New Adventures

"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams."   - Oprah Winfrey

Today I start a new adventure, a new chapter in my life. I moved to Missoula, MT - 14 years ago with my family. This time I'm moving to Portland, OR with a family of my own. It's such an exciting time in our lives! 

Let's face it though, it was time to move on and I couldn't imagine a more perfect time than now. I've met some wonderful people and made some long lasting friendships.  I won't lie and tell you that I'm not sad to leave. I just never thought I would become so attached to Missoula, it must be the fact that this is where Little E. was born. I'll take all of wonderful memories and keep them close to my heart as we embark on our new journey. 

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful moms! Being a Mom is a 24/7/365 type of job that never ends.  Today, I am thankful that I got to spend the day with my mom and my daughter. 

Stuff

How much is too much? Let's analyze this in terms of "stuff" and I say stuff because it can be related to almost everything.

We go to the store and buy things, we shop online and we acquire things through our friends and family. What a lot of us don't realize is that we really don't need everything we think we do. I've talked about Spring Cleaning and de-cluttering your electronic equipment and files. But today, I want to talk about the material things.

There's nothing like cleaning or even better yet moving to realize how much stuff you don't use. Yet, these possessions take up a lot of room. There's a rule about getting rid of anything you haven't used in a year. That's when the emotions start setting in. We become attached to things we no longer use because it was either worn or received for a special occasion.

That's when we need to gather the courage to separate our needs from wants and give these items a new life. Instead of accumulating dust, said items will receive the love and appreciation they deserve. So take sometime and clear out the stuff that you've been meaning to get rid of for years but haven't been able to. Think of it this way. Get rid of it in your own terms, otherwise you'll have great items tucked away in a box.

Government Alerts

May 1st, 2013

I woke up to my phone beeping at me, and for the second time in a week it wasn't my alarm, or my child (which should technically count as an alarm!). Nope, it was a Weather channel Freeze warning. Having lived in Montana for a longtime I'm used to such warnings. Except that instead of having to get up and watch he morning news, these alerts are conveniently delivered to my phone. I did mention that this was not the first alert of the week.

The first alert was an Amber Alert on Monday morning. A little boy had been kidnapped by his parents in Kalispell. The fact that the Amber Alert when out to everyone with a smart phone at 7:00 am as soon as it was reported by the police department. I was surprised that it took the media 30 min's to report the Amber Alert, by then all of my friends on Twitter and Fb had posted and "re-tweeded" or "shared" the car and suspects information. When the suspects changed cars once again Twitter and Facebook were the first to report it. Thankfully it only took a couple of hours to track down the suspects and quickly get the little boy to safety.

Thanks to technology the Amber Alert received enough attention to make a difference in a little boy's life. Shortly after, everyone wanted to know how they had received such information since they had not signed up for any alerts. Turns out that most people are not aware of this feature in your phone. They're under Government Alerts and you should have two options Amber and Emergency. These are set to on by default and can be manually turned off at anytime.

Personally, I wouldn't turn these settings off for many reasons.
1. I am a mom, and I just couldn't imagine not being able to help bring a child back to safety.
2. It's simple. Can you imagine how much faster it would've probably been to issue an Emergency alert for the Boston bombing suspects in Watertown when the mad search started?

I am glad that these safety features are incorporated into our phones. I know that in the future they'll probably be more useful than they currently are. It's good to see first hand the difference that these alerts can make in someone's life. I just hope that everyone checks their phone and doesn't turn these alerts off.

What do you think about these alerts? Would you change anything about them?