week – that gave me the space I needed to overhaul and update my website (a BIG to-do task I had on my list) PLUS I designed two new t-shirts for XscreamThrills! I ordered samples and they will arrive this coming week! We’re really hoping to get that store up and off the ground SOON!
- Newsflash: there are new Bluey episodes out on Disney+ and my children have been DYING over them! I’ve never heard Leander laugh so hard! GO WATCH!
- Leander’s been having the hardest time going to bed this week. He’s not been falling asleep until after 9:30pm every night (his normal bedtime is 7:30/8pm). Some mornings he’s slept in until 8/8:30am, but other mornings he’s been up closer to his usual 7am time – which obviously isn’t enough sleep for our sweet boy. We’re still trying to figure out what in the world needs adjusted to make bedtime better, but it’s been quite the rude awakening for our boy – who LOVES to sleep and has been an excellent sleeper since he was 4 months old – to suddenly be WIDE AWAKE through bedtime and not interested in sleeping at all!
- And for the saddest news of the week: I canceled my Peloton membership yesterday. It was like breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. I’ve used the Peloton app (on my non-Peloton bike) CONSISTENTLY for the last 3 years – I’ve LOVED it! But they recently changed their subscription and DOUBLED their price. The app went from $12 a month to $24 a month (thanks inflation). In the grand scheme of things – that’s still probably a fair price, but after paying $12 a month for so long, it was a huge hit. They had announced these changes a few months ago, so I knew this was coming, but what I didn’t see coming was them just automatically charging my credit card. In their “terms and conditions”, it says they will notify you before the annual renewal goes through, but I never received a notification. My plan was (once I knew the renewal was around the corner) to research my options and make an educated decision on whether I would keep the Peloton app or switch to something else. But, they just charged my card without me knowing and that made me very upset. So, I contacted customer service (along with everyone else in the world apparently, because I couldn’t even get through for a long long time, then finally I was placed in a long queue). I was worried I would have to fight to get a refund (since it also says in their “terms” that all money paid is non-refundable), but she just gave me the refund, said “So sorry to see you go” and that was that.
So, I’m on the hunt for a new workout app! I’ve found two that I want to try this week – we’ll see how they go and I’ll report back! - The Christmas decorations are coming down today! A special person’s birthday is RIGHT around the corner, so we’ll be decorating for that before you know it!
