Catch Up On September's Blog Posts

In a post-NaNoWriMo writing frenzy I'm caught up on September's blog posts.  Pardon my tardiness.  Please catch up here. We did a lot in October.  You wouldn't know it from the dearth of posts.  I will fix that soon as well.

August Blog Posts Completed

During some downtime at Alex's school while we were waiting on him to get back from his field trip, I was able to finish out August's blog posts.  Please see this post from earlier this month to get caught up on the Montana trip. To catch up on the entire month, including back to school festivities and some cool shot from the pool, please come check it out here.

For those of you following along, I've got over 18,000 words completed on my novel.  While this is amazing, I know now that it won't be completed by the end of the month.  I've got major plot points outlined, and I plan to complete it, but it is great to have some of my free time back.  I'm thankful to NaNoWriMo for getting me started.  It will be interesting to see how far I take this.  If I like it, I may try to get it published.  Mainly because I think a little bit of rejection now and again will keep me humble.

Montana Blog Posts completed

Now that I found out I can crank out prose at an accelerated rate (I'm at Chapter 10 with 17,277 words under my belt), I decided to complete the last two Montana bog posts this morning. I decided not to write a post about the pain in the backside we experienced trying to get back from Montana on United and Alex's assertion that Chicago O'Hare Int'l Airport is "not that big" as we hauled ourselves through 4 different concourses to get on a plane bound for Detroit. If you've missed any and want to read about our adventures in order, here they are:

Montana Vacation - Day 1 - No Bags, No Rental Car, Beautiful Scenery

Montana Vacation - Day 2 - Yellowstone National Park

Montana Vacation - Day 3 - Moose Baby and Scenic Lift

Montana Vacation - Day 4 - Gallatin River and Soccer

Montana Vacation - Day 5 - Nature Hike and Craft Day

Montana Vacation - Day 6 - Heading to Big Sky Resort

Montana Vacation - Day 7 - Swimming, BBQ, and Wolves

Montana Vacation - Day 8 - Junior Yellowstone Rangers

Montana Vacation - Day 9 - Wilderness Survival & Jeopardy

July Blog Posts

Though July was as long as months go, I only had 8 posts this month and they are finally completed. There are some good ones here, including the wild animal attack that the boys and I endured and an impromptu rock concert on our front lawn. You can find these and the other 6 posts here.

June Blog Posts

I'm on a roll. I'm caught up with June. Be sure and check out the boys' first home-brew haircut.  Catch up on the rest of June here.  This puts me exactly 2 months behind.  I can almost taste the finish line. Of course, this is a project that is really never finished, but it will still feel good to get completely caught up.  Until I get behind again.

May Blog Posts

May's blog posts are done.  Please be sure and check out Alex getting his Cub Scout Wolf badge.  You can read the rest of the posts here.

April Blog Posts

Now that I have the Disney vacation blogging monkey off my back, I've cranked through the rest of the April blog posts.  Find the hidden cornbread recipe in the Dad & Lad post.  Here's the rest. May, here I come.

New Blog Features

The blogging host I'm using, Blogger, has rolled out some new features that I'm using with the Evans Family Weblog.  I am editing most of the entries with the text editor from their beta blogging service - Blogger in Draft - but the main Blogger service is better at uploading pictures.

There are also some new "gadgets" that I've installed on the right column.  Below the "About Us"  gadget, I've added a box to search the blog, so you can find that elusive post about a horrible combine warning sign. (Note: as of publishing time, I could not actually get this to work to search the blog, though you can use it to search the internet - hopefully it will work by the time you try it).  The results pop up at the top of the page.

Then below the "Blog Archive" that you can use to find posts by date and title, I've added "My Blog List".  It lists my other 4 blogs and Mark's blog, ordered by most recently updated, with the title of the most recent post underneath it. Below that are buttons you can use to easily subscribe to this blog using your favorite blog aggregator (I use Google Reader).  Below that are some other links and the tag list for the posts I've tagged.  Click on any of those and it will take you to all of the posts on that subject that I have tagged.

As always, I welcome your feedback.

Disney Posts Completed

All of the Spring Break Disney posts are completed, about 4+ months late. Links below will take you directly there.

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 1 - Volcano Pool & Ohana

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 2 - Epcot

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 3 - Animal Kingdom and Date Night

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 4 - Boma, Fishing, and La Nouba

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 5 - Magic Kingdom

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 6 - Disney Studios

Disney Vacation 2008 - Day 7 - Missed It/Repeat It Day

Pre-Disney Blog Posts

Today I finished the March posts before we went to Walt Disney World. I am woefully behind which is seeming to become a perpetual state. Please follow this link to catch up on (most of) March.

February 2008 Posts

As regular readers of this blog (Hi, Mom!) already know, I am way behind again after just getting caught up. The usual excuses about being very busy and or tired can be inserted here, but it is something I want to catch up on. It's already mid-May which puts me a solid 2 1/2 months behind. My fingers are cramping in anticipation of the typing that I know is coming. As you can imagine, my other blogs (listed somewhere over on the right) are being neglected a bit also. I am pretty caught up on my 101 in 1001 blog. I am still planning on working on the My Disaster Kit blog and there should be a new post up there soon describing a small, personal-sized disaster kit that can be thrown into the bottom of a bag. One thing that has stalled me there is a new blog that I found from someone who took the lessons he learned after fleeing post-Katrina New Orleans and applied them to a new plan to protect him, his family, and his future livelihood (if a devastating catastrophe made us suddenly flee Ohio, could I prove to another state that I am a trained, board-accredited, and licensed physician?). This blog made me change some of the ideas that I have had and will lead to a re-tooling of our disaster preparedness plans and subsequently the blog. One of the key points of that blog is that "Survival is not a kit". He's right, of course, so I've got to make kit building a small part of our preparation plans, and focus on the process. How quickly can we get out of the house in case of fire? What would we grab if we had 1 hour to evacuate? How can we prove who we are if we have to leave quickly? Can we carry and use the kit contents?
Keep an eye on that blog for answers to these questions and in the meantime, enjoy these February posts.

December 2007 Catch Up

I seem to perpetually be a month behind, so I guess this is right on time. Please follow this link to catch up on our December adventures. Now to see if I can knock out January before the end of February.

November Blog Posts

I just finished catching up on November's blog posts. Catch up here.

My Disaster Kit - The Blog

After the ice storm last month in Oklahoma, I've been thinking again about getting prepared for unforeseen emergencies. Mark and the cousins had to abandon the house for a night after their neighborhood lost power. I sent him some links to resources I had used to make some preparations. I realized that I had spent a lot of time thinking about this and putting together several emergency preparedness kits for personal use, for sheltering in the house during a blizzard or power outage, for getting stuck in the car during bad weather or a big traffic jam, and a portable 3 day kit for grabbing and bailing out of the house in the event of a disaster that damages the house. It has made me feel more secure, though I hope I'll never need most of it. I wanted to catalog what I was doing, and I can't seem to avoid wanting to share this stuff, so of course I decided to put it all into a blog. It is not meant to tell anyone what they need to do, but instead to get them thinking about emergency preparedness, and to catalog my specific efforts. I'm going to slowly add to it over time. I have a few posts over there already and will add more when I have time (sigh). Please check it out and comment at My Disaster Blog. There's a link to the right of this screen also that will get you there too.

September Blog Entries

I know this feeling won't last long, but I am caught up with the September blogs, including our account of the Race for the Cure at the end of the month. It feels great to be blogging in the current month, but of course I'm behind in October as well. Catch up on all of the September fun here. I've also been trying to keep current with 2 of my other blogs - Remembering Melinda and Jason's 101 in 1001 Project.

Skills You Don't (Necessarily) Learn In School

I usually don't review other blog posts/articles here, but this one is great. I found a post on Zen Habits (courtesy of Parent Hacks) that lists "27 Skills Your Child Needs to Know That She's Not Getting In School". The suggestions range from Practical to Happiness, and from Financial skills to Social ones. This list just gets the conversation started, as over 100 commenters add their suggested critical skills to the list.

My favorites:

• Saving. Spend less than you earn. It’s such a simple maxim, and yet very few young adults understand it or know how to follow it. Teach your child from a young age to put part of money he receives or earns in the bank. Teach him how to set a savings goal, and save for it, and then purchase whatever it is he was saving for.
• Critical thinking. One of the most important skills not taught in school. These days, we are taught to be robots, to listen to the teacher and not to question, to accept what we are told and not to think, to be good employees and to shut up. If you’re an employer, you might want your employees to be like this, and if you’re a politician, you might want your citizens to be like this. But is that how you want your child to be? An unquestioning, naive, ignorant citizen/employee/student? If so, carry on. If not, just start introducing the habit of questioning why? And the skill of find out the answer. And how to question authority — there is no one right answer. Conversation is a good way to accomplish this skill.
• Compassion. Not taught in the schools at all. In fact, instead of teaching children how to empathize with others and try to ease their suffering, our schools often teach children to increase the suffering of others. Learn to put yourself in the shoes of others, to try to understand them, and to help them end their suffering.
• Love. Compassion’s twin brother, love differs only in that instead of wanting to ease the suffering of others, you want their happiness. Both are crucial.

What's great about this list and the additional suggestions that follow is that these are also great skills that we should master - not only for ourselves, but so that we may better teach our children, by example if necessary.