Sorry I haven’t updated all week! It’s been kind of hectic around here lately.

Preston got sick the end of last week, and then I got it the beginning of this week, so I slept all day Monday. Some yuckie stomach bug or something. But anyway, now the girls both have it, plus they are teething, so they are both needing lots of extra attention.

Plus, I’ve been spending time with my mom since I’ve been apart from her for so long. I will admit, it’s a bit tense having my family staying here right now. My parents are okay but my sister and I are basically exact opposites and we butt heads on a lot of things it feels like. I don’t know. So, I think she’s pissed off at me 90% of the time. Oh well though, not much I can do about it. We just see life from two very different view points I guess. It doesn’t seem fair to go too much into it on here.

Ashton will be with us all next week which will be nice. I wish we could afford to take her somewhere fun since this is the only summer time her mother will allow with us. But, we just don’t have the money to take a big trip somewhere this time. Hopefully next summer will be better for us, if we even get to have her at all next summer. Who knows. I don’t think Ashton will mind though. She doesn’t really care what we do as long as she’s with us. She had a lot of fun last time she was here playing with my sisters 5 year and 2 year old sons. Now they miss her and ask where she is all the time, so they were excited to find out that she’ll be here for an entire week.

Anyway, that’s really all that’s been going on. I can’t even believe it’s Thursday already. The days go by so fast with this many people in the house! I don’t think it will last too long though, my dad and sister and her boyfriend have been looking for jobs and I’m sure they will find some soon because there are a lot around here. On the topic of jobs, here’s a good site for Atlanta jobs if you are in that area.

Well, I think I’m going to go relax with the hubby before he has to leave to have dinner with Ashton. Normally I would go but the girls are sick so I don’t want to make them be out all evening.

I think I mentioned before how my parents are moving down here, and my dad was here for about a month by himself looking for a job. Well, Thursday my mom and sister and her boyfriend and two kids got here. So everyone is saying at our house until they get a place of their own. It’s a full house but it’s going extremely smooth so far. It’s a huge thing for my parents and sister to move all the way down here from WA state, so I’m glad we have a large enough house to help them out in the transition phase.
It’s SO NICE having my mom and sister around again. I’ve really missed being around them and my nephews. They are 5 and 2 - quite a handful and a lot different than what I’m used to with my two girls and Ashton, but they are just awesome.
I think it’s going to be a really good thing for them to all be down here. Where they were living up in WA it’s a great little town but there are not a lot of jobs. Around here there are tons of jobs to be had and the houses are so much cheaper. My parents had a very small house up in WA and for the price they are selling it for, they can get three times the house down here!
So anyway, needless to say I’ve been quite busy the last few days. I think come Monday things will switch to work mode and it will be a lot less hectic. I have a review post I need to get done for a necklace I received last week. It’s absolutely gorgeous, so look out for that. I like when I can do reviews of great products that are hand made by other women (and men) instead of a random diet pill review or something.
Anyway, I think I hear the girls waking up from their nap so I think that means we’re going to get ready to take the kids to the park. With 5 kids in the house right now you gotta keep them busy!

Okay, so sometimes I talk funny. I think what got me was the very last question. Yes, I pronounce “bag” in a way that makes it rhyme with “vague”. I do it with all my “ag” words and Preston loves to tease me about it!

Preston and I are looking for a freelance illustrator who can help us with an upcoming project. This person would have to be highly skilled in Adobe Illustrator, creative, and easy to work with. Please contact me: sarah AT alittlelessordinary.com if you are interested in some work.

I think I need some sort of addiction treatment for bow makers. I seriously love love love to make bows. Who knew it could be so fun!? There is something very rewarding about spending time and effort making something and then having people actually end up buying the things you make. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how things would go with the boutique. It’s been open almost a month and I’m really just so pleased with it. I know I’ve said that before but I really am. I’m slightly worried about what if I start to get too busy, but that would be a good thing, right?

Anyway I’m going to put the ribbon down and go snuggle up to the hubby!

P.S. Did anyone watch House tonight? I have missed a couple episodes that I still have to watch online, and I guess I missed where Wilson started to date Cut Throat Bitch. I’m so not feelin’ that.

It’s been so nice out lately. I’m really loving that summer is coming up. We don’t have a back yard to speak of here, which is a bummer. I would really like to have a place to BBQ and something like this teak patio furniture to relax in the back yard. We have the balconies but it’s nothing compared to a yard. I took the girls out on Saturday to play in the grass over by the town center. They loved it! I need to find a park with baby swings. The ones I have seen so far just have the regular swings. I can’t wait until we get a place where we can buy a swing set. It’ll be awhile though… I’m just wishful thinking!
My parents are going to start to look for houses down here soon. I’ll admit, it’s really making me wish I could get out of this 3 story condo and get into something with a yard. I really hate having 3 floors. Don’t get me wrong, I love this place but the girls will need a lot more room to play out doors when they are bigger. Our lease is up next winter so who knows. Maybe we can get in a buying position before then. Wishful thinking again!

As you all know, I have done post for Pay Per Post in the past. I haven’t done any for about a month now. I really liked doing posts for them occasionally because it gave me a little extra spending money, which was nice.
Google doesn’t like companies like Pay Per Post. I’m not exactly sure why. So for whatever reason, if Google finds that your site is doing posts for PPP, they knock your Google Page Rank down to a big fat 0. This is bad because places like PPP use Google PR to determine what your blog is “worth”. Advertisers that put out opportunities want to know that they are paying for a high traffic blog to talk about their product/website. 99% of them use Google PR as a guideline to determine who can take their opportunity that they have posted. I had a Google PR of 3, which is pretty darn good for just a regular ‘ol blog. I used to be qualified for tons of opportunities on PPP, some which paid up to $90 for one post. Since I recently got my PR knocked down to a 0, I am qualified for 5 opportunities, all of which are completely random crappy opps and pay the minimum of $5. I’m sorry but I’m not going to blog about european pay day loans for $5. I don’t need spending money that bad.
Tons of bloggers have had their PR knocked down to 0. PPP knows this, yet they still allow advertisers to use Google PR as a guideline when using their website to find bloggers. Sure, PPP put out their own ranking system called “Real Rank” but advertisers are not familiar with it and still are allowed to base their opportunities on Google’s PR.
It’s my opinion, and the opinion of many, many other bloggers that PPP should remove Google PR from their site completely. It’s not fair to their bloggers, the people who actually make their website what it is. I was one of the lucky ones for a while who didn’t get “caught” by Google. Now I can see why everyone was so mad the first time this happened.
I won’t be working for PPP again until this changes. They would be smart to get rid of Google PR as a guideline and use only Real Rank and Alexa. Pretty soon they will be forced to do something because all their bloggers will eventually get axed by Google and by then they might have left a sour taste in the mouths of all their highly qualified bloggers and not have anyone left when they finally decide to do something to fix this extremely irritating problem.
In the mean time, I will continue to do link insertions for PayU2Blog and I highly recommend them to any other bloggers.