11 Year Anniversary

I was reminded by Timehop on my phone this morning that today is my 11th anniversary of blogging!  I started on Oct. 30, 2004.  I didn't know how to link articles, post pictures, or really do anything other than type words (not that I do anything all that exciting now, LOL).  

We had 4 boys at the time.  Nathan had just turned 7 a week before we moved to DC the July 4th weekend, and Jonathan had just turned 1.  I was so overwhelmed and busy!  How could I ever consider having any more kids?!  This picture is technically from 2005, but the faces look pretty familiar.  Cute boys!  Hard to believe Nathan is in college now.  Where does the time go?!

I have to laugh when I think that I had 4 kids 7 and under at that point--and now, 11 years later, I still have 4 kids 7 and under--plus 6 older ones.  Ay yi yi.  I didn't even have an inkling about what being busy really was!  Sure I dealt with messes, and it was hard to homeschool with toddlers around.  But they all went to bed around 8:00, and then I was done.  I wasn't staying up for hours trying to dredge my memory for how to use the chi square test to check results of a fruit fly genetic experiment or making up Latin practice sentences using 3rd conjugation verbs (present tense only!) plus selected prepositions and nouns from the vocab lists.  I didn't have to write exams and practice worksheets or search around the internet for alternative labs since I can't get the supplies for many AP labs as written.  Compared to now, there was no mental strain, and I know I got more sleep and exercise than I do now!  I never really dreamed that any stage could be harder than the toddler stage, but it turns out the "high schoolers plus toddlers" stage is 1000x more exhausting.

I'm so glad I started blogging.  It has always mainly been to keep in touch with family and friends, especially in the "pre-Facebook" world (remember that dim, dark epoch of time?).  I didn't realize that a few short years after I started blogging I would become way too busy to keep up with scrapbooking, and this blog has become a scrapbook, especially once I figured out how to post pictures (and got a digital camera in 2006, which was the first step--we are not early adopters of new technology, LOL).  It's really fun for me to look back and reread old posts from way back when.  I only regret now not having enough time to blog, so a lot of the fun little day-to-day things are getting forgotten.  Poor Drew is only going to be remembered for his "Autumn of Accidents", LOL. I need to do another month of everyday blogging, like I did in October 2013.  Maybe when things get easier . . . haha!  I crack myself up!  It is somewhat encouraging to think that in 11 more years, I should NOT have 4 kids 7 and under.  It is incredibly weird, however, to think that I could potentially be a grandma by then.  Well, I'll keep on blogging, and we'll see where we are then!