I think we're alone now....

Have you ever been absorbed in a conversation with someone when an innocent but interested third party walks up to join your conversation? You don’t want to be rude and stop talking all at once so you give your friend the look that says “I’ll finish my story later” and smoothly transition into a generic topic of general interest. That is what my blog had turned into for me; just generic information about my family’s life.

I had friends who started blogging way back when and I stomped my foot and said I would never have one.  Then when Katie and Jacob moved to St. George I decided to start a simple blog that would keep her up to date on us without having to pick up the phone (but let's be honest, we still did that every day anyways, didn't we?).

My "simple" blog turned into my new hobby. It was an outlet for me to chronicle the random events of our lives and I could stretch my artistic muscles and create pretty things for me to look at and I loved it. I thought it would also be a great place to showcase the FibreNew work Olen was doing and I created a “Biz Blog” too. I linked to my friend’s blogs in my ward and around town and in about an hour I could catch up on ten or more family’s while sitting at my computer chair and in my pajamas. Then I learned that there was a whole blogging community and blogs about food, travel, politics, art, design – everything! You could gather followers by linking to networking blogs and the more comments you left around the www the more you could get back. It was mind-blowing.

If you’ve blogged at all, you know that you’ll get about one comment for every four or five people that actually visit your blog. The first time I got a comment by someone I had never met before, I got a little freaked out. This meant that at least four other people that I probably didn’t even know had read about what our family was up to without me knowing it. I changed our blogspot url from 'the-reynolds-rap.blogspot' to this current 'astoldbymolly.blogspot'. I started going back and deleting our last name and any personal information like the name of our ward or city. I deleted entire posts about our FibreNew franchise because I didn’t want any weirdo to find us through it. I remember feeling sick when I came to one post that actually said what school Porter went to.

Using code names and omitting information worked for me for a while then I started feeling limited to the things I could actually share about our family because I was never sure who was reading and I didn’t want to paint a misleading picture of our daily lives to those who didn’t know us. One time I posted about a hunting trip totally dictated to me from Porter about the time him and Olen and his uncles went hunting for coyotes. I re-read that post and it dawned on me that people who don’t know our family (or more accurately, the Reynolds side of our family) may think that we are totally barbaric and cruel. It bothered me that I felt that way, why should I worry about what strangers are thinking about my family? Dunno.

I’ve been tossing the idea of going “private” with our blog for a long time but always put the idea away because the competitive side of me was having too much fun showing off my gorgeous children and writing about the everyday adventures of our hum-drum lives. I thought, what do these popular “mommy blogs” (slang in the blogging world for stay-at-home-moms who blog about poopy diapers and casseroles) have that I don’t have? I can do this! But do you know how long it takes to gain readership? I was spending hours (usually after midnight) reading poorly written essays about some stranger in some place who’s kid did something that day that she thought was worth writing about. This person left me a comment and so I was leaving her one to keep the comments coming. Ridiculous, but that’s how it works.

For Spring Break I put myself on a mandatory blogging time-out. I was amazed with how much I could get done in a day when my mind wasn’t preoccupied with keeping up with who’s commenting and who’s posting. You know what? I didn’t miss it at all. I figured out that the people I really care about and the people that really care about us didn’t care if I left comments back or how cool my pictures are and they already know my kids are gorgeous and they were usually apart of whatever hum-drum adventure I was writing about anyways. So why was I wasting my time on these entire stranger’s blogs and making my real-life people suffer? Dunno!

When Chris and Katie moved to Colorado I started emailing our updates and a lot of my emails started out “Here’s the rest of the story I couldn’t write about on the blog…” (And I’ve sent a couple e-mails like that to my BFs too.) Now that Chelsea and Mitch have r-u-n-n-o-f-t to Virginia, I don’t want to write a blog for strangers and send separate e-mails to the people that really care about what’s going on. That is stupid. I’m done being stupid. And so I think that catches us up to where we are now! In our own secret club.

I don’t plan on blogging any more or any less. Actually the only changes will be improvements like getting to tell the whole story instead of cryptic details and I’ll use real names for people and places and I think this is going to be really rad. So, if you’re reading this, then you’re one of the select dozen or so people who I invited to continue this journey with us. I really want to keep this a small crowd, but if anyone actually asks me about the blog going private then they’ve passed my secret test and I send them an invite, too. Sometimes I am tricky like that. I just figure if people care enough to ask then they should be apart of our secret club. As long as they are people that I wouldn't mind knowing in real life.

But being one of like nineteen people, show a girl some love and leave me a comment once in a while, will ya? You must be someone we want to keep in our pocket as we go through this crazy little thing called life. So stick around awhile, take off your shoes and let’s get back to where we left off…

I'm going to gush about Olen rocking FibreNew now.

Here's a fun job he did a couple weeks ago. There were four seats like this taken from a jet that belonged to a guy in the [let's just say] magazine business. Yes, even the seat belt buckles are gold plated. Olen re-dyed all four leather seats black and I think they turned out pretty sharp. Andrew (my 17 yr-old little brother) started working with Olen this past weekend and Olen said he did great. I've always thought with Andrew's natual artistic ablilty the task of mixing and matching the right color of dye or repairing a rip or filling cracks in plastic would be a no-brainer for him. Olen is excited to have his new part-time employee and I think it's pretty fun too.

  

So yeah, Chelsea and Mitch are in Virginia now. I took only one picture last Monday afternoon before they left, but it's not something I can post even on a private blog. Sisters, mascara and water works, you get the idea. 

 

Here's my Cub Scout at our Pack Meeting last week. Yeah, we totally made that space derby the night before while watching The Blindside. Olen, Porter and I all took turns shaving, sanding and shaping the body of the rocket and then I put the motor together and Porter painted it. Can you guess why he chose that shade of orange? Yup. He wanted it to have the same paint job as the General Lee. He's priceless, I tell ya. Well, our last minute efforts surprised us all - he came in second! He was so proud and Olen and I were so relieved. Olen as the Cub Master and me as his den leader should be more prepared with this stuff. I'm thinking if we start now we have a pretty good chance of first place at the pine wood derby next month.

 "London, how does your face look when you feel sad?"

This girl...oh boy. She is a big reason I need to take a few steps back from the blogging thing. We're going to start preschool and field trips and other projects together. I can tell that she is going to be my challenge and I need to be her champion. I'm number two child inbetween an older brother and younger sister and I see a lot of me in London, so I know I've got my work cut out for me, except this time I'm playing the role of mother. I love this wild child more than words.

Last but not least, here's our Baby Blue Daisy Lou.

(This is a low-res picture the studio people gave me to tempt grandmas into buying photo packages.)

Daisy and I went to get her 5 month-old pictures done a few weeks ago. She charmed the photographer with her dimples and overall cuteness, and then fell asleep. She is such an angel, and I know that sappy parents say that about their babies all the time, but seriously, if you've ever held her you're probably nodding your head right now because you know I speak the truth. She really is such an angel. Sleeps from nine to six every night, only cries if she's poopy or hungry, she'll cuddle right under your chin and let you snuggle her for as long as you like and she even lets London kiss her head a few times before calling for help. Look up 'angel' in the dictionary and this is what you would find: 

Okay, I can tell I'm going to like this.

Thanks for signing in to read up on us, I know it can be a pain, but every secret club needs a secret handshake or password or something and I'm glad it's just us in  here.

Yes, this is going to be fun again.