The Den's 1st Anniversary

Today, 15 December, marks the 1st anniversary of the Den's appearance in the blogosphere. Here we are, some 154 posts later, and today's post is not much different from that first one. My first post lamented the cold, snowy weather we were enduring in Chicagoland. And it's not much different today. While I'm not shoveling snow today (because it's frozen solid to the ground), I am dealing with ice and wicked cold temps. Wind chill is screaming in at about minus nine degrees. I had to carve my way through the ice to the handle on the Swedemobile this morning in order to get into the car. Yeah, it's not good.

So the weather hasn't changed much, but plenty of other things have. Since December '07, our house population has shrunk by one as Our Lady of BYU graduated high school and hightailed it to Utah; we all got older; SML went back into the paid workforce; CAL is about to get her drivers license; the Boy remains the Boy; and I lost 35 pounds (good riddance, man boobs). And a whole bunch of other stuff happened, much of it chronicled here.

This blog thing has been good for me. I don't think it's been a particularly cathartic thing or a forum for me to get in touch with my feelings. I can hire a therapist for that, although I don't recommend employing this one:

I've simply liked chronicling what's doing with me and my family. And it's also been good to further open the window to my own brand of madness.

So the long, strange trip into the Lyons den will soldier on. I hope you've enjoyed the ride and that you'll stay on for awhile.