what i did today

Wow, what a great day.  MIL kept the girls last night and I stayed out until 1 at my mom’s watching One Tree Hill DVDs again.  Scott worked last night so I slept in with him until after 11!  I got up and did some cleaning around here.  The girls got home around 1:30 or so.

After Scott left for work, Heather, the girls and I went shopping for the girls some shoes and a few outfits.  We also stopped at a Mexican restaurant to eat.  After all that the girls were asking to quit walking and head home.  We ended up at my mom’s for them to play and I watched some more OTH before heading home a few minutes ago.

I’m taking my Sunday School class to IHOP in the morning to celebrate the graduates since tomorrow is their recognition at church.  So…I have no lesson to study for tonight.  Probably going to spend a few minutes straightening up a few more things and Internet for awhile longer before trying to make it to bed before 1:30 again.  Surely can’t sleep in until 11 tomorrow.

Here’s a few cell phone shots from today…

Taking a break at the mall

Heather snaps a shot of us all primping at the table

Motherhood in action, as Heather said…one on my lap, one asking questions, and packing a to go box.

“Shorty”

As predicted, May was a great month for my OTH site. Best month ever…and worst in some ways.
This month we had the season finale which brought record numbers to the site. We hit a high of 54,000 page views in one day. Our average page views per day was 23,000. We had a total of 740,000 page views for the month. Since the finale aired and everything has calmed down, we’re back to averaging 15,000 a day. All numbers I’m not complaining about. It definitely should pick up once filming begins again June 18 and spoilers start rolling in.
The month was tough though as each Monday night after the show aired, we hit CPU quota limits and the site went down for hours at a time. We simply outgrew our shared hosting plan this month. Last Friday we had complaints about emails going out that made the host shut down our mail program which shut down the whole site. With the holiday weekend, no one was around to turn it back on. That led me to move to another type of shared plan server except it’s supposed to automatically grow as needed over at mosso.com. I’m still considering moving to a dedicated server but the costs are much higher than I ever planned to spend.
The move to the new server was not as smooth as I would have liked. Some of my plugins messed up and they had to move my database server. Also had some issues with other people in the cloud causing down time. It hasn’t been smooth sailing since then although it has leveled out the past few days.
Search engines have been nice to us this month, especially since the finale. We were actually number 2 for a time with the keyword “one tree hill”. We’ve gotten ranked for season 6 keywords since the finale and have been visited by a lot of SEO type sites.
The big stand out this month though were the new contacts we received directly from reps. It was great to be recognized as a standing OTH site and fun to give away free stuff to our readers. I get so many nice emails and comments thanking us for the site and great info. To be able to get a little pat on the back and also give back to the readers has been great.
As for numbers for the month…

BlogHer: $810
Adsense: $360
Kontera $40
Linkshare: $45
Amazon: $3 (a lot more has been earned from here b/c people are pre-ordering season 5 DVD set but I won’t see any of that until they ship)

For a total $1258. My hope was $1200 and am very happy to have met that.

The summer will probably prove to be a little slow since the season doesn’t start again until September 1 but I’m hoping between the spoilers, possible interviews, possible visits to Wilmington, we’ll have enough good stuff to keep ’em comin’.

So of course I want a Wii fit now…but look at this video of this guy doing it. Now THAT will be some good blog entertainment.

Well, welcome us to the Wii world. We got a Wii a little while ago. We should be worn out when we use it. Waiting for it to get wired. Will be back after we officially are Wii-ed.

Scott was back in full swing today…sorting clothes first thing.  Yep, Scott is on the mend.  We headed out to Heather’s neighborhood pool where the girls and Heather were brave enough to stay in for a little while.  Meantime I was unknowingly getting my first sunburn of the summer.  Oh joy.

This afternoon the girls and I planted some flowers Mom had bought for me in a few pots.

After Scott left for work, this evening the girls and I spent over at Mom’s for a cookout.  The girls ran off lots of energy outside helping (?) Mom in the yard.  I went back and forth, still unable to stand for very long…great excuse to hide in the theater room and catch up on more One Tree Hill DVDs.

This evening back home has been spent catching up on some TV and doing more laundry.  I’m actually waiting on my sheets to dry so I can crawl into a fresh bed.

Tomorrow reality hits with work and school and another trip to the dentist.  Oh joy!

I think a lot of us want to help the needy. I do. I just think sometimes we don’t because we have no clue how. Yeah, there’s starving children in Africa but it’s hard to send those leftovers you refused to eat. Yes, you can send money but to which organization and how do we know it’s legit and what it’s really used for? Well, I’m hoping Aaron and some other bloggers have some answers soon. They’re promising Real Hope for Haiti. Tangible and direct ways we can help.  I’m personally psyched to find out what we can do. Go check it out and stay tuned.

I ended up going just to Sunday School this morning, took a trip to CVS and came home and took a FIVE HOUR nap while the kids were at the zoo.  I completely missed choir and church this evening.  But ya’ll, it was NICE.  I can’t even remember the last time I had a Sunday afternoon nap.  The kids had a great day today and Lexi said she saw a “monkey with a pink hiney”.  Emma was excited to have seen the elephant and zebra.

Scott and I are both off tomorrow although Scott has to work tomorrow evening.  He’s doing much much better now although he has spent most of the day sleeping and went to bed early tonight as well.  I’m not sure if he’ll be up for a 12 hour night shift.

I think we might take the kids over to my sister’s neighborhood pool.  Besides that the only thing I need to do is clean the floors.

So Scott’s plane didn’t come in until about 9pm last night.  Much later than originally thought.  And bad news…Scott developed traveler’s diarrhea while he was there.  He was MISERABLE on all his flights and has been MISERABLE since coming home.  He went to the doctor this morning and got 3 prescriptions and they seemed to have helped but he is LOOPY and TIRED now.  I’m just glad he can finally get some rest.

I’m still in a bit of pain.  Today is better than yesterday but I still can’t walk or stand for very long.  Once I’m seated, I’m good.  

Today was a very easy going day mainly consisting of straightening up and taking care of everyone this morning.  This afternoon the IL’s took the kids, Scott finally napped and I snuck off to Mom’s to watch more of One Tree Hill Season 2.  

This evening we’ve just been around here.  The kids played outside a bit and I’ve been on the computer for hours now.  My OTH Blog went down yesterday because of some mail issue that can’t be fixed until Tuesday they tell me so I’m just taking the leap to move it to a bigger server since I’ve been wanting to do that anyway.  Everything is copying now so I’m hoping by tomorrow it will be back and functional.  This move will cut into my income every month but it’s better to be up during peak times..I either lose money when I’m down or be up and pay it upfront anyway.  If I pay it upfront, I don’t look such a loser site being down every week after the show.  All this work getting it moved will be worth it.  I just wasn’t really expecting to do it now.

Early tomorrow the IL’s are all going to the zoo and taking the kids.  I’m going to go to Sunday School and possibly stay for service.  Depends on how I feel.  Scott will obviously be staying home.  Should be another easy going day tomorrow.