Sorry Grandma! I had schedule this post to publish last Monday, but I guess it never happened. I guess it will do for this week's post instead.
I remember when my mom used to say "The Whole Fam Dam" and I thought she was making a terrible swear. Now we here.
Our trip to Utah last week was wonderful! I will probably share even more pictures next week after I empty my camera cards. For now here are some shots of my whole family that I took with a tripod. Get you some children with some marketable skills (photo editing) that you can use for freeeee. So far Jack's only marketable skill is eating all the leftovers that are now gross to me and I don't want to eat but also don't want to throw away. Not really a marketable skill tho. I'll report back in 20 years.
Back to the Utah trip! We had a great time. With Jordan+Amanda+Asher also coming in from out of state to see Tim come home from his mission, my parent's home was fuller than it's been since probably before I got married. Jack and Asher are the exact same age. Jack is the crazy one and Asher is the calm one, so I was thinking that Asher's wonderful mannerisms would rub off on Jack and Jack would teach Asher how to get into trouble, but kind of the opposite happened: Jack taught Asher to be less of a picky eater and Asher taught Jack about saying "no" and he gave him croup haha. Oops! The croup didn't show up until after we got home from Utah though. Luckily he was in good spirits during our "vacation." He loved all the attention and jumping off my parents' furniture all day.
My favorite adventure from our time in Utah was off-roading with Dad in his new truck. We went up through Wallsburg and up this crazy bumpy canyon trail that I never would have dreamed a vehicle could handle. Felt like we were riding Indiana Jones at Disneyland. I think we'll have to get a truck at some point now. The adventure ended with a tire popping in a rocky riverbed. Luckily a nice mechanic was driving by with his family in an ATV and he helped us change it out lickity split. It would have been a gorgeous drive in the fall. I'm secretly hoping to sneak back to Utah with Jack when the leaves start turning in a few months. It's been too many years since I've been able to enjoy a Utah fall. Jared is coming up on a couple months of night shifts, so that could be the perfect time to get away.
Of course the real highlight of the trip was being reunited with Tim. It's almost weird that he's the last one and now the whole family is home for good. It was fun to have Tim drive me and Jack back home to Casper. We talked about upcoming college life and business ideas while Jack screamed bloody murder in the backseat. Taking a tiny child on a roadtrip is FuN!
Ok, Jack is waking up in the other room. Usually I just leave him to talk to himself in his crib for 5-10 minutes after he wakes up, but poor sick buddy has the saddest little croup cough so I'd better go get him. Until next week!
I remember when my mom used to say "The Whole Fam Dam" and I thought she was making a terrible swear. Now we here.
Back to the Utah trip! We had a great time. With Jordan+Amanda+Asher also coming in from out of state to see Tim come home from his mission, my parent's home was fuller than it's been since probably before I got married. Jack and Asher are the exact same age. Jack is the crazy one and Asher is the calm one, so I was thinking that Asher's wonderful mannerisms would rub off on Jack and Jack would teach Asher how to get into trouble, but kind of the opposite happened: Jack taught Asher to be less of a picky eater and Asher taught Jack about saying "no" and he gave him croup haha. Oops! The croup didn't show up until after we got home from Utah though. Luckily he was in good spirits during our "vacation." He loved all the attention and jumping off my parents' furniture all day.
My favorite adventure from our time in Utah was off-roading with Dad in his new truck. We went up through Wallsburg and up this crazy bumpy canyon trail that I never would have dreamed a vehicle could handle. Felt like we were riding Indiana Jones at Disneyland. I think we'll have to get a truck at some point now. The adventure ended with a tire popping in a rocky riverbed. Luckily a nice mechanic was driving by with his family in an ATV and he helped us change it out lickity split. It would have been a gorgeous drive in the fall. I'm secretly hoping to sneak back to Utah with Jack when the leaves start turning in a few months. It's been too many years since I've been able to enjoy a Utah fall. Jared is coming up on a couple months of night shifts, so that could be the perfect time to get away.
Of course the real highlight of the trip was being reunited with Tim. It's almost weird that he's the last one and now the whole family is home for good. It was fun to have Tim drive me and Jack back home to Casper. We talked about upcoming college life and business ideas while Jack screamed bloody murder in the backseat. Taking a tiny child on a roadtrip is FuN!
Ok, Jack is waking up in the other room. Usually I just leave him to talk to himself in his crib for 5-10 minutes after he wakes up, but poor sick buddy has the saddest little croup cough so I'd better go get him. Until next week!
I'll keep this one short since I have sooo much to do today that I don't know how I'm gonna make it all happen. We've got an exciting week ahead of us! My youngest brother Tim (hi Timmy!) will be getting home from his LDS mission this Friday! We are going to drive down to Utah so we can meet him at the airport and spend time with family. Jared is only able to take a couple days off work, so we are hoping to drive down right when he gets off work Wednesday evening and get there around midnight. This could be the best idea we've ever had if Jack falls asleep and stays asleep at his normal bedtime, or it could be the worst idea we've ever had if he won't stay asleep in his carseat and is a grumpy mess. I guess we'll find out.
In the meantime, we've got lots of packing, cleaning, and preparing to do. I need to get a couple Bucketless Family posts planned out and photographed so I can continue posting once or twice a week while we're away. I should do even more than that, but I'm lazy. Jared needs to get caught up on his patient notes and ahead on his readings. Tim will actually be driving me and Jack back to Casper when we're done in Utah, so we need to get our house ready for guests (this is tim so i'll probably just stock up on ramen and call it good). Anyway, we're very excited for this week. Jared will evne get to spend some time with his family, who will be in Utah while we're there.
Not much new to report during this past week. Jack is teething again, booooo. Luckily he tends to do better with teething when he's busy and distracted. It's a great time to go to Utah. Casper is already starting to cool off, which is bitter-sweet. I love fall, but all-to-soon winter will be back. We're going to have to hit up some swimming pools and snow cone shacks before it's too late.
Well I guess that's it. We'll be seeing many of you next week! I'll apologize ahead of time for if I don't get a post up next week. I'll try, but I'm also going to focus on really enjoying all the time being with family in person. I'll for sure have one up the following week though. We love you!
In the meantime, we've got lots of packing, cleaning, and preparing to do. I need to get a couple Bucketless Family posts planned out and photographed so I can continue posting once or twice a week while we're away. I should do even more than that, but I'm lazy. Jared needs to get caught up on his patient notes and ahead on his readings. Tim will actually be driving me and Jack back to Casper when we're done in Utah, so we need to get our house ready for guests (this is tim so i'll probably just stock up on ramen and call it good). Anyway, we're very excited for this week. Jared will evne get to spend some time with his family, who will be in Utah while we're there.
Not much new to report during this past week. Jack is teething again, booooo. Luckily he tends to do better with teething when he's busy and distracted. It's a great time to go to Utah. Casper is already starting to cool off, which is bitter-sweet. I love fall, but all-to-soon winter will be back. We're going to have to hit up some swimming pools and snow cone shacks before it's too late.
Well I guess that's it. We'll be seeing many of you next week! I'll apologize ahead of time for if I don't get a post up next week. I'll try, but I'm also going to focus on really enjoying all the time being with family in person. I'll for sure have one up the following week though. We love you!
A month or so ago I started an Instagram account called "The Bucketless Family." Essentially it's just a fun creative writing and photography outlet, with the potential to become something bigger and produce a good side income for our family and help us pay off the med school loans. I'll give a little crash course on making money on Instagram for Grandma:
If you create an Instagram account that is interesting enough that lots of people, say 10k or more, want to follow it to see what you post, then you can make money on Instagram as a marketer (sometimes called "influencer"). Brands and companies will work with you to talk about their product in one of your pictures or stories. It's kind of like commercials on a television show: your account is the main show, but every once in a while there will be a commercial for a product, and these commercials are what fund the show so they can keep putting in the time/effort/money to create it.
The general rule is that you can make $10 per 1,000 followers you have if you create a sponsored post. So if you have 10,000 followers, you can find brands who will pay you $100 to do a sponsored post. If you have 100,000 followers, brands will pay $1000 for one post. And if you are a really big deal and have a million followers, then you can make $10,000 to publish a single sponsored post. I think lots of people are shocked to hear that. I know I was the first time I heard about it, but those rates are the industry standard. There are many people out there who have grown huge instagram followings and are able to make an excellent full-time salary through instagram alone.
Most Instagram "influencers" who do this create beautiful pictures daily about their lives, outfits, hairstyles, or travels and post them with captions. They'll throw in a sponsored post every week or so--maybe a hotel is paying them to stay and post a picture with a caption about their experience. The biggest traveling influencer family on Instagram is The Bucketlist Family. They are a nice little LDS family who met at BYU and now have 3 young kids. Soon after graduating, they sold their cars and belongings so they could travel the world for several months (sounds risky, but they did have a large nest egg to fall back on from selling a phone app). During these months, they built up a large instagram following and started to make good money from hotels who would pay them to stay there and post a picture about their stay. They were one of the first families to ever portray this full-time travel lifestyle on instagram, and they have done very well. They have a following of nearly 2 million viewers. They traveled the world full-time for 2 years and eventually bought a bungalow on a beach in Hawaii.
This is all well and good, but I started to think how novel it might be to start an instagram account that would be more relatable to the general masses, with a humorous twist. The new account I started is a visual story about a family (us) who would love to be able to travel to exotic places, but is unable to do so because they are "tied down" and in a heap of student debt. So they start up an instagram account in hopes that it will eventually allow them to travel occasionally, but because they don't have money to start out with, they travel to humorous places around town like some dumpsters, a parking lot, and a thrift store. I called it The Bucketless Family because we are "too poor to afford even a lowly bucket." Like I said, it started out as a creative writing hobby for me, but only a month or so in, people started to notice and eat the account up. It's something that's never been done before and is a refreshing laugh in an Instagram world full of model influencers with glamorous lives. Others with student debt or who would love to travel but are unable to are the main fans. Over the weekend many people started to share our account with their friends and next thing we knew, we had 3,000 new followers enjoying our fun little project within the span of 24 hours.
I like to keep my expectations low but my aims high. So while this project is still in the early stages and may never become a huge sensation, I am having a lot of fun creating new posts a few times a week and thinking about ways I could use this platform to help our family even if I never publish a single sponsored post. The most appealing thing about having a large platform to me is that if I ever wanted to start a business (which is something I would love to do someday), there will already be thousands of eyes of our fans on whatever product or service we create.
This is getting to be a much longer post than I anticipated, but it's a fun part of my life I wanted to share with anyone who may not understand this particular aspect of social media. We've got a good week ahead of us! Nothing too crazy, but Jack is acting more happy these days than he has in weeks, and we're enjoying our yard now that the mosquitos have subsided. Jared is enjoying being a second-year resident with more responsibilities, and Jack is enjoying pushing his new favorite toy (an empty diaper box) down his slide. It's a good life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)