celebrating merry’s 10th blogiversary

Merry /Mrs Muddlepuddle, queen of hama, friend and blogger has been blogging for 10 years! That is a seriously long time I have only managed 8-and-a-half. I haven’t known Merry for all 10 of them, just 8-and-a-half, but they have been a great 8-and-half years with highs and lows [on both sides]. As her Mrs Muddlepuddle incarnation, she set up the yahoo group that gave us the early encouragement to be home educators, and also the muddlepuddle camps, which got us to meet lots of other home educators. Always welcoming, friendly, sometime bracing with a bit of eyerolling thrown in . Not being entirely sure of what to put in a post celebrating this, I thought I would say something about our shared blog moments, and how sharing our lives, education and ups and downs [not always on blog] has enriched us. Online friendships becoming real life friendships, the early [prefacebook and other groups] years when in the evenings we eagerly whizzed around the muddlepuddle blogring to see what each other had posted, and then had comment conversations. The silly quizilla quizzes and other memes that swept around us. These were our younger carefree years! Less thought about audience, CEO, tags etc and possibly less thought all round! Our older years have seen us change blog styles, Merry has integrated business with pleasure [I think fairly successfully] and talked more about issues, passions. However, throughout is running a sense of family strength and firm friendships. So I have trawled through Patch of Puddles for links and added my own photos tho make a thread of laughter, tears and friendship [with some education alongside]

So here are some of our shared moments, starting with the first muddlepuddle camp in Melrose [we make an appearance in the last pic], which i was a bit nervous about as she and other home ed friends i had yet to meet had been on a centerparcs holiday together and sounded like a group of swingers…

And what struck me was the friendliness and warmth of the group we were joining, and that yes, it was possible to do this home-ed scary thing! Sadly Melrose is being sold, but we went out with a large snowy hurrah!

Kessingland, come rain or, well, rain! also great moments – particularly the one sunny year . Memories of you despairing over the shopping/food max had left you with. the children all having a great time together. Actually we did have some sun…

It hasn’t always been holidays and sunshine [or lack of] we have been through our bad years. I was priviledged to meet Freddie within hours of his birth and hope desperately with you for a good outcome. I was fairly poor at sharing the grief with you when Freddie died, as I was mired in my own grief of losing my sister, and it has taken us some time to come back to equilibrium. But i did care deeply that you lost Freddie, but had only the slimmest thread keeping me going and no way to communicate without that breaking. I am sorry for that. I gave all that I could.

but we carried on. Our children loved and played, we continued meeting at groups, more groups, still more groups

at party’s , many parties in fact

and loads of just meeting up to hang together. Our families have become friends, we have shared camping trips, holidays, new years eves, and just the day to day. We were all very happy to welcome in the littlest puddle too. All this shared history started by a woman on a mission, with a blog and a yahoo group.

All this and more blogged on Merry’s 10 year old blog, and my 8-and-a-half year old blog. Blogs are funny things, ostensibly about one thing, but usually about everything. These blogs were home education blogs, life blogs, but contain who we are, what we care about and how we think. Maintaining a blog for any length is hard, it is a labour of love. A bit like life.

Congratulations to Patch of Puddles for its 10 year blogiversary, and for Merry who really is a star.

PS:And the merrymobile, now sadly defunct, but very iconic in it’s day