Welcome (back) to the blogging world!

So here I am. Sitting at my computer, making an attempt to start a hobby. Again. I have made an attempt at blogging once before but needless to say, it fell flat. Blake (my husband as of 2008) always gives me a hard time when I take up new hobbies. Avon - fail. Sewing - fail. Couponing - fail (although I promise myself daily that I will get back into that one...we shall see..) Now my targets are healthy eating, weight loss and of course, blogging.

My sister is a blogging pro. And proof of my claim can be seen here. I attribute it to her BA in English. She's really smart (I'm saying that in my best Forest Gump voice....) and I hope that doesn't offend you. I'll probably be making a lot of politically incorrect jokes here. That's what I do. I stick my foot in my mouth for the sake of a laugh or two.  Which brings me to my next point. I'm really not blogging for you...I'm blogging for me.

The idea of a diary seemed kind of outdated to me.  And what a shame that the only way it would have been read would be after my death. I mean, what a waste. If you wanna read about my life, I wanna know that your reading - know what I mean? But either way I'm using this as a outlet. An outlet for my happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, complacence, and probably most of all, my boredom.  I got a lot of junk floating around in my head and I think it best that I release some of that...and here's where the sigh of relief comes from Blake...he's been getting the brunt of my emotions for the better part of 5 years now.

So I guess since there is a slight possibility that there might be some total strangers reading my blog I assume it's only appropriate that I give you a quick bio: my name is Courtney and I am the wife of Blake.  I have a 12-year-old step-daughter, Taylor. More on that topic in the blogs to follow, I'm sure. Blake and I have a two-year-old daughter, Peyton who was the answer to prayers before I had ever even prayed them (I'll explain later...) and Haylie who would be 18 months old on the 18th of this month if she hadn't gone to be with Jesus before her birth. We have a dog named Rufus and he and I share a love/hate relationship.  I am a SAHM, but my PR degree from UA sure does look pretty hanging on my wall...(note the sarcasm...)

Now, lets talk about my blog title. I got the idea from a book that I am reading. Well actually a series of books by Karen Kingsbury. Anyway, one of the characters has a very refreshing outlook on troublesome times. He says - and I'm paraphrasing here - that if the climb up the mountain is this challenging, then just think how great the view from the top will be. And that got me thinking about a message our pastor preached not too long ago. He said that everyone falls into one of these three categories in reference to  trails: you're either headed into a trial, in the middle of a trial or coming out of a trial.  So then I thought back to my books (and I'm a visual thinker) so I pictured a person at the foot of a mountain, climbing up the side of a mountain, or on the top of a mountain.  And there are views every step of the way. Thus, leading me to ask...How's the View?