I hit install update 3.3 on WordPress yesterday.

That was after putting in a nifty plug-in (Page Links To) that would let me redirct pages or posts to other websites, in essence making some of my pages links.

Then my precious blog vanished.

No posts.

No pages.

Just 6,370 comments in response to NOTHING!

I sat in shock for awhile.

I went back through everything I did, desperately trying to undo it all.

My heart was heavy, with a panicky flicker of nervous despair and a dash of hope.

Why was I so freaked out?

Surely I could just restore everything from backed up files.

Except that was the problem.

I HAVE NEVER BACKED UP MY BLOG.

8 YEARS OF BLOGGING.

I AM AN IDIOT.

My journey in blogging started with a Livejournal that I exported over to a free wordpress.com and then later exported into paid domain with a snazzy webhost (Girly Website Hosting) and a shiny brand new wordpress.org.

8 years of what I like to think of as my scrapbook was summed up by the words “error 404″ and “page not found” and zero counts in the posts and pages section of my dashboard.

I googled my tush off trying to figure out if it could be fixed.

Interspersed by facebook and twitter updates lamenting my sorry existence.

Then my search came up gold.

I read someone elses story, very similar to mine. Posts and pages gone, comments still available.

It looked like my database still had an awful lot of data in it to be “lost”.

I hit repair.

Everything came back OK.

MY BLOG IS BACK!

I have learned a valuable lesson, please take it to heart if you blog as well.

ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATABASE AND FILES.

 

Okay, I have some sort of excuse for falling off the face of the planet again.. We are trying to sell our house! It’s been on the market for 2 months now, but that first month was a whirlwind of action, including painting every room in the house as well as all new carpet. Don’t forget to throw in decluttering and multiple trips to my parents basement.

Really praying our house sells soon as we found our dream home!

Plus, I don’t know where anything is and I’m tired of living in this half moved out state, as are the kiddos.

And now for the photo of two bees and a Buzz! Hope ya’ll had a wonderful Halloween!

 

 

I was grocery shopping yesterday and I happened to walk down the baby aisle. I always stop to see all the baby personal care products on the market to see if they have any “natural” ones out and most of the time I am disappointed by what I find.

This time was no different.

In fact there were two whole rows of Johnson’s Baby Wash completely empty due to a sale on the Vanilla Oatmeal and Shea and Cocoa Butter varieties.

 

Of course, now that I have had my eyes open to the toxins in our personal care products, I decided to look up the products when I got home. By the way, I strongly urge you to look up your own family’s products on the Cosmetics Database, you may be surprised at what you find. Gaining information is a small step in the right direction.

So back to the Johnson’s baby wash products. I wasn’t surprised by the number that popped up on the database.

 

 

 

Moderate Hazard

 

 

 

I love how a product that is supposed to be completely safe for babies, specifically says “keep out of reach of children”.

These products have 9 ingredients with a score of 3 and above.

Johnson and Johnson has brand power and it’s synonymous with baby products.

I used varying products of theirs on all of my children before being enlightened in the ways of personal care toxicity. I would love to say ignorance is bliss, but that is far from where you want to be with this issue.

Now whenever I see a bottle of body wash or lotion, specifically targeted towards babies it makes me ill knowing that there are still a wide range of parents out there who do not know what are really in these products and how they can adversely effect our children and their health. Brand power in this case is a bad, bad thing.

So from now on, I’m going to post products that I see, ones that are widely used, or maybe even organically obscure but still harmful and I’m going to post them on Toxic Tuesday.

I may eventually turn it into a linky so that others can do a little research and share what they have found. Let me know in the comments if you would be interested in participating in that.

Knowledge is power my friends!

 

And as always, shameless plug here,  if you want to switch to safe products and use a company that makes it easy to simplify by everyone in the family being able to use the same products, contact me about placing an order for Ava Anderson Non-Toxic.

“Out of youthful idealism and passion, Ava Anderson Non-Toxic was born in 2009. Always true to Ava’s ideals, we develop and produce cutting-edge, SAFE personal care products to the highest performance standards. We are leaders in providing wellness information, while sharing the dangers of toxic chemicals in personal care products with families across America.”

So you realize that your 8 year old minivan, with 178,000 miles gracing it’s odometer has reached that point of no return.

You can either pay to have the transmission fixed to the tune of at least $1500 or recognize it’s time to say goodbye.

We decided to say goodbye to our Grand Caravan..

She served us well, taking us on many family vacations, lots of soccer games and let’s not forget all those trips to school, as well as bringing two of our three babies home from the hospital.

But she had to go.

It was time.

Problem was van shopping while on vacation 400+ miles from home isn’t ideal.

Yep, you heard right.

We made it in one piece to PA only to have our van start acting up on us as soon as we arrived.

So we spent a lot of time online looking at vehicles, and even more time test driving and jumping from dealer to dealer.

It was high stress and a lot of frustration.

Monday night, which also happened to be Brianna’s birthday was the culmination of our efforts.

After spending all day van shopping, we took Brianna to Build-A-Bear and then to get her ears pierced, and then went off to see if my dream van was in fact at RideSmart Auto.

It was…

A fully loaded Chrysler Town and Country. I’m talking dual DVD people, and heated leather seats, up front and in the second row and power sliding doors, and a power lift gate too! And a back up camera! And.. and… and… so much more!

I am in love with this minivan!

So the very next day we went back to get the van.

After a very long day of waiting at the dealer, Brian taking it to the mechanic for a once over, waiting some more, talking endlessly with our bank, filling out lots of paperwork, eating some lunch, waiting some more..

Did I say waiting?

We got to take home our new baby..

I mean van!

I heart my Town and Country!

The kiddos love driving in style, their favorite thing to do, besides the DVD player of course, is shutting the doors with a touch of a button.

Brian loves the van too, not so much the spending money on a huge purchase, but oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I will end with this..

Buying a van on vacation?

Definitely on my list of things never to do again!