Bloggiversary

Again, how great it is to see your own daughter swinging around nunchucks!  She's been doing this a lot more this summer, and is actually pretty good at it.  This is because she enjoys it, and practices a bit more with these.  She's also practicing her kicks, as you can see here below.

Tonight the kids were certainly pretty active, although they weren't sparring.  They were also working on their form.  Madison was back after the short vacation, and doing pretty well, as if she never took a week off.  In fact, tonight she earned her second stripe, and is one more stripe away from getting her blue belt.  Ah, the purple belt was fun while it lasted.  These belts go by quickly!

We had art camp today at the Quinlan, the students there working with clay.  You could tell this even before Madison had to explain, because there were streaks of dried clay all over her hands and arms as she walked out of class.  We cleaned that up at the ATA studio, of course.

She's enjoying art camp though, although it's a different atmosphere than last year's camp.  The kids are older and there's more of a focus on the art projects themselves.  As such, Madison likes the camp this year.  She says the art she's working on now is more fun than what it is that she's seeing the younger kids doing, so we're glad we've got her in this class this year.

Tonight we were watching "Captain Marvel" again, for the first time since we've seen it in the theaters.  We did like the movie a lot, and in fact looking back, it's the entire basis of the "unleashed" theme Daddy wrote for Summer Xtreme.  That's going on this week, by the way.  Up in Spartanburg, the last of the Summer Xtremes is taking place.  Initially, we were going to take Madison up there.  But someone needs to stay down here and keep things going at KidPak, and art camp looked fun, so here in Gainesville we stayed.  Meanwhile, a few of the others - Josh, Lance and Chris - are all up in Spartanburg.  In fact, service this week will be Joey and myself, and the volunteers.  Certainly a skeleton crew.  That's summer at KidPak though.

So, today's the day.

Ten years ago, to this day, I've been writing this blog.  And it's been pretty much every day.  There is in fact an entry for every single day, although many times I'd write things a day or even more afterwards.  Frequently, I'd just jot down a few words or notes about each day with a promise to myself to come back and write more about what happened that day.  The primary purpose was a place for the grandparents to come back to and see pictures and updates, but the other idea behind this was simply a letter - a long one - to Madison.  The idea was that some day she'd come back and look at this day or that, and she could tell anyone what she did on any given day over the past decade.  We can all see the day she first started liking tacos, or her pumpkin sculptures each year, or her swim with dolphins, or an occasion where she made pizza - and so on.  It's been occasionally difficult keeping up with this, and quite a burden as well sometimes.  But I've kept it up, and I'm pretty proud of that.  It's a recording of every day we've had Madison since she was around 3.  I wish we started the moment we adopted her, of course.  And that sort of emphasizes the importance of a blog like this.  That year we have photos, and memories, but nothing as extensive as when we write about it afterwards.  Of course, we're not catching everything that goes on every day.  But we do catch a bit, and it's fun to look back on, if only for the pictures and memories.  If we could go back in time ten years and do anything differently, sure, we've learned a few things and would do them better.  But I really can say these past ten years have been such a blessing for us, and it really has been a happily ever after for our family.  How wonderful that we can see this version of a scrap book, looking back often with so many happy memories.  Just randomly picking any year and selecting a month of that year, and suddenly we're back in time, reliving happy moments together.  We've been blessed.  It's been tough to keep going on this, and sometimes you get tired or don't want to write.  But it's been so incredibly worth it.