Archives for May 2008

Now that was a Saturday

May 31, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Wow, what a great day. MIL kept the girls last night and I stayed out until 1 at my mom’s watching One Tree Hill DVDs again. Scott worked last night so I slept in with him until after 11! I got up and did some cleaning around here. The girls got home around 1:30 or so.

After Scott left for work, Heather, the girls and I went shopping for the girls some shoes and a few outfits. We also stopped at a Mexican restaurant to eat. After all that the girls were asking to quit walking and head home. We ended up at my mom’s for them to play and I watched some more OTH before heading home a few minutes ago.

I’m taking my Sunday School class to IHOP in the morning to celebrate the graduates since tomorrow is their recognition at church. So…I have no lesson to study for tonight. Probably going to spend a few minutes straightening up a few more things and Internet for awhile longer before trying to make it to bed before 1:30 again. Surely can’t sleep in until 11 tomorrow.

Here’s a few cell phone shots from today…

Taking a break at the mall

Heather snaps a shot of us all primping at the table

Motherhood in action, as Heather said…one on my lap, one asking questions, and packing a to go box.

“Shorty”

May OTH Blog Report

May 31, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

As predicted, May was a great month for my OTH site. Best month ever…and worst in some ways.
This month we had the season finale which brought record numbers to the site. We hit a high of 54,000 page views in one day. Our average page views per day was 23,000. We had a total of 740,000 page views for the month. Since the finale aired and everything has calmed down, we’re back to averaging 15,000 a day. All numbers I’m not complaining about. It definitely should pick up once filming begins again June 18 and spoilers start rolling in.
The month was tough though as each Monday night after the show aired, we hit CPU quota limits and the site went down for hours at a time. We simply outgrew our shared hosting plan this month. Last Friday we had complaints about emails going out that made the host shut down our mail program which shut down the whole site. With the holiday weekend, no one was around to turn it back on. That led me to move to another type of shared plan server except it’s supposed to automatically grow as needed over at mosso.com. I’m still considering moving to a dedicated server but the costs are much higher than I ever planned to spend.
The move to the new server was not as smooth as I would have liked. Some of my plugins messed up and they had to move my database server. Also had some issues with other people in the cloud causing down time. It hasn’t been smooth sailing since then although it has leveled out the past few days.
Search engines have been nice to us this month, especially since the finale. We were actually number 2 for a time with the keyword “one tree hill”. We’ve gotten ranked for season 6 keywords since the finale and have been visited by a lot of SEO type sites.
The big stand out this month though were the new contacts we received directly from reps. It was great to be recognized as a standing OTH site and fun to give away free stuff to our readers. I get so many nice emails and comments thanking us for the site and great info. To be able to get a little pat on the back and also give back to the readers has been great.
As for numbers for the month…

BlogHer: $810
Adsense: $360
Kontera $40
Linkshare: $45
Amazon: $3 (a lot more has been earned from here b/c people are pre-ordering season 5 DVD set but I won’t see any of that until they ship)

For a total $1258. My hope was $1200 and am very happy to have met that.

The summer will probably prove to be a little slow since the season doesn’t start again until September 1 but I’m hoping between the spoilers, possible interviews, possible visits to Wilmington, we’ll have enough good stuff to keep ’em comin’.

Wii Fit?

May 30, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

So of course I want a Wii fit now…but look at this video of this guy doing it. Now THAT will be some good blog entertainment.

We got a Wii – the “W” post

May 30, 2008 by Amy 2 Comments

Well, welcome us to the Wii world. We got a Wii a little while ago. We should be worn out when we use it. Waiting for it to get wired. Will be back after we officially are Wii-ed.

David Cook with a British Accent

May 30, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

I’ll be a forever fan now…this is for you, Heather

Emma’s Preschool Graduation

May 29, 2008 by Amy 5 Comments

Walking in…if you notice they are all wearing their Daddy’s white dress shirts backwards. Enough to make me cry right there…

This is the part where I sort of lost it. I tried to hide the tears behind the camera but I just couldn’t seem to stop my eyes from filling up when they sang I am a Promise

I am a promise
I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital "P"
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learnin’ to hear God’s voice
And I am tryin’ to make the right choice
I am a promise to be anything God wants me to be.
I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountains
I can cross the wide sea
I’m a great big promise you see!

All I could think about was buying Oh the places you’ll Go before she was even born and reading it to her. Can you really blame me?

(Emma is the first on the left of the top row)

Then it got worse when they played handbells to I Love You, Lord, one of the songs I sing to the girls at night sometimes.

Then they sang What a Might God We Serve

Emma is a bit hesitant but tells everyone she learned to share this year at school.

She gets her diploma

All her shyness wears off when she gets in Daddy’s arms. She glows and is so excited afterwards

Let’s watch Mommy cry…see the eyes…but where in the world did the neck wrinkles/rolls come from??? Gah, I hate getting old.

Now, where’s that other napkin I need to use as a tissue??

My favorite picture of the day. Except for that neck thing.

Emma and her bestest friend. Can you tell they’ve gotten in trouble for talking in class before? I love they are holding hands.

Emma and her teacher. They seemed to have a wonderful connection. My thank you note put her in tears. I told her that was fine, I was in tears writing in.

Cousin S gives her hug afterwards

Lexi gives her a hug

And I can’t help but post Ms. Lexi in her yellow sunglasses. Boy, world, wait for that one.

So, congratulations my little one, preschool is done now it’s time to conquer "big school".

Youth Camp, Here I Come

May 28, 2008 by Amy 2 Comments

So it seems like I will be going to youth camp as camp counselor for the third year in a row. I really hadn’t planned on going but there was absolutely no other female to go so I did some arranging and I got the kids places to stay so I’ll be headed to StudentLife camp the week of June 16 where Todd Agnew will be the worship leader. I’m getting pretty excited about it now that’s it’s starting to sink in. Camp is always a good time and I hope to enjoy the week. The kids were ECSTATIC when I told them where they were staying each night that Scott works so it’s always good to leave happy kids behind.

Preschool Graduation

May 28, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

Tomorrow is the last day of preschool for the year. Hello, summer. Last night I actually bought teacher appreciation gifts and wrote them thank you notes–unheard of for me..a whole 2 days before school let out. Nevermind the fact they had teacher appreciation week 3 weeks ago. This year is Emma’s last year and I wanted to make sure they knew how much they were appreciated, albeit a little late. And of course I broke down crying writing the letters. Tomorrow they are going to do a little graduation ceremony for the 4 year old classes. I tried to get all my crying out last night but who knows.