It has been a long time since I looked at the statistics from my site. I was amazed to discover that this blog has had over half a million hits. Which just seems bizarre to me to be honest. My blog has been around a long time but those numbers still average out to a lot more hits than I would have guessed for a little blog about homeschooling and life here in Minnesota.
I reflect now and then on why I started, stopped and resumed blogging and what it has meant to me through the course of different years. In the long run my overall purpose is the same as it was when I started a sort of online journal or record of our journey as a family. I keep thinking I need to print this out and bind it in a nice set of books for my kids. This past week I used a blog to book service to save my entire blog in a chronological .pdf file. The blog was too big to fit in one file and when printed out it will reach just about 2000 pages printed, entirely too big to be bound in one volume. It is simply amazing to me that I have written that many words over the past few years.
Along the journey of blogging I have met some interesting people and had some interesting opportunities and I am glad I have done this. I am also thankful that I took a break. The break helped give me time to manage my busy life and reflect both on what I wanted to continue using this blog for and what I did not. I am thankful for all the people I have met and gotten to know through the years through this blog. I also love that my family can easily read this and feel like they are getting glimpses into our everyday lives and feel a little closer to us since we are all separated by so many miles and too much time in between visits. I am glad my kids and maybe generations after them can see glimpses into my heart and the priorities of our family at these stages of our lives.
Through the years I have gone back and forth about the honesty of my blogging and in general my choice to highlight all the best moments and at the same time share some of our more real ones as well. Looking back I am sure that was a good choice for us, now those memories books will read like a greatest hits album with many of our strong and beautiful times together. I am sure my kids will naturally remember all the ways that I screwed up as a mom so I am glad they will have some of the positives to look back on as well. I would like to think those are the memories they would choose to remember but you never know :)
Through these posts I have never wanted to appear like a "supermom" or someone who has reached some unattainable perfect reality. We live normal lives just like everyone else. I lose my patience and temper like all home school moms I know. I have moments where all we can manage to do is our math, spelling and reading textbooks. But I have not made things up for this blog (other than giving each of us screen names) either to make me or homeschooling look somehow better. All the good really did happen and we really do have our amazing moments together on this homeschool journey that keep us all going each day.
So many years ago I chose the phrase "10 hands. 10 feet. But just one beat of our common heart" to represent our family here on this blog. I still think it fits today even as we run and move in so many different directions at once our family still has the beat of a common heart and purpose of living together in this world and bringing glory to our creator. It has been an amazing journey so far, one I am thankful to walk every day. Thanks for taking part in our walk in some way: if you just come to visit occasionally for a book list, arrive as a result of a google search, read to keep up with our family, share your wisdom and thoughts or just are the random passerby. Who knows how long I will continue this little blog in this little space of the internet, maybe some day I will reach a million hits and then I can reflect again about what I am doing and why.
Blessings
Tenniel
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