The winding down of a blog

Greetings, from the world's worst blogger!

I hate to admit it, but my blog is winding down, folks.

While I'll still get a kick to write every so often, mostly it's the dreaded task that I can't make myself finish even begin. Life is just busier and the blog has taken a back seat.

I blame having teenagers!

I've really struggled throwing in the towel. For one, reading past entries makes me so glad I took the time to write down the funny and cute and awkward life happenings that go on around here and I'll miss this method of recording them, and for two, it's such a great way to scrapbook (by printing your blog) without having to actually scrapbook, haha. Again, too busy!

More than feelings of sadness though, I feel relief. It really is a weight lifted off me to give this up in the season I'm in. And I'm really proud of myself for sticking to it for so long. Six and a half years... if nothing else, that's a LOT of outfit pictures ;)

Thanks for hanging out with me in this space.

Peace out ;)

P.S. You can still find me on instagram, and very rarely on twitter and snapchat. Just search for jodalamode.

Hello again, and Hey Valentine!

Hi, friends. I've decided to reenter the blogging world... as awkward as it feels. Awkward because blogging feels like real life and the last few weeks have not felt real at all. But my blog is important to me and I think therapeutic for me as well, and I've missed it.

I am not going to write about the accident. It's just too tender of a subject, and I don't have the distance of time to be able to see the full outcome, let alone reflect on it with any amount of proper perspective. More importantly, if the family of the man that lost his life were to by chance come across this little space of mine, I would never, ever want to cause them pain by discussing ours.

So I will write about the everyday, and the fun and the funny, and hope that people will not take me as flippant. Just protective.

I'm going to start with Valentine's Day because, well, I love Valentine's Day.

This year called for a low-key celebration and that's what we did, a casual date night out to dinner and the movies with Russ's brother and sister-in-law.

We gorged ourselves on Olive Garden pasta and breadsticks, group played Trivia Crack while waiting for our theater to be seated, and saw Taken 3, which was as predictable as can be expected of any film's third installment. What I'm saying is that we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

And in case you were wondering just how romantic Russ and I are these days... this is what I asked for instead of a card or flowers:

That's right. Mirror #4 is the one, guys. The one that's not going to fail me like all the rest that have fallen and shattered (my heart). Russ was like, "You realize how permanent this is, right?" And I was all, "I AM ALL IN."

Which, coincidentally, summarizes how I feel about that guy of mine.

Monday Confessional

Sometimes I sit down on the couch at night to write a blog post for the next day, and logging in to blogger leads me to catch up on several blogs I follow, which then leads me momentarily to Facebook (don't ask me how, it's all a blur now), from where I follow a link to a youtube documentary about human rights in Saudi Arabia, of all things, and the next thing I know I've watched three more incredibly interesting videos on the same subject, feel slightly more enlightened than I was an hour and a half ago, but am nowhere closer to actually writing a blog post than when I first sat down.

Is that called procrastinating?

I'm very, very good at it.

10 on Tuesday

1. I just realized that I passed my blog anniversary... 12 days ago. It's been three years now, how crazy. I don't really have any profound thoughts about it, just that I like to blog and that's why I keep on doing it!

2. Blake threw up yesterday - without warning - in the backseat of the car. In times like these I like to call Russ at work and tell him how lucky he is to NOT be home cleaning puke out of a seat belt, booster seat, floor and door, which helps make up for all the times he comes home to find me in the middle of an afternoon nap.

3. Kendall and I are in the middle of her bedroom makeover that I have been somewhat attempting to photograph along the way so I can do a fun before/after post when it's all finished. I say "somewhat" because I keep forgetting to take before pictures. Including pictures of her room before we took everything out to paint, pictures of her old wall color, and today, pictures of her dresser before we took the hardware off to refinish it. I did remember once we had the dresser outside ready to sand, and asked Kendall to go grab my camera for me. She took a couple of shots but I decided *I* needed to do it and asked her to move the mirror she had leaned in front of the dresser to the side.

And then this happened.

and Kendall burst into her ugly cry.

4. I don't think I was cut out to be a DIY project blogger.

5. my cousin Dylan is being deployed to Bahrain next month as part of the Marine Reserves and we had a big family BBQ send-off for him this past weekend. Go Marines! (You better believe I immediately googled everything there is to know about Bahrain the second we came back home, including studying a picture map of the naval base he'll be stationed on. I can now tell you all SORTS of useful information about the island nation. Like, it's hot there!)

6. Cooper had decided he MUST run a lemonade stand before summer is over and will not let the idea go. I've been dragging my feet like crazy because we live out in the sticks so we have to find somewhere to do it and then I have to supervise, and frankly it all just sounds like effort to me, but I can't say no because who doesn't love an entrepreneur? The big day is happening this week. I'm still working on my attitude.

7. Lemonade stands aside, I'm one of those obnoxious people that thinks almost everything even slightly entertaining is REALLY FUN and then almost gets offended if other people don't think the same thing is as fun as I do. ("What?! You didn't love that movie/place/activity/game/book/trip/grocery shopping adventure... what's wrong with you?!!")

Recently I've discovered Kendall is the same way and I love that we have this in common! Yes darling, please tell me every single minute detail of your awesome church kids camp that you loved every second of and thought was the MOST FUN EVER. It took her an hour. I ate it all up. (And then Russ thanked me afterwards because Kendall lost him seven minutes in.)

8. My candy crush addiction continues. You know it's bad when your children ask what level you're now on and then roll their eyes at you because you've reached level 200. Shoot, even I'm rolling my eyes at myself.

9. As I type this post (possibly in the wee hours of the night) deer are crunching apples from our fruit trees QUITE loudly right outside our open bedroom window. Kinda cool, mostly freaky sounding. I'm definitely going to close the window now.

10. Good night! (Actually, good morning :)

Search results

I have a statistics feature on my blog that tracks certain information about visitors to my site.

One of the things it tracks is the key words entered into a search engine (like google), that have brought people to my blog as a result, and while most of the searches are either some form of my blog title or a search for outfits and clothing items (I do have a lot of "What I Wore" posts), there are sometimes some really random searches that are more entertaining, and I'm sure have led people here quite unwittingly...

"goodwill soulmate" - yes, definitely.
"how to keep a poinsetta indoor plant alive forever" - or in my case, from Christmas till May.
"embarrassing moments pics" - Hello, Monday confessionals.
"date outfits from Walmart" - Well speaking of embarrassing!

Some are weird...

"seen a jod" - what?
"manic frustration trouble" - huh?
"tights to the dentist" - that's a bit concerning.

And then there's the plain disturbing...

"girls sniffing uggs"
and
"pregnant girls pooping"

WHAAAT?!!

I'm pretty sure I've never talked about anything like that before, and if I ever were to, it would be more in the line of pregnant girls NOT pooping, because I'm sorry to break this to any childless reader out there, but pregnancy and constipation go hand-in-hand.

Or so I've heard. Ahem. I don't discuss these things.