YEA

Hey great idea. I hope to hear more from everyone!!!

Welcome To The Cottle Family Blog!

We hope that everyone will contribute to this website so we can all stay connected and share our lives. If everyone signs up and writes a few words every once and a while, it will be a good continuation of the Family Newsletter we all enjoyed a number of years ago. There is no obligation to contribute, and you can do so as much or as little as you choose, but we will all enjoy the blog more if everyone does their part. Grandma and Grandpa are especially excited to have the younger children participate.

On this blog, you can:
-Write about your lives
-Share whatever is on your minds
-Post pictures and movies
-Comment on other people's entries and start a dialog
-Post children's drawings and stories
-Share links to cool websites
-Let us all know about what is on your personal blog

Grandpa has asked me to administer the blog, so if you have any questions or suggestions about the site, please let me know. In particular, let me know of any links you would like to add (like personal blogs or websites).

Becoming part of this blog is very simple. You all should haver received an e-mail that says "Randal has invited you to contribute to his blog" (it may be in the junk folder). If you have not received this e-mail, please let me know; I've tried to invite everyone, but I could have easily missed someone. You need an e-mail address to sign up, so if some of the younger kids don't have an e-mail, they can just use their parent's account when they want to contribute

To sign up, just follow the link in the invitation e-mail and create an account (you just need to choose a password). Once you have an account, just go to www.blogger.com, sign in, and hit the "new post" button. Then, simply write what you want in the box and hit "Publish." There are also buttons to add pictures, links and to format your text. It's pretty much like writing an e-mail.

Right now, the blog is public, but we are planning to make it private as soon as everyone is signed up. This means that only blog contributors will be able to see the site. The advantage of this is that our posts will only be seen by family members; the disadvantage is that you will have to create an account and sign in to even read the blog. Let me know what you think - do you want the blog to be private or public?

Thanks, and I hope everyone participates so this blog will be a success!
Randal