{ Wanting to turn back time }

Oh my friends, I want to sit and just cry.  Have a good, good cry, maybe even one of those ugly, nose running, mascara smudged, loud cries.

It's not for anything bad, but just because my heart hurts and yearns for years gone by.

Since returning to my blog full time, I have gone back through my archives and started reading from the very first post.  I am amazed at how different I was, how different I thought, and how much I've grown up and changed since that very first time I put words down on the computer screen, and hit that publish button.

 I've fallen in love with my blog, all.over.again.

I've also realized just what it was that made me want to start blogging in the first place, and those feelings have stayed the same, those haven't changed one bit.

As I read through the posts, I want to go back to when my children were little, to when we were stationed at this base, to when I was a new military wife still trying to make sense of everything, loving that very first snow, the very first in my life since moving to the States from South Africa.

The walks we took, the trips to the library, even the crazy schedule my husband was on.

It's just that feeling of wanting to be back in that time when everything was so exciting and new.

I had a good sniffle this morning, and then I reminded myself that it doesn't have to be a "here and now versus back then".  I am still the same person, just more mature, older, having lived through many more things since then.

I can't change it, I can't go back, but I can still be Sandra, the old Sandra that never left.

You know I feel that I veered away from who I was for the past few years, and quite honestly I blame myself for trying to become something else, all to please the ever changing and fast growing social media world.

I've now been away from Facebook for a little over two weeks, and I can tell you with certainty, that I do not miss it one single bit.  I haven't gone back, I don't even get the urge to go and see what is going on or what people are posting.  Being away from the negativity and the drama has been liberating.

It has also caused me to take a good look at who I am and what I was becoming, and I'm not happy with that person, so I'm extremely joyful to be going back to me.....just little old me, plain me.

It's so hard to admit that you've been trying to be something you're not, that you messed up, that you got so caught up in what others expect of you that you had forgotten yourself.  Here I am...admitting it.  I am not shy to do so, what matters is that I recognize it and make a conscious decision to change, right?

Anyway, going back to wanting to turn back time.

Let me tell you why, well aside from what I said about the blogging back then and my little ones etc.  The blogging friends I made are a huge thing for me.

I read through their comments, and I try to go back and find them, to see if they're still blogging, how they are, what they've been doing for the past 7 years.  Sadly enough, some blogs stopped posting back in 2008, some blogs are completely gone, and then there are some friends who like me, are still out there, blogging all these years later.

I'm trying to find them, trying to reconnect, and every time I manage to track one down, I get so happy.  It's like we belong to this special club and are reuniting all these years later.  Oh I'm sure many of them don't even remember me and my blog, but no matter, I remember them and that's ok.

Are you tired of my babbling yet?

I bet by now you're having flashbacks of my old blogging ways, I seemed to jump from subject to subject and make these super long posts.  Hahah
I often wondered if anyone read them to the end, or if people just got bored halfway through and moved on to something else.  I chose to believe that they hung in there and read every single word.

Anyway, all this to say that in my yearning to turn back time, I have realized that though that maybe impossible to do, I can still bring back the essence of what my blog was, and IS.

Yes, that is what I am going to do.  So be prepared, you will see some old meme's brought back to life, you will see some old features revived but most importantly, you will see me, in all my crazy, life loving, homemaking, family adoring glory.

I'm ready.....time to go back to the past and not rewrite it, but incorporate it into my present, and hopefully my future.

So excited to do that.  My only hope is that there would be a blog revival, and I'm not talking about the way blogging is now, but a revival of all the old family oriented blogs.  A girl can dream right? )