The Seven Year Tour

Well, it's that blogaversary time of year again, and since Studeo is now officially "alive" again, I thought it would be fun to take you (and really myself) on a little tour of some favorite moments from the last seven years. It's really been so long since I've dug through the archives that this will be a bit of  a journey of discovery for me as well - I really don't have a clear sense of exactly what I will find. :)

And, by the way, I've been meaning to mention that I've spent a bit of time on my various pages that can be found along the top bar of the blog - especially the favorites section. So feel free to take a peek (though they are, of course, always a work in progress).

So here we go...

I Start Blogging...


I didn't start reading blogs until right around the death of Pope John Paul II, when I was interested in all of the personal thoughts and tributes that people were writing about him. It was especially following my sister's original blog that inspired me to make the leap. And I really, honestly, remember thinking that no one would read my blog and I that would like to keep it anonymous (thus I even have that still present nickname for myself - Love2learn Mom), but I thought that I would enjoy writing it. I still don't like trying to follow the unwritten "rules" of blogging. As I mentioned in my very first post:

I'm very talented at starting notebooks with thoughts, comments from reading, etc.; dutifully commenting in these for a few days and getting sidetracked for awhile before starting the process once again. Here I will attempt to "collect my thoughts" at least all in one place, if not more consistently.

And I still really do believe that writing brings clarity. And so, for me, this blog has never been so much a place to "teach" as a place to "think" and also, of course "remember".

We had fun coming up with blog pseudonyms for all of the kids. At the time this blog started they were the following ages: Ria (11), Gus (9), Terri (7), Bernie (5), Kate (3) and Frank (1). And that's just because I happened to start the blog during the short few months in which their ages line up rather nicely. Now Ria is finishing up her freshman year at Thomas Aquinas College and Frank is just about to receive his First Communion.

One of my earliest posts was about the election of Pope Benedict XVI. I was reminded of this post (which focuses on a Mass at Holy Hill said by Archbishop Timothy Dolan) just this past weekend because Cardinal Dolan came back to Milwaukee and said a Mass at Holy Hill (which we were unfortunately unable to attend - but watched streaming online). Anyway, the original post is:

My Children and the Papal Conclave

Family "History" Preserved...

 It's fun to stumble on little bit's of our family's "history" that ended up avalanching into more and more things over the years. For example, in this post, I wrote about reading Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse" aloud to Ria. And later you can find (though the photo is currently missing) a reference to Ria reciting a long portion of "the Ballad of the White Horse" from memory at the American Chesterton Society Conference in Minnesota.

Some Actual Studying Took Place...

The blog title "Studeo" is Latin for "I Study", but also seemed like a fun play on words, doubling for a place set aside for working on things. The unofficial subtitle (sometimes found in the header photo and sometimes not) has always been "My Thinking Spot" (with gratitude to A.A. Milne). And so a lot of my posts have been about ideas I've been working on understanding (and generally heavy on quotes, and even jokes, that I found helpful). Here's a pretty typical example:

Discerning God's Will

Funny Business...

One of my favorite things in retrospect about blogging is how much of the funny things my kids have said over the years have been preserved. Several years we made little photos books for the grandparents for Christmas that were sprinkled with funny kiddie quotes that were easy to pick up right from the blog. In fact, I have dozens of funny and cute posts to be found under the label kiddie quotes and we had a special category, just for Frank's quotes called Frankly Speaking.

Here are a couple of favorites:

Frankly Speaking on Religion (Kate and Frank were 8 and 6 at this point)

Frank Fashions

Frankly Speaking: Defining Terms

About Town with Frank

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

 With a little help from the wonders of Flickr (who make it look so easy!), we've always had a lot of family and fun photos as part of this blog. So I wrap up this tour with a totally random selection of photos from blog posts (and a few Studeo headers) over the years (made much simpler with Blogger's nice feature for selecting photos from within the blog). Thanks for stopping by!