I was making some changes to the blogroll because most of the links were out-of-date. In the process, I lost it all. I got my family’s pages back up, but not the rest of you. If you want me to post a link to your blog, either comment or send me an email at rebecca [at] reid-family [dot] org. (Scroll down for recent posts.)
No, this is not my wedding anniversary: this is my blogging anniversary.
In the past year, a lot has happened. My husband and I moved to Australia. I had a baby. I went from working full-time to being a mom full-time. I learned to cook. I had abdominal surgery.
I guess that doesn’t sound like a lot, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot this year.
In the past year, I’ve written more than 80 posts. Here are some of the things I experienced and learned (and wrote about):
For good measure, here are my favorite recipe and my favorite photographs.
In looking back over these posts, I realize that not many of them have anything to do with being in Australia. I could have learned these lessons anywhere. I guess that’s the point of life: we learn what we need to learn, wherever we are.
As a stay-at-home mom, I know that I need an outlet where I can develop my creativity and my own thoughts. That’s why I like my page: it is mine.
Notice that I call it “Rebecca’s Webpage.” It is not our family page. (I don’t think my husband even reads it; if he does, it’s a month after the fact.) At the same time, I will write about my life, and of course my family is a huge part of that.
This page is my personal forum and journal, online. And I love having a place to write. When I think about this blog, I feel satisfied. And I think that’s the reason I write it.
I’ve added the ability to comment without logging in. You must answer a simple math question. (The problem is if you answer the question wrong you lose your comment! I’m looking for a better spam guard, but in the mean time, here you go.)
You can always comment while logged in as well. I think I’ve fixed the email problems.
Yesterday, Paul turned five months old. He celebrated his day by sleeping: I had hoped he wouldn’t get the family cold that is going around, but yesterday he apparently succumbed. The poor little guy! He can’t understand why he can’t breathe, and he is very annoyed by it. It must be hard to be five months old.
Here’s a video from yesterday morning. He wouldn’t laugh and giggle, but here are a few smiles for you.
Now you can leave a comment without logging in! In order to prove you are a human, however, you must answer a math question (it’s just addition…). I’ll experiment for a few weeks and see how this works. If you hate it, let me know by either leaving a comment or sending me an email at wordpress at [my-last-name] hyphen family dot org.
Note that if you answer the math problem incorrectly, you lose your comment. I don’t like that feature, so I’ll look for a different plugin that might work better.
My sister gave her site a makeover, so I decided it was time to do the same, my way.
I have finally officially upgraded this site to WordPress 2.3.3. You probably don’t notice the change–it is an internal change that makes it easier for me to manage the blog. But in the process, I’ve added some new functions for you, too.
Here are the features:
Check the box when you post a comment, and get the subsequent comments mailed to you. I previously had some email problems, but it should be working now. Note that you can also subscribe to the RSS feed for comments to all posts. (If you are currently subscribed to the feed, I apologize for all of the test comments I posted today. They were kind of annoying.)
Click just like in Word to add bold, italics, underline, and links. Note that the icons look funny in Firefox, but they work fine.
If the word you type is not spelled correctly, hover over the word for suggestions.
I’ve confirmed that the email functions work now, so there shouldn’t be any error messages. But if you do get an error message and you feel like helping me out, send me a note at wordpress at my-last-name hyphen family dot org (or at any other email of mine that you have).
I’m looking for more plugins to make the site work more smoothly. If you have any requests, let me know and I’ll see what plugins are available.
“The Man from Snowy River” is a well-known Australian poem. In the 1980s, the story from the poem was made into a movie. I admit, the movie is cheesy and the special effects say “low budget,” but it is definitively Australian.
When we first decided to come to Australia, my husband and I watched the movie. As I watched it, I awed at the beautiful landscapes. The main character, Jim Craig, has a house that overlooks a beautiful range of mountains. Part of the story is that the other mountainmen won’t let Jim, who is still a teenager, stay in his mountain house after his father died: only men who have earned it can live in the mountains. (Spoiler alert! By the end, he’s earned the right to live there.)
As I watched the first time, I felt sad that we would be so far south in Australia: if only we were going to Brisbane, we’d be near to where this movie was filmed and we’d be able to see the beautiful mountainscapes.
To my surprise, at the end of the movie, a note told us that this was filmed in Merrijig, Victoria. I told my husband we were going to see the mountains.
The house that Jim Craig lived in was built as a prop on the side of Mt. Stirling. Many people visited it to see the same view that is seen in the movie. Unfortunately, it burnt down a few years ago (there are often brush fires in the area, especially during droughts). But because so many people wanted to visit the place, the hut was rebuilt. Last January, it burnt down again in a more serious brush fire.
I was sad that we wouldn’t be able to visit it — until my husband found out that they are rebuilding it once again! The hut that we visited December 24 is still under construction; in fact, standing right in front of it is a huge dumpster. Because one side of the house has been completed, we could still take some nice pictures. I could avoid the dumpster, but I was unable to get an extra wide view.
To get to Craigs Hut, we drove on a washboard road winding up and down the mountains for about 1½ hours. Our Toyota Corolla did not like it! Then we walked 2 km up and down a very rutted path (we could have driven if we had 4-wheel drive). Finally, we arrived at the scenic overlook where Craigs Hut has been built.
It was a chilly night. Paul was fussy in the carrier until we put the snow suit on him. I carried him and finally he fell asleep just as we arrived. (My husband was the trooper that carried both of our cameras and both tripods.) The wind on the top of the mountain was horrendous.
It was so windy and I was so chilled that I only really took pictures for about 10 minutes. I was afraid that none of them would turn out, but with a little bit of adjustment to the exposures, I think I got some good shots.
![crw_6355lr[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7193/6857339979_5386d99e07.jpg)
![crw_6356lr[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7046/6857340021_1256d30b9e.jpg)
![crw_6361lr[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7198/6857340053_95a5b63065.jpg)
![crw_6366lr[1]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7036/6857340133_485153efc2.jpg)
A year ago, approximately, my sister started “blogging.” I wrote in my journal:
[My sister] has taken to writing a blog online every couple days. I’ve been logging on for the past few weeks. I think it’s the kind of thing that will fizzle out and die eventually.
Umm…OK, so I was wrong? I laughed when I reread that the other day.
I have always been a compulsive journal writer. At one point during college, I wrote in my journal every single morning for an entire semester. I got up at 5 or 6 a.m., before my five roommates even stirred, and wrote a few paragraphs. I wrote about what I did the day before. I wrote about my classes. I wrote about what I was reading in the scriptures. I wrote about my personal feelings and relationships.
Then I started working full time, and life, I guess, was boring. I decided my journals were boring, so I wouldn’t write every day. Well, it’s very easy to go from every day to never, or, at least, rarely.
A year and a half ago, I started grad school because I wanted to write again. I wanted a forum in which to share my thoughts and develop my writing talent and improve myself. After one course (and $1,800), I realized a school setting was not what I wanted. I thought I wanted someone to tell me to write and to read what I wrote. But I didn’t want the format of school. I wasn’t ready for the homework. I wasn’t ready for a teacher telling how much to read and write each week. It’s too much fun to not be in school. What did I really want?
That is the setting in which I was critiquing the blogging movement. I guess I don’t think I had any idea then how addicting it is to write for an audience and to feel like I have a place to share my thoughts.
I was being silly to critique it because just three months later, in March, when my husband and I decided to move to Australia, I changed our webpage (previously a page with our wedding pictures) into a “blog.” I did that because we were about to leave the country (I didn’t know it would still be four months) and I wanted a format to easily communicate with my family and share pictures and thoughts.
When I started my webpage, I really felt certain that it should not be a blog. I thought a blog implied revealing too many personal things. By definition, a blog doesn’t really imply any of that. However, I still think a blog should not replace a journal. There are things I write in my personal journal that I’d never write for the world to see. I want to guard my personal problems. They’re personal for a reason.
Also, along a similar line, I have wanted to keep this page in the family. There are weirdos out there. I don’t want strangers finding pictures of my son or stalking our family. I am blessed with a very common name, so I’m only one of many people named Rebecca Reid on the web (try to find me — go on, I dare you!). I have no intention of hiding behind fake names if I do make my page public. But as of now, my page is not searchable by internet searches, like Google. The only way someone gets here is if they know the webpage to begin with, or they link to it. That’s also why I require a person to login before commenting. I just feel safer that way.
Elder Ballard recently made a statement about blogs. (Yes, he’s nearly 80 and he is aware of these things!) Here is part of what he said (emphasis added):
The Internet allows everyone to be a publisher, to have their voice heard, and it is revolutionizing society. …. The emergence of New Media is facilitating a world-wide conversation on almost every subject including religion, and nearly everyone can participate … There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. … [M]ay I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration. Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.
After Paul was born, I started thinking that I didn’t need my own page — I’ll just use Paul’s Page to discuss all family news. But then I started thinking about what I could write about on my page, and I found myself writing pages of outlines of things I’m interested in writing about.
I realized that I need my own outlet to write and expand on my hobbies and dreams. That is my way of continuing to develop myself. After reading Elder Ballard’s talk, I feel that I also need to discuss my testimony and publish it for the world to see. He said,
How will you use these marvelous inventions? More to the point, how will you use them to further the work of the Lord?
As a New Year’s goal, here are some things I plan on discussing on my page in the coming months:
Elder Ballard’s talk is a great talk. Read it. If you have a blog, I challenge you to respond to his challenge in a post of your own, telling what you are going to do to answer it. Make it a part of a New Year’s resolution.
As for comments to this post, I’m interested in your thoughts. If I do write about the things I described above,
If you don’t like the “log in to comment” requirement, send me an email. I’m interested to know if that stops people from commenting.
Thank you in advance for your thoughts.