It's a Small World After All

One year ago today I started blogging.

My sister in law had a blog and it was so fun to see their cute family and read about the things that might not get told in a phone conversation. Like for example the pet frog that Gracee found and "adopted", the bucket of snails all the kids gathered and tried to sell to raise money for sick children in the hospital, a video of Emma singing a solo at their church talent show... I gobbled up each post.

I was hesitant to start a blog... just the two of us... no kids to write about... But I loved the idea on keeping in touch with family. Soon my mom and sister joined in the fun, followed by Patrick's sister. We now have several other family members including many nieces and nephews.

This was awesome!

Shortly after I got a comment from a childhood friend which introduced me to several other friends from yester-year. I loved seeing their families and all that they were up to.

Several of my past students keep in touch- they are more like little sisters and they make me smile!

Even neighbor friends became closer as they shared their lives through their blog.

Blogging became all I had hoped it would be... a connection to family near and far, catching up with friends, and a type of journal for me and Patrick. It was perfect!

One thing that I did not expect was to make new friends. I'm not really sure how it happened, but new friends began popping up. Even though we had never met they made me smile, they inspired me to be better, they even brought me to tears. It didn't matter if they lived in North Carolina or Virgina, England or Greece we had so much in common. The world felt like a smaller place.

One of our new friends was Marie from A Year From Oak Cottage. Her daily posts offer inspiration and always ended with a fantastic recipe. She lives in England and yet we (my mom and my sister) all felt like we had been friends with Marie for years. She is incredible! You should check out her blog.

Marie's daughter would be competing in the Winter Special Olympics and luckily for us, the competition was in Idaho. This brought Marie over to the States and we could not have been more thrilled. It was amazing to finally "meet" her. But really we already knew her and loved her to pieces.

While she was here we got to do some Utah sight seeing. In this picture we were waiting to hear the Mormon Tabernacle do their weekly performance of Music and the Spoken Word. It was amazing!

Marie has since returned home, but she is now one of the family and we love her to pieces.

It has been a great year and I am thankful for this opportunity to make this whole wide world seem like a smaller place.

It really is a small world after all.