April 30th, 2009

California Here We Come

Remember that long post about our crazy road trip? Cancel it, lol. We saw a great airfare to Disneyland later in May and decided to do that for our family vacation instead. I’m a little hesitant to take 7yo out of school for a few days but I think it will be a much nicer vacation for the kids than the road trip would have been.

No worries – I’m still going to BlogHer!! In fact I used air miles to buy that ticket today so I’m all set to go to Chicago for four days in July. A good friend is probably going to come with me, but even alone I’m sure I’ll enjoy the trip and the conference so much. It will be nice to not have to rush back to the hotel after to spend time with hubby and the boys, which I would have done had we made it part of our family trip.

So now we’re busily planning a trip to Southern California and I need to get myself organized! I think we’ve chosen a hotel already (given that we want a hotel close to Disney and that will offer a separate bedroom and space for 5, we have fairly limited choices in our budget!) and we know a few things we want to incorporate into the trip (Disneyland of course, Santa Monica Beach, maybe Magic Mountain) I’m open to suggestions though if any of my lovely friends have any to offer!!

It’s going to be an interesting week for work when we go. I’ll keep my schedule pretty light, but will try to keep up with a couple of things. We usually try to get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour even on vacation and I should be able to work a couple of hours a night. Hope I’m not being overconfident about that though!

Ok, off to do a little more research before bed – night all!

Laurie/Mobile Mommy

April 29th, 2009

Book Love and Book Reviews

Ok, I applied to do some book reviews for Penguin Canada. And a couple of weeks ago I started getting books from them to read, I thought it would be a couple only but already I’m up to 4 or so and I’m thinking whoa horsey, lol! I’m going to start posting occasional reviews and wanted to share my reasoning behind signing up for book reviews first.

I love to read. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. I have used books as a comfort measure most of my life – I was reading adult-aged books by the time I was 10 (possibly too early for some – I still vividly remember the vice-principal of my elementary school questioning if my mother actually knew I was reading VC Andrews – and for the record she did know!)

Books were my refuge in a somewhat difficult childhood. I loved to escape in romance novels and grew to love many genres – suspense, fantasy, science fiction, historical novels, biographies – you name and I’ll at least have tried it I’m sure! Books were where I learned about conceiving my babies, about pregnancy and now I regularly read parenting books for advice and tips on helping my wonderful boys grow up into wonderful men. And when I decided to become a virtual assistant I immediately purchased a couple of books on starting a VA business specifically, and a couple of books on running a home based business in general.

My book habit would be brutally expensive if I didn’t also love my local library! The $15 annual fee (plus admittedly another $15-20 per year in late fees, lol) is so much cheaper than buying every book that catches my fancy. Some books I’ll read at the library and then decide I need to buy but usually I am able to just get the information I need and return it for someone else to enjoy. I’m pretty sure I’ve read every book my local library has on running a small business and countless romance novels!!

So you can see why I applied to do book reviews on my blog – books are a huge part of my life. I don’t want to overtake my blog with book reviews though, so I plan to try and only post reviews once every week or two weeks or so. I also plan to only post honest reviews and other than receiving the books themselves, I am not taking compensation for the review process. I’m going to add a disclaimer to my blog or each post, but never hurts to mention it more than once!!

So stay tuned, in the queue for review are some interesting looking books, including a novel by Daniel Depp, a parenting book, a book about a family with autistic triplets and a novel about a co-op in New York and the interwoven lives of the residents! I’ll also share some of my top picks or fave books in the occasional list post, especially books that I think will be helpful to my fellow work at home moms!

Laurie/Mobile Mommy

April 25th, 2009

Earth Week Etc

Earth Day was this past week and I’ve seen several blog posts on the topic and I also watched a bit about it on television. I must say I find some people’s approaches to being eco-friendly to be mind-boggling. Now, don’t get me wrong, we aren’t the world’s most earth friendly family – we do a lot of things that are “green” and some that are not. We had three children after all – a big no-no in some circles (of course there are those who believe having no children is a solution – read this great post over at Canada Moms Blog for a good discussion of that topic).

Probably the thing I was most judgmental about this week though was when I was watching House Hunters (a fave show of mine on HGTV) and they had a couple looking for an eco-friendly home. The couple had one child. They bought a house that was over 4000 square feet and put in eco-friendly flooring and kept the heat turned down in the finished basement. I think they actually thought they were being green!  4000 square feet for 3 people is not green in my opinion. I see this frequently on tv shows like that. Now there are a few that make pretty serious efforts, like using solar heating and other techniques to be off-grid, so they maybe are more green than someone who just uses eco-friendly flooring.  Not that I’m an expert so who am I to say?

Anyway…if you need some ideas on how to be more eco-friendly go check out this post over at Suburban Granola. Bonnie shares her resolutions about being more earth friendly this year and she’s got good suggestions!

Laurie/Mobile Mommy