My site issues have not been resolved and because I’m still waiting, any new content on the site will be lost when it is eventually fixed. I debated not writing… but that seems so boring, although I’m sure most of you would welcome a break from my musings.
Tomorrow (or today) depending on when you are reading this, is my 18th anniversary. Sometimes it seems like not too long ago, but most of the time it seems like forever. I’d share the link to the story of how my husband and I met and got married, but that part of my site is broken too. 
Things I’ve been thinking about lately…
- Raising teenagers
- Managing toddlers
- Year round schooling (not liking the idea as summer approaches)
- The beach
- Gas prices (good grief, they are high)
- Soccer (because that’s all I do in the evenings)
- McDonalds (my husband took a few of my kids there last week and they got sick. It was their first time eating at McDonalds in about 3 years)
- Ebooks (do you buy them/ read them/ like them)
- Kitchen tools that waste space
- Cloth diapers (hoping we don’t need them much longer)
What’s been on your mind lately?
I’ll answer the ebooks question: I only read ebooks. Actually, I only read ebooks that I can get onto either my kindle or my phone. And, I need to be able to get them into a native format (not PDF. If epub is the only option, then I have to be able to convert them to another format). Oh, and I don’t pay more than about 4$ for ebooks. Yes, it’s cheap. But, I get about 5-10 ebooks a week from Amazon for free, so anything more than 1$ is crazy expensive to me.
As for kitchen tools, I find that most of them waste space for me. I had a kitchenaid stand mixer that I used a grain mill attachment with. Well, that burned out the motor. It’s still sitting on my counter, waiting for me to get around to taking it into someplace to get it repaired. This time, I actually bought a real grain mill, though.
I generally do all mixing by hand. I even made meringue cookies a few months ago, using a regular old whisk. 
On the issue of the site… what’s the issue? If you can get a database dump right before you cut over to the fixed version, you shouldn’t actually lose *anything*. How to do the database dump kind-of depends on what database you have. I’m going to make a wild guess and say it’s probably either SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL. I know that MySQL and PostgreSQL both have really easy ways to do a dump, then a restore, and I’d be really surprised if that wasn’t possible with SQLite.
If you want more information on how to do that, please feel free to email me. 
Tuxgirl,
Thanks for your offer to help!
My site is too big for me to back up myself, it has to be done by my hosting company. (It is their TOS, not mine, if we were allowed to we would definitely do it ourselves) The hosting company is the one has deleted many of my .htaccess files, suspended my site randomly without notice, and done a few other things. I got my db yesterday from the company and it took 7 hours of my time on chat and over 30 emails. Unfortunately I do not have that kind of time to spend trying to get another backup, so we’re using that copy which won’t have anything from the past two days on it. So that is the short version of a very long story and I hope it made sense. I am not the techie one in my family and my husband usually handles these sorts of things for me.
Toni
Ick! That sucks!!!! Sorry you have to go through them for that! I hate it when companies have policies like that, although I suppose on one level, it’s probably to prevent people from accidentally deleting their entire database or something.
Hope you can get it figured out. I’ve never gone through anybody else for hosting (I host at home since my websites are always just me playing around, and not really for anyone else), so I’m afraid I don’t have any suggestions for hosting, but I can imagine the frustration and hope it’ll get resolved quickly!
Frustrating with the site! I think a lot of the same things have been on my mind lately, minus the soccer and the beach (we’re in MO) and McDonald’s. (we haven’t been there lately…) Though we are potty training one, we still have one more in diapers. The teenagers, the toddlers, and everyone in between.
Kitchen tools- we found a intermediate option, we have some of the tools on a table in the dining portion of our kitchen (we use a living area for our dining room) so there sits the Kitchenaid, the wheat grinder, the waffle maker, and the toaster… (hey, if the waffle maker is out my husband uses it… and shares!)
Ebooks… my husband ALMOST got me a kindle for Mother’s Day… so I’ve been looking. I can’t stand reading books on the computer, but I think I’m warming up to a kindle. Even though I’m a die hard ‘real’ book fan, the idea of that many books at my fingertips without my hands getting tired… very tempting. I think later this year. And for now, I’ll look and see what options there are. The really nice thing is you can check ebooks out from the library, now.
Year round schooling, looking at it more and more as we are approaching summer months and we’re slowing down. 14 year old took a bit of time off math and admits that he is having a hard time getting back into it… all the more reason not to stop.
The price of gas is outrageous… and the cost of natural gas hasnt gone up. I’m not even sure its a $4 atm. Someone is making big bucks.
I am just beginning to read e-books – my new laptop came with the kindle for pc so now I’m looking to make enough swagbucks this year to get myself a kindle.
I think the most useless item I have in the kitchen is a slap chop (you’re going to love my…. yeah.. that one..). The one I bought has dull blades so it doesnt work well. I’m faster with a good paring knife anyway.
I use hostmonster for my website and they have always been good with tech help and I think I’ve only had down time once in 5 years, when they moved me to a newer server. Just throwing it out there for you.
Hope it’s back up for you soon and all straightened out.
Cheers!
Penny-
What in the world is a slap chop?
Toni
haha
I always forget about how far-reaching the internet it. The slap chop is a gimmicky food tool that was originally sold only through tv offers.
See this video on youtube. Vince (the ‘host’) is a celebrity. haha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUbWjIKxrrs
it’s safe for work or home viewing when children are around
Happy Anniversary!!
So sorry to hear about your site issues. I’m sure you probably have these, too, but I have emails from your last 2 days’ worth of posts…
Year-round schooling – we love it! We are starting our new year on June 6. To fit with my husband’s rotating schedule, we school 4 weeks and take 1 week off.
McDonald’s – oh, can we ever relate to the getting sick part…
Been thinking about bulk cooking/canning/using less freezer space, and organizing/decluttering. Also wondering what kind of dress I need to borrow/buy for attending a “jacket and tie” dinner celebration with my husband – I sure hope the thrift store carries those.
I buy ebooks on subjects I’m interested in and pay up to $10. I don’t have a Kindle/Nook but instead read on my laptop or phone.
And in terms of your site, if you need help I might be able to assist also. At least they gave you a db dump! Sad to see it al go for the short term though.
I do want to use this a s a reminder to people to weigh the cost/benefit of going with a cheaper hosting company rather than a national leader. I pay a couple dollars more a month for Network Solutions and have had an almost 8 year uptime with my site. They have national/international redundancy across many server farms and information should never be lost, even due to natural disaster.
CoreyAnn-
I agree. This is the fourth company I have been with since I started blogging. All have been national brands, BUT the customer service with my current host has been horrendous. I cannot even begin to describe the level of irritation I have experienced dealing with the techs. The uptime has been good with this company, but when things go bad it is really bad and I just can’t afford to spend the time trying to navigate my way through customer service nightmare world to get any answers. The fact they deleted most of my htaccess files was kind of the last straw….
Yesterday I blogged about what’s been on my mind.
Community.
Exercise.
Clothing.
Attitude.
Happy Anniversary!! What an accomplishment you guys have made; especially in this day and age where marriages barely last 3 years any more. So sorry about your site; that is a huge bummer. It makes me wonder who your host and how I can avoid the same problems.
Managing toddlers is always on my mind! I really love your tips on how you keep yours occupied. I need to get another colander so I can do the spaghetti trick that you posted several weeks ago.
Hang it there; I know having your site down is really frustrating!
I plan on writing more on toddlers once all the site issues have been resolved. Since I’n on my 7th toddler I’ve learned a thing or two along the way.
Sorry to hear about your site. I don’t know whom you are using, but so far i love Bluehost. They’ve had some down moments, but they were upgrading and they have been always available and helpful beyond what they needed to do.
Happy Anniversary!
I feel like even if I were to have 7 kids I still would not know what to do w/ toddlers sometimes
Happy Anniversary! Sorry about your site. Hope it gets sorted without too much more hassle for you. I also have been thinking about toddlers and teenagers. Hoping diapers are almost done with and hoping teenager can find a summer job.
and my Keuring coffee maker. I have been thinking about our upcoming in-town move. We are moving ourselves for the first time in 12 years so not looking forward to it. I have also been thinking about exercising more. Now I just need to do it.
I have lots of kitchen gadgets on the counter, grain mill, stand mixer, bread machine that only works on the dough setting
As for e-readers, we bought a Kindle last year and enjoy it. I get books for free on Amazon often and enjoy playing the free word games when I have downtime. It does get a bit confusing having to sift thru all the books on the screen to find one but other than that, I like it.