The Beginning

I'm a big fan of to-do lists. I always have 3-7 of them laying around in various forms (post-its, backs of receipts, on my "all important" cue cards). To-do lists keep me sane. And on track. They help me plan out my goals, big and small, daily and weekly. I've had "start a blog" on my to-do lists for about two years. It's been transferred from post-it to paper, from in-box to file folders.


My biggest hesitation in starting a blog was what to name it. I wanted it to be quirky and fun and the epitome of our family. That's a tall order when it also needed to be short, sweet and still available in the .com realm. I took a year to come up with my first inspiration and was quite pleased when I decided on "Then What Happened?". I could picture the fun header I wanted to design and those three words seemed to be the phrase that Jeremy and I often threw back and forth when catching up on our day and telling stories of our precocious children. I finally sat down to sign up for my new blog account - my new adventure - and it was taken. That was a year ago.


I tossed around a few more ideas since then in my head. None of them were very great. I asked Jeremy for ideas. His big suggestion was "Save the Drama for Your Llama". At that point I decided I needed some help. I asked my friend Kamille for her input. She's smart, a beautiful writer and perhaps my most insightful friend when it comes to personalities and description. One facebook post later and she had 4-5 great suggestions. Rain Boots in July was the first on her list.


I could not think of a more perfect description of our family. Both in the literal sense of the description (Parker and Everly rock their rain boots with every outfit, for every occasion, in every kind of weather), to the more thoughtful meaning behind it. The way I see it, those rain boots have become a marker for us - that we are ready for anything at any time. Whether it's muddy, rainy or a sunny day perfect for seeing how far one can walk into the Puget Sound before water spills over the tops of the boots and fills them up. Those rain boots are worn to church with our finest attire, squeezed on over footed pajamas when the morning dew on the grass looks too good to waste time changing into clothes, and during our proudest moments (learning to ride a bike!). Those boots are with us through thick and thin, rain and snow, good times and bad. In our family, rain boots are year-round. And especially in July, when the berry pickin' is good.