Long Time No See!

Well hey there! So, it's been a while. I know. But guess what....I'm back!

Believe it or not my break was intentional.

I felt like I needed some time to focus on being a momma. A good one. A not distracted one.

We were going through some major life changes in our little family and at the time it made sense to devote all my time to my little, Fickle Jr.

I feel like (knock on wood) I have everything (kind of) on track, and it's time to dive in head first!

I think I'm going to start posting photos with my posts, which kind of scared me, but after some reflection-I'm going for it!

Little Fickle Jr. is wait for it....ONE! My precious little baby has been in this world an entire year! It's so hard to believe. I'm sure all of you mommas can relate it is the absolute craziest year of your entire life. The fastest and the longest all at the same time.

We celebrated in style yesterday with mother totally going over the top and Martha Stewart-ing up an incredible winter wonderland. It was seriously amazing.

Not many of our friends have kids yet, and the ones that do were all napping. Who knew everyone lets their kids nap at 1:30? Parenting fail on our part. So, it was basically a big 'ole celebration for all of mine and Pickle's friends. Not a bad day.

Pictures from the day are coming very, very soon!

Anonymity In the Blog World

This will be a relatively short post, but I would love to get some opinions on this topic. If you are out there reading, please comment and let me know what you think!

I've been a blog stalker/lurker for quite some time. I have wanted to start a blog for years, but just recently found the time and motivation to dive in.

I'm sure you can tell, I'm learning as I go. From the beginning, after speaking with some fellow friends who have had blogs, I decided to use a pen name in order to protect my family and myself from having our entire life splashed across the internet.

However, who likes blogs with no personal touches? Does it cut off that desire of readers to keep up with a blog?

I would love to post before and after pictures, precious baby pictures, and even pictures of myself and Pickle, but then anyone who knows me in real life will know it's me! In our every day life we are careful of posting pictures on social media, and cautious of whom we allow to know personal things about our family. From personal experience, people can easily twist things in to things to bring unnecessary drama to others' lives.

I would love to get some feedback. Can a blog be successful without laying it all out there for the world to see?

-F

Fickle Goes to the Auction

Well, you know by now my love from jumping from one hobby to the next. My latest adventure has taken me to the auction!

With some time off this summer, the whole family loaded up and went off to visit some of our family that lives in a vacation state! We went to the beach, ate enormous amounts of seafood, spent hours upon hours in our house's little pool, and wait for it....went to an auction.

This isn't Christie's I'm talking about here, friends. This is Storage Wars style auction in a big 'ole hot, sweaty warehouse.

You bid on big boxes of what may very well be junk, or it may be a gold mine. My uncle, who is retired, does this on the side to make some money. He goes and bids on boxes and then resells whatever is good on Ebay. It's just a hobby, really, so he let us go through his latest haul and see what it was like! I can't even begin to explain the crazy stuff we found!

Mother and I being our OCD selves went through it and organized it all for him, so he could list it a little bit easier.

A few days later we were off to he auction house warehouse ourselves! We got a box of so many cool things! There were electronics galore that Pickle was jumping up and down over. What were Mother and I most excited about? About 20 bottles of Meyer's cleaning products and soaps and about 10 bottles of Method cleaning products and soaps!

Crazy, I know, but considering the low price we got our box for? It was like hitting the jackpot!!

The not fun part? Loading up our finds in an already overstuffed van and roadtripping back 9 hours. I will still chalk it up as a win, though.

This is my life. A random assortment of crazy stories. On to the next adventure!

What are your family vacations like? I'm assuming not very similar to ours! Tell me about your normalcy-maybe one day we can achieve it.

-F

Catching Up

Hello, followers! Oh yeah, I don't have any of those yet. That's probably for the best at the moment considering I haven't been the most consistent blogger as of yet. Shocker- I know. So let's catch up! So what has my little family been up to this month? A lot is the short answer. Pickle and I were able to snag a few weeks off together this month and we set our sights on "nesting" 7 months late.

You see, I felt pretty crummy my entire pregnancy. I wanted to nest oh so very bad, I just couldn't. If I stood up for longer that two minutes, everything started going black and I would almost pass out. Not the best recipe for baby prepping.

I've had all of this pent up nesting energy for months, and we I decided to unleash the fury!

I started reading Organizing From the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern, and let me tell you. If you have the least bit of interest in getting organized it will get you well on your way. I love her approach. It worked for Pickle and me, and we have completely different outlooks on cleaning/organizing.

I could do a whole post on all the DIY, purging, cleaning and organizing things we've tackled this month, but I will save that one for a rainy day. Plus, there is much, much more to come on this topic.

I decided to work out this month...once. There is a new gym close to my house that does kickboxing style workouts that includes several different disciplines from MMA style fighting. They had a thing where you could have a free personal training session. Oh sweet baby Jesus, was it a workout. It was so much fun, too. I would really love to get in to it more, but right now my schedule with Fickle Jr. and work is so crazy I can never tell what day or time I'll have free time to go!

And of course we've had a whole lot of time with our sweet, little precious. What's new with her? Baby food! I had dreams of making all of her baby food fresh, but that hasn't happened quite yet. It may eventually, but for now those little baby food pouches are a life saver! She loves her some Yobaby too!

Glad we could catch up! Shoot me a comment if you aren't a blood relative of mine and you are out there reading! Tell me how to make blog friends, too! Pretty please?

-F

What's New This Week

You can honestly never tell what I'm going to be in to at the moment and it honestly changes from week to week. So this is "What's New This Week".  It will tell you what I'm in to and what I'm "over" at the moment.

In true Fickle style, though, you never know what I will revisit that I was so over even a few months ago. So stay tuned to watch me constantly contradict myself. Something that comes oh so naturally to me.

New Hobby: Coupons. Coupons, coupons, coupons.

No. I did not get hooked because of that annoying coupon show. It really annoys me. The first time I watched was OK, but they all end the same. Mother got me in to couponing. She decided to venture in to this world, and we both found www.thekrazycouponlady.com. It makes it super easy to "match up your coupons"<----insider's lingo. I honestly would have no clue what I was doing sans "the google". But it is the BIGGEST rush to see how much stuff you can get for cheap! We currently may or may not have a years supply of laundry detergent and deodorant.  OK. Moving on...

Where Have You BEEN Fickle: Online Banking

Yeah. So. I'm embarrassed that I just discovered the joys of online banking and bill paying last week. Let's just say my power company is pleased with my find as well.

Food and Beverage: TEQUILA!

I've always enjoyed the daily occasional marg here and there, but I've recently discovered I just love me some straight tequila. Only the good stuff, though. No Montezuma, please.

Things I'm Over: cloth diapers

Ugh. It makes me tired just to type it. I wanted to love them. I really, really did. I tried them all. All. It just didn't work for us. It really is making me tired thinking about having to explain how and why. Just know, it didn't. They were so freaking cute on Fickle Jr., too. Oh well. On to the next thing, I suppose.

So tell me...what's new with you? Anything cool and amazing I should know about? Like ONLINE BANKING? Yeah. I mean how was the world keeping THAT secret from me? Thanks a lot, guys.

-F

Oh, hey!

Well, hey guys!

So I guess I'm a blogger now? It makes sense, I find myself sometimes jumping from one
hobby obsession to the next, getting my curiosity satisfied and then moving on to the next thing.

I was at a wedding recently and struck up a conversation with two fun friends who have done the blog thing. They said I would enjoy it, so here I am! Out of fear of public ridicule for my deepest darkest thoughts I'm heading down the pen name road. So from here on out I am known as Fickle.

Other characters you may see pop up will include, but are not limited to...

Pickle- my husband

Fickle Jr.- my sweet precious baby angel girl

Mother- my mother (yes I really call her Mother)

Dad- my dad

Crazy Cat 1- my older crazy cat

Crazy Cat 2- my younger crazy cat

Crazy Dog- my crazy dog

I have friends, too, but you know...with Fickle Jr. occupying a lot of our free time we don't see them quite as much these days. I promise they are around though, and their stories will pop up very soon I'm sure.

Stay tuned to hear what's got my interest piqued at the moment!

-F