Greetings!!

Greetings from the Thomases of Salt Lake City!! This is a momentous occasion, for me personally and my lovely bride, Sarah, and our two crazy teenagers, Anna (5) and Heidi (3). I have been generally removed from the blog-world for the last few years, both by choice and by circumstance. By choice because the last few years I have made it a moral decision to refuse the stimulus overload found in today's on-line habits of communication and thus I've done all within my power to not have reason to participate...at least on the giving end of blogs. Sure, I've suffered...lost touch with friends and probably offended a few by not participating in the blog mania...but what are friends for if they can't forgive you for leaving them out of your lives?!? Luckily, there are those patient friends that have seen me through this incommunicado transition and have lured me back to give humanity another go at this form of cavemen talk...writing on walls...really is anyone going to read this or can't we just talk face to face?? Anyhow, it was the suggestion of a friend this past week who asked why I didn't get into blogging--actually, I think he just wanted someone's blog to link to on his own blog. Well his recommendation reminded me of another close friend that gave the same suggestion nearly 6 months ago. At least they haven't given up on me! So it is to them that I pronounce and unequivocally launch this personal voyage back into the mainstream form of communciation: cavemen style blog-arrhea. For the time being this will be my wall for therapy, my own "have a seat on my couch and tell me what's going on" chance to stick my neck out in the world and explain what I'm doing here and what I hope to accomplish.

Actually, all due respect to those (few) friends reading this but the real reason for this walk off the plank involves the other elements of my life, the aforementioned "circumstance." That would be the said 3 yr old and 5 yr old that have recently insisted that our computer (internet) is too slow. Heaven only knows why that should matter to a toddler...really!! but I'll save my ranting on Webkinz for another day. Anyhow, the story goes of a miser young father that insisted on saving his pennies by not giving into the monthly shackles of DSL and convinced his (suffering) wife that a dollar saved was a dollar earned as far as the reduced costs of AOL dial-up were concerned. Initially, it was only a temporary ploy to save a few bucks when we got a new computer which included 6 months of free AOL but then it propagated into dial-up dependence as I discovered that the attractively free albeit slow speed of dial-up was a convenient deterrent to wasting endless hours of precious life surfing the web. This reasoning gained additional support the last few years as I was launched into my career and found myself sitting in front of my computer for many hours of the day. Coming home each night, the last thing I really wanted was to have instant web access and further reason to take my work home with me. So I held my ground, cited the expenses of DSL, hoped that I could keep the kids away from the computer and prayed that, as before, this too would pass. How that all relates to blogging is that because of the strain on my time (and Sarah's) at home in sitting in front of a slow dial-up connection for endless hours waiting for websites and images to load--because of that reality, we have not shared pictures and memories with friends and family and relationships have obviously suffered. At least that is what Sarah would like me to believe. Either way, it is without further ado that I relinquish any control or form of persuasion that I thought I had over our household of little women and admit my guilt in subjecting our 5 year old Anna to a slow internet connection. What a world we live in!! So please welcome us back in the blog world and greetings from Spencer, Sarah, Anna and Heidi Thomas.