Help! I was kidnapped by little green martians ....

....oh, so you don't believe that. Well, the truth is alot more boring and mundane. Sure you don't want to go with the little green men story? No? ok, but I warned you. The more boring reason the blog has been quiet is life got busy, and blogging kept sinking lower and lower on the to-do list. There were times when I thought about posting but had trouble even figuring out what to talk about. But I used my blogroll to keep up with reading others blogs. Then even that trickled away to nothing. I think I got bored with blogging and reading blogs or maybe I simply lost interest in that way of communicating on the web. Weird, huh?

Of course, part of it might have been the fact that my mom gave me her old iPad when she upgraded. Now I had a bright shiny toy to play around with. I fell in love with all the apps out there and exploring all that you can do with them. An iPad isn't the best way to surf the web, so I never got on my blog or others with my iPad and it became practicallly all I used. We also found that my son who has Angelman's syndrome took to the iPad like any fish in or out of water. He LOVED it, and was able to utilize it. He found youtube videos about dinosaurs faster than the speed of light. So with the extra money I had been saving up for a new laptop I bought myself a new iPad instead and gave Josiah the hand me down. So now we are 2 peas in a pod hunkered down over our iPads enjoying apple technology. One thing I've really enjoyed doing is taking photos with my iPad. It has a great camera and I love how I can immediately see in full screen mode what I'm shooting. I have found a half dozen apps besides instagram to tweak said photos and post on facebook and twitter. I had let my picture taking days slide as it was such a hassle to upload the photos onto my computer and then mess around with them. Now its a breeze.

To be fair tho, there were other factors. Pinterest comes to mind. Boy, is that an addictive sight. I love it! And I don't just pin items, I go back and use those pins. I've made some great recipes from it, tried some cleaning and organizing tips, found a few new hairstyles to experiment with along with new nail polish colors and tricks. Everything a girl could want. At the beginning of the year, I also quit playing a silly online game that had taken up alot of my time and made it a priority to get into the Word daily. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I found a rhythm that works for me: reading a passage and writing down my thoughts about what it is saying to me, then writing out my prayer requests for family and friends and finishing with prayer. I got so hooked on it that I was even able to continue with it thru the summer when the Joe-boy was home. I just made sure I got up before he did and had my time of quiet then. The goal of having a consistent quiet time had been on my heart for quite some time. I'm glad I finally gave it priority in my life. If you have been pondering the idea of pursuing a more deliberate time in the Word and prayer, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to go for it! You'll be so glad you did. Just in the last couple weeks I've added praying for countries around the world. I'm using the book "Operation World" to guide me as I pray. The book is split up into 365 days for the year to pray over a different country. It gives you an overview of the country as well as specific prayer needs for the people and the pastors and workers in the country.

And lastly, I've been doing more walking. My doc wants me to walk daily, but I usually get in a 30 min walk 3x a week. We had a lovely fall this year and walking gave me an opportunity for some great photo shoots.

So that's my boring life. How has your year gone? Been abducted by aliens? Til next time ....