Today’s the introduction to the blog trip and for those who are following it, an introduction to me and my site. I live in Poway, CA, which is near San Diego. It’s a pretty quiet area, but we like it. We get some hiking done at some nearby fields, which my two kids think is a real treat.

For those who are new here, I’m expecting #3 right now, due February 3, 2009. It means we have to be a bit more careful on hikes since our usual path has some spots where it would be easy to fall, but we get around that by going into the fields a different way.

Poway’s a quiet area, but living near San Diego means there’s plenty to do. We have passes that we haven’t taken nearly enough advantage of this year to go to the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park.

Working at home can be pretty hectic, especially as everyone gets used to new schedules. In the past few weeks my husband has started a new job after being laid off in January, my daughter has started 1st grade, and my son’s speech therapy through the school district has started back up. Add in planning for a surprise baby, and getting actual work done is pretty tough some days. But somehow it all comes together most days.

A little time cooking can be a great activity for parents to do with kids. You just keep the kids’ parts age appropriate, and of course make it fun. Although some kids do enjoy helping make dinner on a regular basis.

Cookies are the classic choice. If you don’t have a favorite recipe, one of the beautiful things about the Internet is how many ways you can look for one you’d like to try. The number of variations on the classic chocolate chip cookie alone is pretty amazing.

You can make some treats a bit healthier. My kids love my whole wheat waffles, for example. These freeze well, so you can make them any time of day. Reheat in the microwave and you have a good breakfast. My kids, at least, don’t notice the whole wheat at all.

A complaint I hear very often from working friends with kids is that they can’t afford to have one parent stay at home. They need both incomes in order to meet the car payment, mortgage, food bills, daycare and so forth. And some of them are right. Others just need to rethink things.

Daycare, for example, is expensive. When you’re figuring out if someone can stay at home with the kids, you have to remember that certain costs go away.

Being a stay at home mom also can mean that you eat at home a lot more. It might not mean that, but if you care to cook much at all, you’ll have more time for it when you aren’t working away from home. Even on days that the kids have really busy schedules you can always use the crockpot to get things going early. Trust me, the crockpot is your friend. That goes double if the children are young and clingy.

Especially with gas prices going the way they are, you can cut a lot of money out of the budget simply due to driving less. What you save will depend on how far you’ve been having to go to work, or if you’ve been able to use public transportation.

The clothing budget for the stay at home mom probably also drops. There’s less worry about dressing right for your job, and you will probably wear far fewer dry clean only outfits.

There will also be a difference in your taxes. A lower income does mean lower taxes. This is a hard one to calculate, but it’s worth remembering if things appear to be borderline.

Some saving money skills can take time to master if you haven’t been practicing already. Clipping coupons, for example, can theoretically save you money, but many people spend even more because they aren’t being careful about buying things they don’t need. No matter how good the deal is, if you aren’t going to use it, it’s not a good deal.

Your savings can also be eaten up by the desire to put your kids into more activities. Many of these add up pretty quickly. They also add a lot of running around in the car. There’s a balance between putting the kids into activities they’ll enjoy and what is reasonable on your budget. You have to find the right one for your family.

And don’t forget there’s a huge value to unstructured play for children. Remembering this can keep you from running around to an excessive number of activities.

When in doubt about whether or not you can afford to stay at home, consider testing the situation. Try living on just one income, and saving as much as possible of the second.

You may also consider looking for ways to earn money from home. You don’t want to start this search when you’re desperate for money, as there are too many scams out there, but searching when you have the time to investigate and really think about what you would like to do can open up a lot of possibilities.

The key here is to just not assume that it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. Look at what it will take to be a stay at home mom, then assess your own situation. You may find some alternatives that will work for your family.

No matter what kind of work you do from home, sometimes you’re going to have to figure out how to explain it to someone who just doesn’t get it.

This can be challenging even if you have a work at home job rather than a business. I had quite a time explaining that yes, my work as a medical transcriptionist was real work to my mother-in-law back when I did that. The idea that one could get paid for working at home in something other than daycare or direct sales was hard for her to accept somehow.

She gets it now though, even though I’m in a business that she doesn’t really understand. But I earn decent money, and that goes a long way toward reassuring questioning family members.

Home businesses can be pretty difficult to explain, even when they’re fairly traditional sorts. Go into blogging or affiliate marketing, however, and explanations get more difficult to give. Not because the work itself is so odd, but because many people just can’t wrap their minds around the concept of earning money online. The things they see online just exist, or they assume it takes a bigger business to run them.

One way to explain is to compare what you do to more common jobs. Blogging is, after all, a sort of writing. Affiliate sales can be compared to earning commissions as a salesperson, except you aren’t an employee.

Then there’s the issue of getting people to respect what you do. Some see your flexible schedule as meaning you can do as you please anytime. The fact that you need to get your work done and have a schedule on which you prefer to do it goes right over many people’s heads.

Of course, when you feel like building a little envy, you just have to mention some of the perks. Little things like saving gas mean a lot these days. Flexible hours can bring about the envy of any working parent and many people who don’t have kids. Add in your delight in whatever you do, and you may drive some questioners complete nuts.

Explain how low home business costs can be and you’ll probably have people asking how they can do the same. They’ll probably never do anything with whatever you tell them, but many will ask.

Don’t expect that no one will understand what you do. Some will, and they won’t all be in their own businesses. Having your own home business makes it easier to understand how others could earn a living from home, but it’s not an absolute requirement.

Talking to people about what you do can be a great way of bringing new people to your site. Many people are all too happy to say they know the person who runs a particular business, especially if it’s in an area they’re interested in themselves. Finding the right way to address the topic of what you do can help you to build your business.

This just sounds like a fun idea. I’m joining a bunch of other moms and going on a Blog Trip.

The idea is pretty simple. From September 1-5, the moms will post on their blogs about various topics. An itinerary has been suggested. This will allow everyone to keep to a theme, although if you don’t want to post on a particular day you don’t have to.

Why am I doing this?

Aww, it just sounds fun. A little switch from my usual blogging routine, and a chance to encourage other bloggers to check me out. You never know what will happen when you start meeting a bunch of random strangers… err, potential online friends. Posting on somewhat different topics may also be good for my creative side.

I’m hoping to get a start on writing the posts a bit early on. The nice thing about having the itinerary is that I can start the writing process early, and post when ready. Some days it takes a bit of time to get the creative juices flowing.

Although I think my daughter’s been watching too much Dora. I can just hear Dora’s voice saying over and over “We’re going on a blog trip!” in that basic rhythm they always use on that show. Make it stop!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me. My husband has gone back to work. School has started for my daughter. This whole pregnancy thing.

No wonder my poor son is barely on speaking terms with any of us. He’s just overwhelmed by it all!

His speech therapy started back up today, which I hope will help, but I’ve definitely noticed that with all the changes he is getting more and more reluctant to talk at all. I joke about having to master the art of interpreting interpretive dance, as he prefers to dance around to get my attention when he wants anything, whether it be a snack or company while he goes potty.

And dang it, he used to do that one alone! Now he refuses!

I do think it’s just all the changes. It’s a lot for a 3 year old to absorb, and it’s making him less willing to speak and more clingy. He’s wanting that reassurance that I can give him.

Helping him is a balance between reassuring him that everything’s all right and letting him know that he cannot literally just dance around the subject when he wants something. He has to speak up.

Combining being there for him with encouraging the independence he will need when the baby comes is challenging. I need him to play more on his own so that he’s not so completely shocked by the amount of time a baby takes.

At the same time, I don’t mind letting him be my sweet little boy who loves to snuggle close to Mommy. It’s not always convenient, but it calms him down more than anything.

Now if he’d just let Daddy so much as cuddle him when I’m available! So often if I’m in the same room he won’t tolerate so much as a touch from his Daddy. I’m pretty much looking forward to the Daddy’s boy phase.

I think….

If your kids are anything like mine, hunting bugs is a major pastime. They have their favorites, generally the pill bugs, and ones they know to stay away from, such as the all too common black widow spiders that pretty much infest our area.

Looking for bugs is a great way for younger kids to learn to appreciate nature. You can talk about which ones are beneficial to your yard, and which you’d rather get rid of. And of course discuss rules for problem critters such as black widows or scorpions. My children know to get a grownup for certain kinds of bugs, while others they will try to catch.

I came across an article last night that I think is a good reminder that it’s not just people wanting to work at home who fall for scams. Even professionals who are earning a good living can make big mistakes.

This particular Ponzi scheme was pretty sneaky. It was run using facilities at the University of Miami. They claimed to be selling perfume and electronics to a company in Chili and Peru.

But as with any classic Ponzi, there really wasn’t a product. The numbers were faked, and people earned by recruiting. Accountants, lawyers, business people and retired law enforcement officers all fell for it.

Of course, it wouldn’t have worked if any of these people had let common sense take the place of greed. They were promised a quick 18% return on their investments. One person stands to lose $2 million.

As with any other scam, I take this as a good time to remind everyone to think before you join any opportunity. What are you being promised? What do you have to invest? Are the stated returns on your investment reasonable? Are you paid for recruiting rather than selling?

Taking some time to consider each of these factors, doing your research, and sometimes trusting your gut when it says ‘no’ are all good ways to avoid being scammed.

It’s one of the first rules of looking for a work at home job: “don’t pay for a job.” But when should you consider spending money on your goal to work at home?

For Work at Home Jobs

If you’re definitely thinking in terms of a work at home job, the answer is not quite never. You do not pay for jobs. However, you can sometimes benefit from paying for resources that will help you to get a good job. This very rarely includes paying to join a job board, although one or two, such as Telework Recruiting, have legitimate listings. But before you pay for such a board, do your research and see what current users think of it.

Another time is when you are looking to build specialized skills for a job, such as if you are interested in medical transcription. Some jobs you simply cannot get without paying for some training first. This adds on the challenge of finding a legitimate training program (there are scams in training too) to the challenge of not being scammed as you look for a work at home job. But this can be necessary to land certain jobs.

For Your Home Business

And of course you should expect to spend money on your home business. I think a lot of work at home moms find this one to be incredibly challenging. Odds are good that you’re on a tight budget, and the fear of being scammed doesn’t go away when you’re running your own business.

Appropriate spending, however, can help you to grow your business much faster. Some investment is needed to start most home businesses, for example. You may be buying the startup kit for a network marketing opportunity, or you may be buying a domain name and hosting for your website. But either way you’re spending money.

There are many more times when you’ll need to spend on your home business. Just starting up isn’t enough. You need to get the word out somehow, and that means advertising.

If you don’t mind waiting a bit for results, article marketing can work well. It’s highly time consuming and you need to produce quality article for it to really work, but it can drive quite a bit of traffic.

Similarly, marketing on forums can get your link out right away, but you have to do it right and it can take a lot of time to build up a reputation on a forum. You can’t just go dropping ads on a forum and expect it to work. On most the ads would just be deleted, and if not it will probably be buried under tons of other ads in a very short time. Participation, on the other hand, can bring in traffic interested in what you have to offer.

If you want to go a bit more quickly, paid advertising is probably your best bet. You can try pay per click marketing, although I really recommend you read up on how to do that well first. The learning curve is challenging, but you’re paying only for traffic to your site, which can be a good deal. Perry Marshall offers a good product to help you learn.

The key to spending on your home business is that you want to pay only for things that will either bring more sales in for you or help you to learn how to do it yourself in an efficient manner. Many of the ebooks you can buy that will help you learn how to market your business have information you can find elsewhere, but the research time will be tremendous. Spending some money can cut down that learning curve and allow you to improve your profits more quickly.

Knowing when to spend and when to just do it the free way can be challenging. Much depends on your personal goals and finances. Never risk more than you can afford to, but don’t try to build your business without risking nothing at all. Take a chance and see where it leads.

As my children enter that delightful stage where they fight over all sorts of random little things, the time also comes when I have to ponder issues of what’s fair. Kids are great at pointing out when things are unfair.

On the other hand, I don’t want to overdo it. I can still remember as a kid not liking my grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies because she counted out the number of chocolate chips for each one, and just poked them in on top. That was how she handled her kids arguing over who got the most chocolate chips in their cookies.

That’s just not me.

I go more for the philosophy of letting it all balance out over time. I won’t say my kids are always delighted with this idea, but since for every cry of “that’s not fair” I can point out another time when that child got the best of the deal, my kids have a bit of trouble arguing that one with me.

They do try sometimes, of course. My oldest is particularly good at trying to come up with more reasons why things should go her way. Honestly, that pleases me. I want my kids able to stand up for themselves. She may or may not sway me, but she’s trying (sometimes very).

Seriously, I don’t believe you need to treat your kids perfectly equally. They do need to be treated fairly, but from a grown up perspective more so than from their own. You don’t want to build resentment but you don’t want to let your kids determine what’s fair all of the time either.

Sometimes things seem unfair to kids because of age differences. This goes both ways. My son gets mad because his sister, being older, can do some things he can’t. My daughter gets mad when her brother has fewer responsibilities. It seems unfair to each of them, but as any parent knows, you can’t let kids do things inappropriate to their ages.

I also just encourage them to work problems out on their own. I’ll start them on the path to a fair solution, sure, and make sure my daughter doesn’t take excessive advantage of her greater years, but it’s not impossible to teach most kids to figure out fair solutions together.

I hope that this way my kids will grow up understanding that not everything in life will go their way, but they can keep trying. Children should steadily be encouraged to be more independent, so they aren’t expecting their parents to solve every problem that comes their way.