I wanted to plan a big post series or a giveaway, or SOMETHING, but the truth be told, I just don’t plan far enough ahead to pull anything like that off! I know lots of bloggers who do (Amber, Kristen, Kris and others) but since I can’t, I’ll just take a little stroll back through my blog history.

January 8, 2005, I began my blog. Back then it was called Mom’s The Word, and I was so amazed that anyone even READ it, but they DID! I made my first Blog Friends, SouthernGirl (aka Kiva), rjlight, TotalTransformation, Amber, and MomLovesBeingatHome, Missy (who happens to look exactly like my friend Debbie!). The whole social aspect of blogging was really new to me and I found it odd that I was making friends this way, but it’s been a really neat experience! I now have many more “Bloggy Friends” and Twitter provides even more of a connecting point. Really neat!

Mom’s The Word was not destined to last, however. About a year after I started blogging there, we had some unforseen personal stuff come up, and I ended up with a real, live internet stalker. Actually it was worse than that, because she was also calling my home 30-40 times a day and my cell phone too. This wasn’t a stranger… more of an acquaintance. Anyway, it made some changes VERY necessary, and quickly. I backed up all my posts and comments, then deleted the blog entirely from WordPress. I put it back up a few days later, under a new posting name and new blog name. The blog friends I had made were notified and they stuck around.

In the first three months after putting up 5 Kids and a Dog at WordPress, my stats exploded! I don’t know why but I saw a huge traffic increase and had a lot more fun blogging too. Then this past September, I moved the entire thing over to a self-hosted site, and here we are. Sadly, I didn’t see a stat explosion this time around. More like a huge DIVE… but I know that it will come back up as the search engines find my posts again.

I look back over these past five years as a time of learning. Blogging was new to me, I went through a huge turmoil of the “should I keep homeschooling-should I quit-I hate public school-We’re homeschooling again” variety. THAT isn’t a rollercoaster I wish on anyone. For those of you who stuck it out with me, thank you. MOST of you were very kind and understanding. It was actually some people in real life, in my circle of homeschoolers, who were the most unkind or unthinking in their remarks to me when I was going through it.

And for your reading enjoyment, some of my most popular or favorite memories from the past five years:

• Thoughts on Adoption
• What Did You Do Today?
• Spell to Write and Read- a Review
• The Unglamorous Mommy
• Dinner Time, Explosion Time?
• Our (non) Schoolroom
• Public School Involvement in Homeschooling
• Something is Very Wrong Here
• Homeschooling on a Very Tight Budget
• UNSheltered Homeschooling
• Knowing Ourselves
• Why Not to Eat the Pretzel Salt

Many of these posts haven’t seen the light of day, so to speak, in several years… so I thought I would re-share them with you.  Please, enjoy my trip down memory lane and thank you for reading!  If you haven’t yet done so, click on the links in the sidebar and Fan Me on Facebook, and Follow me on Twitter! Pretty please?

Life is such a journey, and it can be so amazing! Even, or should I say especially when we go through the hard times. God can teach us so much about himself and his provision when we finally reach the end of ourselves. The cool thing is, I can go back and read my old posts and remember where I was and what was going on, and actually SEE the hand of God. THAT is one priceless benefit of blogging.