Spencer is 5!

Spencer's birthday was yesterday!

He's gone from this...


To this...



A plain chocolate cake quickly turned in to a Clank cake when the birthday boy says, "By the way... I want a Clank cake!" and the cake is already baked and frosted. Mommy is not an artist! :cD


En garde!


Oh my silly Gracie!

Busy, Busy!

Wouldn't it be great if I could be a better blogger? I just get so busy with life that the first thing I ditch is online stuff. I guess that's good, but I think I could do more blogging if I really tried. I'll give it a good effort, but I never promise anything. ;c)

It may or may not have been noticed, but I haven't done the last few rounds of the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day bread braids. This is for a couple reasons. The first time I missed it was on purpose. We had just gotten back into town from having a little anniversary get-a-way, one recipe called for espresso(we don't drink or cook with coffee) and the other recipe called for spelt flour which I didn't have and didn't feel like driving 15 minutes each way to the store that would have it, so that time was skipped. The second time was because I was really busy, Kirk was out of town, and the breads didn't appeal to me enough to tempt me. This past Monday was another bread braid. I may try to make them tomorrow or Monday because they do look good. We'll see. We've had so much going on this week. This is an All Fun, No Pressure thing for me, so I may just pick up the next time.

Speaking of what we have going on, we got new carpet this week! We had the basement rooms re-carpeted. To get ready for that, the large family room and the smaller extra room(it was my sewing/craft room) had to be completely emptied. Originally, the installers were coming on Thursday. We were all set to go Thursday morning, and then the installers called with a delay. They were coming Friday morning instead. Kirk had arranged to be at home on Thursday, so we decided to go ahead and do the repairs and painting in that room before the carpet arrived. We worked until about midnight. The carpet was installed today and looks great! The extra room is going to be Katelee's new bedroom! She is so excited to have her own room. She's been sharing with Spencer, but she is 11.5 and he is 5. It's getting harder for her, understandably. She really wants her own space where younger siblings won't destroy her belongings.

Tomorrow, Kirk is busy all day and night with a Singles' Conference and then Stake Conference. I'm going to put a coat of paint on the wardrobe for Katelee's room, work on getting her bed set up in her new room and help her get settled. I can't wait to get the treadmill moved into the family room and the TV set up again so I can get some good running done. It's great to make progress!

There are crazies out there!

Otherwise titled: Don't use the same password for everything, no matter how strong the password.

So it all started with the hacking of my eBay account. From there, they had the password to my Paypal, but also my email and Amazon. They added filters into my email so everything with the words "ebay", "paypal" or "amazon" went right to trash so I NEVER GOT A NOTICE OF ANY OF THIS! They then bid on a bunch of auctions, paid for a big auction with my Paypal and bought downloaded games and Kindle books on Amazon. I didn't find out about the Amazon stuff until today. Amazon is refunding me. The Paypal thing is still in dispute, even though the seller responded to my email saying he never shipped anything and has refunded me. He hasn't, or at least it hasn't gone through anywhere, so it's still sitting in Paypal waiting for him to respond. I guess in a week then Paypal will just do it for him. For all I know it's the same guy, seller and hacker, but he has a high positive feedback rating, so who knows. This all added up to over $500 of stuff. I spent last night on the computer and phone with eBay and Paypal and then today at the bank for an hour. I have to say that everyone I have dealt with at all the companies has been very nice and helpful.

Anyway, all my passwords to EVERYTHING have been changed and later tonight I am going to create a new and different password for each site. I use very secure passwords, but by using the same one, if it's hacked, it's hacked everywhere. (I have always used a different password for my bank accounts, thank goodness.) No more using the same password for more than one thing ever again. This was insane. It could have been so, so much worse. I'm sure that I will get the money back eventually, but this was absolutely crappy to go through and I never want it to happen again. I have deleted my bank card from anything online, not that it really matters since I've also canceled it and asked for a new one. It's not like I can realistically just never buy online again. I buy all our homeschool curriculum that way, for one thing. I'm only using my credit card to shop online, though. I can pay it through my bank's website as soon as it posts to the card(usually the same day) so I won't have to wait for the statement. This way there is no danger that someone can wipe out my checking account leaving me with no money to pay bills, etc while I wait to be refunded.

This is the second time in 6 months that someone has tried to steal money from me online and I don't shop in shady places. I only buy where it's secure. Pretty scary stuff. The last time they stole my actual bank card number to a card that was less than 6 months old.

Change your passwords often and don't use the same password for everything!