Multiple times a year my husband and I bemoan the fact that the kids are getting older at what seems to be a much faster rate than when WE were their age.

I remember feeling like I would NEVER be old enough to drive / work / go to college / graduate college / work …

And now we long for the days of not having mortgages and bills to pay!

A Time For Reflecting

We had a good time this weekend remembering funny Erin stories from when she was a toddler. Every time I listened to another story I looked at my very grown up teenager and just wondered where had the time gone. It seems like yesterday that my little 7 pound peanut was born and now she’s counting down the days until she goes to college.

My biggest reason for wanting to work from home was so my kids wouldn’t have to go to daycare. Not that there’s anything wrong with daycare; I’m a firm believer in doing what works best for YOUR family and respecting other people’s choices. But after being a stay-at-home mom for 11 years, I couldn’t imagine not seeing my kids for 10+ hours each day.

And I stink at interviewing, so that was my 2nd biggest reason.

Looking Toward The Future

I’m hoping that my teenager will remember all these days when I pick her up at the bus stop after school so she doesn’t have to walk up the monster hill near our house. Or walk up the hill in the pouring rain. And how I’m able to drive her to her 4pm dance classes when most parents are still at the office.

The practical side of me can’t help but think about the amazingly large college tuition bills that are looming ahead and how I have to ramp up my business so we can be prepared for those. I’ve got 3 years to go full force…what a daunting challenge that is.

I have a vision board hanging in my office with lots of great pictures on it but I don’t think it’s working real well in terms of being a motivator. I look at it and think, “Nice photos”. I should have put a big huge photo of my two girls in the center, by themselves, because THEY are what motivate me. The ability to be home when the bus arrives, to help with homework, and to volunteer at their schools when called.

Hopefully they’ll have fond memories of Mom always being there for them.

What are your reasons for working from home? I’d love to hear your thoughts below in the comments section.

I am the first to admit that I hadn’t been giving this site much love and attention when the hacking occurred. My virtual assistant business was super busy as were my kids with their after school activities. The excuses kept coming and I kept promising myself that I’d get to it tomorrow.

How The Hacking Was Discovered

Then I received a really irate email. I don’t know if she was a regular reader or just happened upon Working WAHM that day but she was all kinds of perturbed about the type of content I was publishing.

I found this curious because, honestly, I hadn’t published any content that recently. And as any of my clients and friends will attest, I am a stickler for high quality content (I even proofread my emails before hitting the “send” button!)

So imagine my surprise when I came here to Working WAHM to find the most god-awful articles and a strange subdirectory as my home page. Either the articles were spun a million times or someone who doesn’t know English very well wrote them. It read like the jibberish of a 2-year-old.

On The Hunt For Mysterious Posts

Now, I am not a real techie person. I know enough about the backend of WordPress to upload photos and change some colors in the stylesheet but trying to figure out how someone created a subdirectory for my site was beyond my expertise. And to make matters worse, when I looked at my post directory, NONE of these mystery posts appeared!

Honestly, I was about to just give up and shut the whole site down.

While my head was spinning, I noticed there were some comments that needed approval, so I went to the comments section. This was the key to discovering the mysterious posts because the unapproved comments were linked to the articles I never wrote. So I had to click on the article title in the comments section and was brought to a different post dashboard which contained ALL the mystery posts.

Let me tell you, there were HUNDREDS of these garbage posts! Thank goodness for the bulk delete function because it didn’t take long to delete them all but I was fuming because I certainly didn’t want to take the time to delete all these posts. I have better things to do with my time, you evil hackers!

Lessons Learned

• Keep your blog up to date. If I was logging in even twice a week I would have discovered the hacking much sooner.
• Change your password frequently. I don’t know how but these hackers are able to infiltrate passwords that aren’t original or that have been active for too long.
• Keep your users list up to date. Turns out the hackers were using one of my users’ logins to add these posts. Since she’s a contributor, I couldn’t just delete her user profile without messing up all her content, so I changed her password, too.
• Good manners mean the world. While I appreciated the reader’s email, I was also miffed at her because she was very accusatory and rude, almost accusing me of being a scam artist. She doesn’t know me from the proverbial hole-in-the-wall so it was highly insulting. We’re all adults here…if you don’t agree with something that was written on the web, inquire kindly or just ignore it.

Here’s to hoping you never get hacked!

I’m truly not sure what purpose hacking serves because these posts were NOT informative; in fact, they barely made any sense at all.

Maybe somebody is testing out a new article spinning software or something but it’s certainly annoying!

So, if you’re new here, I hope to have the design reworked by the end of the week.

A blog post will be coming shortly as well about how I discovered this and how this is one of the risks you take when you don’t keep your website updated, both with content and with wordpress updates.

Thanks for understanding!

Honestly, it’s so awesome to NOT have to wonder at 5pm what to make for dinner (and let’s face it, at that time it’s either pasta or take out).

However, I do struggle with this because I LOVE to eat yet the rest of my family are picky eaters. Plus I need a recipe to make everything so that takes extra time to look through my cookbooks or online cooking sites.

BUT…I’m done with excuses! With the help of Laura from the Organizing Junkie I am determined to get this part of my life organized – especially since school ends in 2 days.

Pretty awesome that I get 2 nights off from cooking! Didn’t even realize until I wrote it all down.

If you’d like to join the fun of Menu Plan Monday, click here for the details & to add your site to Laura’s page.

The Benefits of Summer Reading Programs For Kids

In the kids’ eyes, there are a huge number of benefits to taking part in this type of program. Although most kids don’t like the idea of being forced to “work” during their holidays, they do like the idea of the rewards they can get by taking part in reading programs! Most reading programs offer incentives and rewards such as gift certificates, bookmarks or school supplies. And it’s also a good opportunity to spend time with other kids.

You can also turn your summer reading program into a themed event to make it more fun and enticing. Try reading all the books by the same author, reading a specific series, or books in the same genre but written by different authors. Follow your kids’ directions and let them be the guide.

My 9 year old is a horse lover and her grandmother found a series of books called Canterwood Crest by Jessica Burkhart. At first I thought they might be a little bit old for her since the characters seem to be in middle school but she is flying through these books! She got the first ones in the series in February as a birthday gift and she’s nearly done with #5. I promised her #6 would be for her good report card so we’ll be making a trip to the book store this week.

For schools, there are many additional benefits to encouraging students to join a reading program. For a start, it keeps kids learning during the long weeks in which they’re away from school. It helps to keep kids in the habit of reading regularly, which in turn will help them absorb new words and knowledge, which in turn helps cut down on the amount of review needed in September. And, by using organized programs, kids can often get the books for free from their local library, with a reading schedule that’s already laid out for you in advance.

For parents, the new books and incentives will keep the kids busy during the day so we can get some work done! Set up 30 minute increments using the kitchen timer so you can check your emails or write an article while they’re reading. Personally, I work much more quickly under deadline and it’s amazing how much I can do in 30 minutes before the timer goes off!

Finding Local Summer Reading Programs For Kids

The best place to start is with your local library. Find out if they’re offering any reading programs and, if so, for what age groups. Do this ahead of time so that your child can join in from the very beginning. Other places to check with include your child’s school and local universities.

Some of the larger bookstore chains also run summer reading programs for kids. They’re free to join but their meetings, or story times, are inside the store so your kids might start asking to buy new books as opposed to borrowing them from the library. That could also serve as an incentive to sticking with the summer reading program: a brand new book to add to their bookshelves at the end of the summer.

For those kids who prefer to use an ereader, you don’t need to go broke buying books for download. If your library has a website, they most likely have a way to “borrow” ebooks. As always, be diligent with what titles your child downloads, even from the library. My teen’s favorite author writes very dark, depressing books and even though they’re bestsellers, we put a limit on how many she can read.

Life is hard enough without filling your free reading with depressing stories, don’t you think? Especially when the main characters are her age and getting into all sorts of awful trouble.

Starting Your Own Summer Reading Program

If you live in an area without a library or any summer reading programs for kids then you may consider starting your own if there is enough interest among your neighbors and friends. You’ll need to choose a place to meet, and decide how long you want the reading program to last (usually up to two months).

Before you get going, decide on the specific books you’ll want to include in your reading program. Go online to find summer reading lists if you’re not sure where to begin. You could offer rewards to kids who read all of the set books, or it could be less formal and simply a time to discuss what they’ve read, similar to a book club meeting.

You could also keep things very informal within your family and let your children determine how many books to read and the titles. My kids give me LOTS of resistance if I get too bossy and lay out the rules so this is something you could easily put them in charge of. They can make progress charts, keep track of their progress by using colorful stickers from the dollar store, and they can give you a weekly update on their progress while you eat dinner.

Certainly summer reading programs are not just limited to the children! Since kids often imitate their parents’ behavior, why not make a point of choosing a book to read and lead by example? I know that’s tough when you’re trying to get work done but instead of watching television at night, dedicate 20-30 minutes before bed as family reading time.

Even if you choose a cookbook to read for your weekly meal planning, the kids will still see you reading.

Making summer reading fun is important but whatever you do, you’ll be offering great value to the kids by creating your own version of a summer reading program.

Here are some more free resources for summer reading programs:

Family Literacy & You
Scholastic Summer Challenge

I’ve been a Virtual Assistant for nearly 4 years and met Val through some online networking. When she mentioned that she wanted to sell this site, I jumped at the chance to buy it because I can still relate to being the “new kid on the block,” the mom who desperately wanted to work from home but didn’t truly believe it was possible.

Yes, it IS possible to work from home but you have to remember that it’s WORK. There’s no quick fix or easy solution, no matter how many gurus tell you otherwise.

You’ll notice some changes, like the overall design. Although I loved Val’s pinup girl, my personality is much more conservative. Plus, I think this layout will make it easier to find the information you need more quickly.

There’s a lot of work involved in rebranding a website, much more than I realized, especially for a mom whose kids are almost done with school! So please forgive me that all the changes aren’t completed just yet.

As you’ll soon learn about me, I have a tendency to over-analyze things, to want things “perfect,” which causes me to not follow through and finish things. So that’s why I’m just biting the bullet and pushing the “Activate” button to get the new design live.

My brain has been churning with ideas lately, some of which I hope to have implemented during the next few weeks. I’m a real do-it-yourselfer so I’m always fiddling with things, trying to get it all “just right.” No worries though…my goal first and foremost is still to find the best resources to help with your busy life.

Here’s a virtual toast to kick off the NEW Working WAHM reincarnation! Thanks for being here and I hope you stick around so I can get to know about your business.

A few weeks ago I had both my email inboxes well under 10 each. I can’t remember how low they both got, but it was probably 5 or under. It was AWESOME! I have two gmail accounts and I forward all my emails to these accounts. I came off of a very productive month of February and hit March by getting that inbox down. It was so easy to open my email and figure out exactly what needed attention. But somehow in the last 2 weeks it’s back to somewhat out of control. Not fully, but it’s not in a manageable state.

Thankfully Tishia Lee posted how awesome her inbox count was on her status. Yes, my first thought did include a swear word and I possibly even had to rewrite my first comment so it didn’t sound snarky instead of funny like I meant it. Then it hit me that this was possibly a direct correlation of how my last week of working has gone. I’ve let it overwhelm me.

Since I use gmail I dove in and cleaned up. I’m not down to where I want to be, but I started at 8:30pm and I really didn’t want to stay up too late working on it. How’d I work on getting a grip on it all?

1. UNSUBSCRIBE! This is always one of the first things I do when I notice my inbox is starting to add up. If there is an email list I recognize I don’t open regularly before deleting or hasn’t peaked an action from me in a while then I click the unsubscribe button.

2. Label and Archive. This is a major one for me and one I battle with. Of course it’s easy for me to label things that are directly site related, but I’ve had one of my gmail accounts for so many years that I worry about putting emails into labels and not coming back to them. If you have a suggestion for that I’d love to hear it.

3. DELETE! This one is such a hard one and I wish I didn’t take weeks to come to the decision that I am not going to act on an email. Typically these will be emails from a company that I’m an affiliate for and I mean to put up a post about the special or the new product. I need to set up a better system of adding a quick post (whole other story) or deleting quicker. I’m working hard at deleting emails about new products I really would like to buy. Needed products are purchased immediately, wants seem to end up holing up in my inbox.

These are my tops for instantly downsizing your email inbox. Sure they can be basic and things that you already have in place. But if you have over 20 emails in your inbox regularly then you are procrastinating on them. I know I’ve signed up for a few ecourses recently and have gotten overwhelmed now that I’m behind. Once it clicked in my head that my email was getting out of control, it dawned on me that this is a direct correlation to a week that I felt overwhelmed. I know that this month is going to finish strong because I’ve caught this much quicker than normal. I’m trying to burrow out from it and I’m on the way now. I have to prepare for spring break next week and much less time online!