May 31st, 2008 by Heidi

Today my baby brother turns 31 years old.  It’s his golden birthday. I think he’s thanking himself right now that he’s out of town today so I can’t make him wear a cheesy gold crown.

Adam is one of my closest friends. We had our rough patches when we were kids, but what siblings don’t. We don’t always see eye to eye but it doesn’t effect our 3 hour phone conversations or rehashing the same stories from when we were younger, over and over. Even though he only lives a few blocks away, I wish we were able to hang out more.

I hope your day is spiffy younger brother. I’ll grill you a steak when you get home.

And don’t let the picture fool you - it was taken last summer at WE Fest where the camping is quite dirty. He really does now how to wash his feet.

May 29th, 2008 by Heidi

It’s little gifts like these that makes a proud mama tear up instantly. Hannah finished 7th grade and Connor finished kindergarten. Connor’s teacher sent this tear jerker home today. I really appreciate Mrs. Kruckenberg. Connor really enjoyed her but she really brought out a whole new side to my son.  My boy started the school year not even able to recite the ABC’s or count past 10. And not for a lack of trying, he just wasn’t interested in learning. But Mrs. Kruckenberg found that spark. I was so excited every day to hear about the new things he learned and accomplished. He finished the year far exceeding my initial expectations. Mrs. Kruckenberg is such a fun and kind person. I’m so glad Connor had her for a teacher. And I hope when Dillan starts kindergarten in the fall, that he has her for a teacher as well. What fun that would be.

Hannah’s grown accustomed to how it is to miss friends through the summer and getting excited to see them again in the fall. Today was a little hard for Connor as he knew he’d not see some friends again. But he thought that again was forever, not just the summer. It’s so hard to try to teach these concepts sometimes. But before long he’ll see that it wasn’t forever. We all know summer definitely does not last forever around here. It rarely overstays it’s welcome.

Both kiddos are glad to be done for the year. They both did very well. I’d expect that Hannah’s reportcard will be full of A’s, as usual. She’s an amazing student. I’m so proud fo her.

So here’s to a hopefully long summer, warm and fulfilling, and fun! The backpacks are already put away, they all stayed up late tonight and look forward to sleeping in tomorrow. I envy them. It’s a bit nostalgic to remember how that felt when I was their age. The last day of school was so exciting!

May 29th, 2008 by Heidi

I have a blog addiction. No joke. This is my 3rd official blog in current use but probably my 10th go at it. I’ve kept a personal journal for a few years now but that’s private. And I find more and more that family and friends know little about me these days. Old friends from years back aren’t able to track me down and say, “hey, what’s shakin’ bacon?” I’ve kept my busy and sometimes turbulent life behind a big password and I feel left out. I feel like people don’t know me anymore and make assumptions that aren’t realistic or think I’m still poor Heidi stuck in 1994. The truth is, I’m not. Life is good. And it’s 2008!

What other blogs do I have? I have my photography blog – www.heidismithphotography.com/blog which I really need to pay more attention to. And I have my Project 365 blog – www.heidismithphotography.com/blog/project365_2008. Yes, I take pictures every day. At least one picture but usually a good handful, sometimes hundreds. When passion and addiction intertwine, obsession takes over. Hello photos!

So why a blog? Because email is hard to keep up with. My inbox currently has 800+ emails waiting for my attention. Most aren’t anything special, I just haven’t gone through them yet. Snail mail? seriously. Who has time for that either? Certainly I don’t. I’d rather have Carpel Tunnel over Writer’s Cramp any day. I’m all about technology and speedy sending. I like the instant gratification. And I know that I always can’t keep up with everyone but at least I can make it easier for people to keep up with me. I can update at my leisure – those late night insomnia attacks, yeah, blogging. And from anywhere – my computer travels with me, it’s like another appendage, an extension of my attached appendages. And I can share my photography – I mentioned obsession, right? And all about my kids and my James, and my Corgis and the menagerie of cats that run our home – because if I didn’t have any of them, I wouldn’t have me, and life just wouldn’t be living. Meanwhile, others can read when they feel like it without having their inboxes full or sifting through the junk mail on their counters. And maybe even I’ll pick up a few new friends here and there too. Being a long time internet geek, I have friends all over the country and a few in various places around the world. I love the diversity that the internet provides. I love the internet. I have an addiction – that’s no lie.

But also, I have a voice. I have things I like to talk about and share and feel not so secluded up here in Fargo, ND. Having a blog is a way that I can explore a variety of ideas and things and have a little fun too. I don’t want to be anonymous anymore. I want to share and discuss and let it all out. Am I looking to be famous? No. I don’t have a talent for writing. I can’t tell a joke to save my soul. And I tend to ramble, which gets boring or annoying but hey, I ramble. And if you talk to me in person, I’ve been known to talk fast. I’m a middle child, sometimes I just need to be heard and if talking fast is the way to be heard, so be it. But if I do become famous – that’s a perk. But I’m not counting on it. I’m here for the rambling, because I do that well.

I hope this space of mine develops into something fun and functional. If nothing else, I’ll have done my part to put myself out there to extended family and friends so they can see what’s going on in our small part of this great big world.

What to expect: some day to day randomness, PICTURES!!, plenty of cute kids, cats, and Corgis too. Comments are on, feel free to join in and share your thoughts. They are moderated to keep my space spam-free. Really, do we want to read 2000 comments about Viagra? I’m thinking not. So unless you spam me or have really awful things to say, your comments will go through. I’m not about to play censor police but I think in the best interest of everyone, moderating is necessary. Did you know the interwebs are full of surveys and weird little quizzes? There are. Bazillions of them. They’ll show up here too since some are fun and they let people know a bit more about the inner workings of me. Or they’re just pure crap but sometimes fun anyway.

Why ‘Just Maybe Someday’? It’s not a secret, but I’ll tell ya later because it deserves a space all it’s own.

Watch me grow and learn and share. Watch my kids grow up and be invested in the things we do in our daily lives. Pull up a chair, get comfortable. But not too comfortable! I’m habitually unsettled with colors and design. The layout of this space will change frequently. That’s partially because I bore easily with certain things but also because I find my interests changing all the time and colors and shapes and imagery top the list. Plus, who wants to look at the same things all the time. I don’t look the same every day of my life, so neither will my space. This comes as public service announcement so that we don’t have people wondering why things don’t look the same. Life changes. Blogs change too.

Anyway, I’m really excited about this new adventure I’m taking. I’ll write even if nobody reads. There are some things a person needs to do for themselves and right now I feel like blogging is the way to go.

Maybe you found me by invite, maybe you found me randomly. Maybe you stalk my every move and found me randomly, by invite, MySpace, Facebook, or a slew of message boards and forums too. Regardless, leave a HELLO in some comments somewhere so I know you’ve visited. Feel free to add me to your RSS feeds, too. If you have a blog of your own you’d like me to visit, leave that addy too. Maybe I’ll even add you to my list!

See, lots of rambling. More to come later.

p.s. since my fingers don’t always communicate so well with my brain and their typings sometimes gets out of hand, I clicked on the spellchecker to be safe [and save myself from the spelling police] and the only words it came up with to be incorrect were ‘with’ and ‘internet’. Well, besides my blog addys that all run together and are ok not being in the dictionary. What weirdness - two totally normal words, spelled correctly several times in this entry, caught by the spellcheck. But please don’t send the grammar police after me, at least not until I take a refresher course. I try but I’m quirky.