The Landers Lifestyle: If everyone jumped off a bridge....

At dinner tonight I couldn't help but think to myself - with whom can I share my excitement over our 13 month old's ability to grasp the fork from my hand and ever so gracefully place it in his mouth? I know it's not that big of a deal, most children at some point learn to eat on their own, but to watch your child grow is truly one of the most amazing things in life! It's those moments that I want to be able to share.

Even more - how am I going to remember exactly when he started doing this?!! I'm definitely not one to write in a diary. I was never that pregnant lady who took pictures of her protruding belly - more power to you ladies! I'm also not one to create a beautiful baby book - I have a photo album with pictures in it. That's as good as I get. I don't trust my memory - and often marvel at how quickly my mother can rattle of when I did things as a child.

Still yet, living so far from family makes it hard to easily communicate. While our parents enjoy speaking with us, both Jon and I are all too keenly aware of who the parental units want to skype with! A 3 hour time difference and active lifestyles amongst all family members makes coordination of those precious factime moments that much harder. We all do our best but sometimes it just doesn't work out.

I remember my Grandma asking me, after I was whining about some horrible injustice my parents inflicted on me, if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would I? Sure, it's a cliche and is often times overused, but being that it was spoken by Grandma it resonated with me. I was completely against the idea of "blogging" - everyone was doing it, why should I jump off the bridge too? Well, I've changed my perspective. I don't see this as doing something that so many others already do...I look at it as doing something I've never done. I'm not signing up to write anything earth-shattering...I just want to share our family joy with anyone who wants to read about it. Sure, it'll probably just be our moms but that's not so bad!

So, let's do some catch up -
2008 - Jon & I are married and then Uncle Sam decides to send him on deployment
2009 - We are finally living together, enjoying our first home together in Bluffton, SC. We met a bunch of amazing people and miss them dearly!!
2010 - There's lots of lacrosse and golf to go around and we find out we'll be new parents!
2011 - EVERYTHING changes! Ethan arrives, we enjoy the summer and we move to Georgia.
2012 - Jon finishes school in GA, we move to San Clemente, California and we celebrate E's 1st birthday.

That brings us up to today! Such an exciting life we lead, eh?