Blogging Fun

Rodna over at Training Children Up for Christ has issued a blogging challenge of sorts. She asked those of us who were brave enough to link up our very first post. While I want to play along, there is just one small problem. One of the blogs I used to use no longer exists.

When I started blogging way back in 2005 I originally started this very blog. Here's the link to that post (and FYI - don't click on the link in the post - it no longer is active). I posted four times (the post linked above, Our New Venture, The End of January 2005, and Update) here before deciding to head over to Homeschool Blogger. I spent about 18 months there. Here is the first official post from that blog:

Who lives in the Berry Patch? Well that would be me, the Momma Berry. Poppa Berry lives here too - this is his family homestead - where his grandfather was born and raised. His grandparents still live in the old farmhouse - we can see it from our living room windows & it takes us about a minute to walk to their front door. We also have Berry One Son, Berry Two Son, and Berry Three Son living here with us. My three sons - yup! They love playing & romping on all the land we now live on. Although we only actually "own" one acre, we have well over a hundered to use and enjoy. Poppa Berry's parents (my in-laws - great folks) live about a two minute walk away in a log cabin they built themselves off of logs they cut themselves from their own land. How cool is that!

Our homeschooling journey began with Berry One Son when he was five years old. It was my "trial" year. He wasn't ready for kindergarten so I figured I would attempt homeschooling. If it bombed, nothing was lost - he could start kindergarten on time as planned when he was six. I love how God works in our lives! By the end of that first year, I was convinced Berry One Son would NEVER step foot in public school, we couldn't afford a Christian school, so I began shopping for curriculum to start our first year of homeschooling. We've never looked back since.

God has really worked in our lives to open the doors He wanted us to move through. It has been such an amazing journey to be a part of. While I was pregnant with Berry Two Son, I worked full time & Berry One Son was in day care. I never really questioned that arrangement, I just always thought that was as it should be. I really never thought I would be a SAHM and had never really even heard of homeschooling so no chance of that happening either!

When I was six months along with Berry Two Son, Poppa Berry & I had a revealing conversation. I had come to the conclusion that I needed to stay home and raise our family. I didn't want others to do that for me anymore. Poppa Berry had been having the same thoughts. Then God stepped in. We had just bought a house 18 months prior to having this conversation and had both realized we would need to sell it to make it on one income. We had it sold & under contract the week Berry Two Son was born. That was within three months of listing it by the way. The couple who bought it wanted to wait three more months before closing which was great for us as it gave us time to find a new place to live and to be in our house for two years to avoid the dreaded capital gains tax.

God then lead us to a wonderful woman with whom we rented an apartment for three years. The place we were to buy fell through just three days before we were to close. Talk about stressful! However, we ended up JUST where He wanted us to be. We lived in a converted home on the second floor. Our wonderful landlady lived on the first floor. It was a perfect arrangement for us all.

However, just last year our landlady (who was getting older) decided to sell the home. We had always talked of moving back to where Poppa Berry grew up and we thought that this was now our chance to make it happen. God continued to work through it all with us. We found a very inexpensive mobile home that we could afford & we had the talent and knowledge to renovate into a wonderful living  space for the now five of us (Berry Son Three had just been born last winter). And so last summer we moved back to our roots. Our three boys are now growing up with their grandparents and great-grandparents right next door. Berry Son One walks down our 1/4 mile driveway every day with his great-grandfather to get the mail. Everyone has been so happy with how things have turned out.

The Lord has truly blessed us.

While I saved all the blog content from my time over at Homeschool Blogger, the blog itself was eventually deleted. And yes, I could add all those posts here, but adding in photos and links wouldn't work so I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

In October 2006 I permanently moved my blog here to The Berry Patch and I've been blogging consistently (more or less) ever since.

Be sure to check out other "First Time" blog posts over at Training Children Up From Christ.