I started this blog 11 years ago when Staley was first born. It was a way for people to keep up with our family, but more importantly, it was a way for me to document our everyday life. I wanted it to be an honest picture of the good and the bad, the big and the small, a snapshot of our daily life. My hope was that one day our kids would enjoy looking back over the blog, sparking memories and helping them to see their childhood, the big moments and the small, through the eyes of parents who loved them.
I enjoy keeping track of the moments and the memories. And I often find myself reading back through the blog. I'll start looking for a specific memory and will instead find myself reading through years full of memories instead. There are so many little things...funny stories, phases, photos, quotes...that I would have easily forgotten had it not been for the blog. Each year for my birthday, my mom makes me a printed book of the previous year's blog posts as yet another way to preserve the memories and moments.
Within the past year or so, my kids have gotten really into reading through the blog books. They love to pull out a stack of the books, paging through them and stopping to read snippets. They especially like reading funny stories about themselves or each other. They then want to read them aloud or retell the stories to each other, giggling and laughing about the funny things they did or said. Watching them pour over the books or listening to them tell each other stories or having them ask me "do you remember when..." fulfills my wish for this blog. It's exactly what I had hoped it would be for them.
