Raising Young Ones has been online now for 7 years!! And it seems like this time of year is always the time where I look back at the previous year and reflect on whether or not I should continue or if I should pull the plug. I'm still trucking along, for now. Not plowing. But trucking along at a steady pace with many, MANY gaps along the way. With very little consistency. But HEY - I'm still here. And, why am I here, you may ask? ....for the same reason today as it was when I wrote my very first post way back yonder on April 27, 2011...
"...to keep track of all the memories we have in raising our Young ones."That was numero uno then and is still numero uno now. I learned long ago that the printing pictures, cutting, labeling, and pasting into albums or scrapbooks takes WAY too much time. I have years and years of memories sitting in my computer in our picture files. Years that have been stored away, not totally forgotten, but not at all tracked and in no way can be picked up and held and looked through. Coming to terms that I was in the "thick of it" as a busy homeschool mom, I still wanted a way to keep these memories alive somehow. I loved looking at all the beautiful pictures and posts written by some of my favorite bloggers (Shower of Roses, In the Heart of My Home, A Holy Experience and Danielle Bean) WAY before I started, thinking what a lovely scrapbook these moms have created for their families to go back and look at whenever they wanted. If I loved looking through them, I can only imagine the JOY it brought to them, looking back over the years. Seeds were being planted for me to start a blog, but I wasn't a writer, so there's no way I could blog. Right? I hated English in school. I did not then and do not now have perfect grammar (blah! what a cruddy sounding sentence right there - lol!). Plus I have a perfectionist mentality, so writing up one post would take forever if I even had the courage to click "publish" and let go of the many mistakes/errors I know I'd be overlooking. So really blogging wouldn't be for me. Or would it? I have all the pictures on my computer. I'm somewhat computer savvy, but have an awesome hubby who IS very skilled with computers. And, then a dear friend here locally started a blog, and I was inspired by her new beginning to start my own. So less than a year after she started, I decided to give it a shot. And so began Raising Young Ones.
I fought the "I"m not good enough" voices and still do today. And, I'm not. I'm not a good writer. Probably never will be. And, when the voices creep in, I kick them far away reminding myself of the purpose of my blog - to keep these precious years and memories alive for my family to have and look back at over the years. The Holy Spirit kicks in every so often with the words and if I get the chance to put the inspiration to create the post, I may inspire a few people along the way. But, mostly, this space is for my family - my 10 biggest fans (my 9 young ones and hubby!!). Obviously, we have the actual blog address that can be visited and scanned through to look back upon the last seven years. I don't hit every milestone, but it's a good summary of how things went, who was born, how the kids looked and changed over the years, etc.... My hubs was so sweet to think of gifting us with a printed hardcover copy of our blog, and I know a few tears of joy were shed when he surprised me with our first Raising Young Ones "yearbook". We now have three copies. Still have to print 2015 and 2016. But, man, what a gift these books are!! To hold and flip through! My online scrapbook printed without the mess of glue and scissors and printed pictures to sort though and label. Typing and uploading and creating posts is WAY easier, for sure!!
To offer a little encouragement and ideas to any of you who may be thinking about jumping into the blogging world, let me offer you a few of my favorite posts to write. Sometimes it's nice to have a little starting point or some sort of schedule in mind to help keep things going...
1. Birthdays - there are 11 of us in our family, so this makes for 11 "for sure" posts throughout the year. Share pics from that year, old baby pictures of the special birthday boy/girl, or "things we love about you". For the last few years, I've done the "things we love about you" where the number of things listed is the number of years they are turning. Here's the last three posts I wrote on for the birthdays in our house...
7 Things We Love About You, Pookey!!! (Pookey's 7th birthday)
Four Blessed Years With YOU!! (Rose's 4th birthday)
Turning 2 and What We Love About YOU!!!!! (Yoda's 2nd birthday)
2. Wordless Wednesday - just upload and share ONE picture from the week. No words. It's as simple as that! And that counts for one post a week! Sometimes, that's my only post during the week and that's ok. I've shared before how life takes over so fast and blogging gets put on the back burner. But if you could do one Wordless Wednesday post each week, that's 52 posts a year! That's a lot!! And a great starting point and something to keep you going.
3. Link-ups and Blog Hops - When I first started blogging, I was drawn to creating a 1000 Gifts journal and tracking the gifts God blesses me with through a weekly post called Multitudes on Monday. The link-up no longer exists, but we still have our journal that sits on our counter and actually flipped to a new page tonight. As you can tell, we are WELL beyond the number 1000...
I sure miss this link-up! Maybe I'll start sharing these posts again on Mondays and write them up, even though there is no longer an active link-up. Just like the Wordless Wednesday post, this was a (somewhat) attainable goal and allowed for another weekly post. Some other link ups I've taken part in and still do from time to time are:
My Sunday Best (used to be What I Wore Sunday)
and now Siena Sisters Blog Hop
To read on why the rest of the Siena Sisters are blogging, click on the image below....
