Why do I blog?  That's a very good question. I'm glad Tiffany asked for day 17 of the March Challenge.  (Yes, I know it's the 24th.  Cut me some slack, okay?)  In 2006, two very big events changed our family forever.  Jeremy and I became the guardians of a 15 year old girl named Kimmie, and we became the parents of a newborn girl named Liberty.  Suddenly, relatives wanted to keep in touch with us.  Family and friends called every day to see how our two girls were doing and what new happenings had happened.  In addition to that, our days stopped consisting of The Usual:  get up, go to work, come home, figure out what enjoyable/worthy event to spend time on that weekend.  Instead, new, silly, dramatic, tragic, hilarious happenings were happening to us every day. 

Kimmie and Liberty in 2007

I'm a story-teller at heart.  I always have been, and so these new happenings gave me great joy.  I loved telling and retelling them at every phone call.  But after telling the same story fifty times, it started to lose it's zip.  I felt so bad for the person who happened to be my fifty-first caller that week, because they got some lame version of "Kimmie got an A on her test, and Liberty rolled over for the first time."  Rather than the first fifty callers who found out all about how hard Kimmie had studied and the laughs and tears we'd shared over her studies and the exuberant joy when she found out her grade, and about the gas that was released from Liberty's tummy in the middle of the quiet library when she rolled over and our stifled, slightly embarrassed giggles when we heard it.

Possibly the first fifty callers would have appreciated that shortened version?

My friend Rachel advised me to start a blog.  A blog?  I'd never heard of that before, so I resisted for most of the year.  But Rachel blogged and loved it, and she insisted that I would love it as well.  She wouldn't let it rest.  "You'd be so good at blogging!" she told me.  "I can't wait to read your stories," she told me.  "You would brighten my day," she told me.

But a blog?  That means that anybody could read my stories.  It feels kind of creepy.

"No!  Not creepy!  Wonderful!  You'll make so many new friends!" she told me.

Eventually, I caved to peer pressure and started this blog.  My first few posts were pretty lame.  I didn't know what to say, but after a while I found my "voice."

And Rachel was right.  Blogging did help me make wonderful new friends!  But that's a post for another day.