Life as Mom – 15 Years Later

It was 2008. Blogs were the new, hip thing. As a freelance writer looking to supplement my family’s income, I started a blog not really knowing what I was doing or how it could contribute to our finances.

(Spoiler: turns out it was advertising, cookbook writing, and self-publishing.)

Twitter and Facebook weren’t very popular then. Pinterest, Instagram, and Tiktok didn’t even exist. The world was very different then.

I was very different then, as was my family.

At the time, I was pregnant with our sixth baby, we were deep in debt, and trying to get right side up so we could move back home to California. I was basically trying to do what became the overall mission of Life as Mom:

Our kids were little. At the time I hit publish on the first post here, we had four little boys, ages 10, 7, 5, and 3. Our baby girl was a little more than a year old, and I was pregnant with the caboose who turned out to be another girl.

I myself was about to turn 36 and thought I knew so much. Whew. How much more have I learned in that time! Basically, that I don’t know a lot, but I’m still learning.

The internet and Life as Mom readers in particular helped me navigate the days of raising my kids and figuring out what it was to be a healthy woman. So much of that is recorded here in the archives of the site:

I’m so thankful for my fellow moms who took the time to comment and offer input. I didn’t have the “real life” community that I had anticipated, but you all stepped in like rock stars.

Where we are today

Fifteen years later, and we can say a lot has changed, both on the internet and in my real life:

• We moved back to California, though are not sure we’ll always be here.
• We paid off our debts, sold a money pit rental house, and have maintained a 6-month emergency fund, while renting and saving for the future.
• We’ve taken our kids on extensive trips to France, the UK, and Hawaii.
• Our kids have grown! FishMan26 has graduated college, established his career, and gotten married. FishMan22 has also graduated college debt-free and is in the early days of his tech career. FishMan20 and FishMan18 live at home and commute to a state university. FishChicks16 and 14 are in home high school, but it’s nice to see that we successfully prepared our homeschoolers for college.
• That blogging friend and I have since parted ways, but I deeply appreciate all that she offered in advice and encouragement and have sweet memories of those early days as bloggers together.
• While Life as Mom (the blog) was once my focus, as my kids grew I realized that I needed to protect their privacy more. Instead of blogging regularly in this space, I put more of my attention on writing cookbooks and crafting Good Cheap Eats. I’m excited to be able to write a little more regularly here, while still respecting my teens’ and adult children’s privacy.