evolution

As we leave 2025 behind and start into a new year I've been thinking about the blog. In 2026, the blog (and Abby!) will turn 18! How did that happen?!  I have made 2,282 posts in total (!), but posting frequency and depth has decreased a lot in the last couple of years, with only 48 posts in all of 2025. 

More than once in recent months I have thought that I need to figure out how to "keep the blog alive" … but now I'm thinking that I need to figure out how to let the blog evolve.

The audience of the blog has been changing. In 2025 we said goodbye to Dee Dee, who will forever and ever be the blog's number one superfan. Other big blog fans, G&G, moved in 2025 and now live a short 15 minute drive from us, becoming more a part of our daily lives IRL and as a result don't need to rely on photo updates on the blog quite so much. And while we know we still have some regular readers out there (xoxoxo), ultimately we aren't really trying to reach a huge number of people, this has always been an ongoing love letter to our friends and family, and kind of a journal that is fun for the kids and me to look back on and remember events and moments, big and small. 

The blog's main subjects - Abby and Nate - are also changing and growing up! And I have realized that more and more they are having experiences out in the world without me, going to camps and other countries by themselves, or just spending more time with high school friends being out and about in this wild world we live in. My blog chronicles of our collective daily life start to feel like they represent a smaller slice of our total "life pie". 🥧 And as the kids get older it feels like they need more of a voice in saying what goes in this digital record, whether that looks like me asking first to make sure it's okay to post a photo, or checking in to see if it's okay to talk about something that is happening in their life. It's so different from when they were little and couldn't even talk, and I was using the blog in part to imagine what they might be thinking or feeling, and trying to record moments that they might want to look back on someday. Social media didn't exist and neither did the concept of a digital footprint. 

As we embark on a new year (one in which Abby will head off to college), maybe we'll try sharing the keys to the blog like we now share the keys to the car, and the kids and I could each post about moments we would like to record. 

Stay tuned, dear readers, for some experimentation in this space. Capturing and sharing bits and pieces of life here has brought me so much joy in the last 18 years, let's see where things evolve from here! ❤️