Thanksgiving break in 500 words or less

Just a quick update to let you all know what's been going on. We had a good Thanksgiving around here. The days flew by so quickly. The past week went by in a flash. Amanda and her sister did a ton of cooking and it was awesome. We had all the normal Thanksgiving fare. Turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, etc, and of course peanut butter pie. Amanda made a sweet potato casserole that was really good. I can't believe for most of my life I thought sweet potatoes were gross.

Unorganized

Most of the time when people say they are crazy busy they aren't actually crazy busy. They are just unorganized, or unable to prioritize. Right now I feel like I am crazy busy. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like there is no way I can get everything done that I am supposed to get done.  I feel spread thin and unable to focus on a single task to completion.

For a long time I've prided myself on my organization and time management.  I started a new job 6 months ago and my workflow and workload changed significantly. I haven't quite got the hang of it yet, and I'm still struggling to keep things in order.  I will commonly work on something then it will go away for a few weeks, then all the sudden I get a question about it.  I have to dig back through emails and try to remember what was even going on.  This is happening a lot, and I feel like I am wasting time.  I need a better system for sure and I feel like I'm about to make a breakthrough.

Code Overhaul

When I built this blog a couple years ago I started with a very basic vanilla layout and have been tweaking it a ton. At this point the code behind it is a beast. Google has been making a lot of improvements and adding features to the blogger platform, but they require you to have a new standard template for a lot of those things.  I've been putting it off for a long time, but I am finally going to bite the bullet and overhaul the code that sits behind dericbidwell.com.

The final goal is for this site to look *pretty much* exactly as it does right now.  I guess we'll see what I break and go from there.  Bear with me if things looks funky over the next several days.

What did I get myself into with these two?

This isn't the greatest picture I've even taken but I love it. Look at these two crazy girls! I'm not exactly sure what is going on here, but little Amelia's face is amazing.

Late afternoon in the garden

I was going through some pictures I took back in August that I had never really looked at and I really loved this one. I didn't even remember taking it at first. It was so hot that day, and all I could think about was when the weather finally cooled off. Now I'm not sure the cold it is as great as I had built it up to be.