It's Been A Year Already?

I can not believe that it was one year ago tonight that I first started writing this blog. Well, to be honest, I did write 2 posts on here back in 2005. Then, we were without internet for 2 and a half years. When we reconnected, I immediately thought I'd like to try blogging again.

When I first started this last year, I had no idea what direction I wanted to head. But I promised myself that I would see if I could make it a habit and stick it out for 21 days. Obviously the habit stuck!

So, since it is Thursday {Thirteen} day over at Happy To Be At Home, I decided to commemorate the occasion with a series of 13 things.

13 Favorite Posts

1. My Strength Is Not Sufficient
   
2. Celebrate The Simple, Celebrate The Mundane
3. Growing Pains
4. The post that started it all - My Blog in May
5. A 3 Moms Tip For The Day
6. Inevitability
7. Just Another Imperfect Post From Another Imperfect Blogger
8. Frugal Ideas For Date Nights At Home
9. Confessions of a Former Literary Snob
10. The Perfect Pair Of Jeans For A Quarter
11. Showing and Telling In My Kitchen
12. What Is The Line Between Childhood And Adulthood?
13. Every single post that included something about my kids, or pictures of my kids. There are just far too many to list!

13 Things I Just Realized While Looking Through My Archives

1. I can be a little long-winded at times.
   
2. Why didn't someone tell me the importance of the return key sooner? Following grammatical paragraph structure on a blog is unnecessary and even I had a hard time reading through posts with not many returns.
3. My tone or style haven't changed very much over this past year, but my focus has shifted a bit.
4. I need to clean up my archives one of these days.
   
5. I have learned a lotover the past year. For example, I know how to tweak and write some html now. A year ago, I didn't even know what html was. (Joy deserves lots of credit for this!)
   
6. I need to do a better job of self-editing.
7. There are so many more places to find stock images to use in posts then I ever imagined. Allposters.com used to be the only thing I used.
8. A lot of you have been part of this blog since early on.
   
9. And I still enjoy each and every one of your blogs.
10. A blog is a wonderful tool to document your family's life, from the simplest things to the extraordinary.
    
11. Eric's views of blogging have changed a lot.
12. I had no idea I'd be able to form so many wonderful, life-changing friendships.
13. I still love comments as much today as I did when I got my very first.

Stop by Happy To Be At Home for more Thursday {Thirteen}.