A Blogging Retrospective

This past Monday was the 6th anniversary of Strocel.com. Jon originally created the site as a gift for me, and as a place to chronicle our home buying and renovation experience. And that was what the early days were mostly about – the suburban castle we have called home since 2003. Check out Jon doing some painting in early June, a few days after we took possession:

After the house came the cat. Dorothy came home in September of 2003, 1 1/2 pounds of fluff and cute as could be. Who would have guessed that inside this sweet kitten lurked such a bad attitude?

Life settled into something of an equilibrium, and we slowly recovered from the emotional and financial strain of the home renovation. We decided we needed a vacation, and visited Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. It was lovely.

The vacation was also something of a last fling, because within a month of our return in July 2004 we discovered we were expecting Hannah. Or the baby who turned out to be Hannah. She was due the following April.

My sister got married in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day of 2005. In spite of my advanced pregnant state, I decided to attend.

Sadly, I brought back more than I bargained for, since 3 days after my return I was in early labour. On February 19, 2005 Hannah was born at 34 weeks gestation, and lab tests showed that I had an amniotic infection. My best guess is the stress of the travel did it. Life as we knew it no longer existed, because we were suddenly parents.

Some blurry years followed, probably the best and worst of my life. Together our little family made it through. And then in either a flash of brilliance or a case of total delusion, we decided to do it all again. After some difficulty conceiving we found out in December 2007 that we were expecting again, in mid August of 2008.

Luckily, things were much less eventful this time around. I gave birth to baby Jacob a few days before my due date, on August 13, 2008. And we were a family of four.

All of this, and much more, has been chronicled here. I love to look back through the archives and read my thoughts when I was pregnant with Hannah, or remember how terrified I was when we bought this house. If I keep up the blog for no one else it is worthwhile for me. And hopefully not too terribly embarrassing for everyone else.

When Jon created this site back in 2003 I had my doubts. I didn’t understand blogs. I understood websites, but blogs weren’t really mainstream yet. I insisted that we have a separate landing page. Jon rolled his eyes but humoured me. I also insisted that we have separate blogs, and so we did for the first year or two. It explains some of the redundancy of our early posts, since those two blogs were combined into one during one of our re-designs. It makes me laugh to think how much things have changed. I’m very grateful now that my husband dragged me along in spite of my reluctance.

And I’m grateful to those of you who visit me here, read, and share your thoughts. I hope you’ll still be with me in another 6 years.