irst Heralds is 3-months old today!  Has it only been 3 months?  A few random thoughts on this day:

What I enjoy about blogging:

I didn’t expect to enjoy blogging for blogging’s sake.  I thought it would be a “useful” thing to do.  I could never understand why people would spend hours writing stuff that nobody probably read.

But now I know why.

For me, blogging is very satisfying. It provides a way to organize my thoughts, my photos, my plans, and my ideas.  I would keep doing it even if nobody read a word of it, because it’s a way to journal my life with my family in a fun, creative format.

I’ve heard you can make little books out of your blog posts.  I’m looking into it.  Maybe I can make a short book each year.  A Family Year Book.

I imagine some day when I’m gone my children will read my blog posts and remember our adventures together with fondness and affection, and they’ll be glad I took the time to write about them.

I hope they’ll remember the intensity of our love and the loudness of our laughter.  I hope they’ll remember our lazy afternoons walking Sycamore Grove, our first family camping trip, and the things that seemed unimportant at the time, but were really important.

I hope they’ll remember that my love for them led me to places I could never have gone if it weren’t for them.  They have taught me as much as I taught them.

What I hate about blogging:

Hackers.  Hackers are big doo-doos.  (I know I need to forgive you, but I wish you were a little sorry . . . )

Biggest surprise:

Aside from being surprised by how much I enjoy blogging, I was wonderfully surprised when Doug Smith, one of the owners of Simply Charlotte Mason, commented on my review of their new Art Portfolios.  I couldn’t believe they’d take the time to comment on my little review, on my very little blog.

Biggest challenge:

I find it very challenging to blog with an authentic voice while also protecting the privacy of my family.  I never write about anything that might embarrass my husband or children.   This means my blogging is only a snapshot of our family life, with some of the tough stuff filtered out.  You aren’t getting the entire picture.  We have our struggles and bad days like every family.  Each of us has strengths and weaknesses, things we need to work on, burdens we carry.

I’m still working on how to communicate the spirit of our family life in a fuller, richer way while continuing to protect our privacy.

Favorite post so far:

I most loved Eric Weber’s guest post on wood burning!  It was great fun working with him putting it together and learning about how he did it.

My favorite posts to write were the challenging ones.  I really enjoyed writing the 3-part Charlotte Mason series, and I plan to write more like those.  I am thinking about a series on Charlotte Mason and Catholicism . . .  whoa!

So, on we go, on our merry blogging way.