hello again

 I've missed blogging. 

Not as much the actual process of writing a blog post, though sometimes if I am in the right mood, I very much enjoy this part as well. What I've missed is the documentation of our daily life. I kept a family blog religiously for a decade. It was a wonderful place to keep family and friends connected to our lives since we didn't always see as much of them as we would have preferred. More so, it was a wonderful place to scrapbook our every day. When everyone began using Facebook and then Instagram, blogging started to feel dated and so I replaced writing on here with those platforms. 

We are getting ready to leave for a family trip to Holland, Michigan. Gracie asked me when we were last there and I told her I would try to find pictures for her. This led to my getting on our family blog for the first time in a couple of years, which led to staying up entirely too late reading over old blog posts. 

Oh, all the feels. The way that I have little pockets of time perfectly captured because of this blog brings me such joy and I had forgotten that. The posts where I took the time to share nothing- special recounts of a weekend together or to document sweet little stories about sibling relationships or record hilarious one- liners of my little people ... these posts are now precious to me. I am beyond thankful that I took the time to keep a blog for so many years. 

But the posts stop abruptly in 2021 and I so wish that they didn't. On the last post I wrote, I was newly 43 and our life just looked different. Gracie was just starting college. Luke was in the midst of high school. Drew had just turned thirteen. Kate was still in elementary and happiest doing whatever I was doing.  I read over that post and find myself greedy for all of the stories in the three years since. I have social media posts from this period of time, so it's captured somewhere, but I'm realizing that the way our life is documented on this blog tells the better story. The blog is the novel, social media is the Clif Notes. 

All this to say, I plan to begin writing on the blog once again. Even if it's just for me. I know that taking the time to document our moments will be something that makes future- me very happy. Because I've got two kids already away from home at college and two racing towards the same, I know that my days of hands-on, full-time mothering will be coming to an end before I know it. There are so many sides to my life as a mother these days and some of them contradict each another. I want to savor every moment of now because it's fun and full.  We'll be empty nesters in five years and I know we will miss this time terribly. I'm also tired from being in the thick of the stress of parenting teenagers and some days this stage feels harder to savor than others.  I miss with an ache the earlier stages of my kids when all my babies were at home and a typical day was spent together in the playroom and all six of us had dinner together at night, but I also like who my big kids have become and have excitement to see where life is going to take them.  I truly miss the previous stages, enjoy (mostly) the current stage, and feel excitement for the next stage. How can all three be true but somehow they are.

So I am going to make more of an effort to pick up this writing habit once again. It probably won't be something I'm great at as I get started, but I'm going to try. The biggest issue I know I will face will be keeping it authentic while also respecting the privacy of my kids. It's one thing to share a story about a hard parenting day when your kid is two, but it's entirely different when your kid is fifteen. It's fine to share my story but I will have to be careful when sharing theirs, and finding this balance can be really tricky. This was one of the main reasons I stopped blogging in 2021 and the problem has not solved itself in the three years since.  But the struggle of navigating this problem is not enough of a reason to prevent me from jumping back into something that brings me joy. 

So here goes...