If you couldn’t see this blog yesterday you are not alone! One minute it was fine, and then the next thing you know it said “server cannot be found” (or a variation of that message depending on what web browser was used). For 24 hours messymom.com came up blank! I panicked and immediately recruited my IT husband to get to the bottom of it.

It seems like every few years I run into a situation like this, but it’s usually because I fail to pay my bill. 5 years ago I went from themessymom.com to just messymom.com because I lost my domain name to some poachers the day it expired. Then two years ago I had my bank card compromised and cancelled, so the automatic draft didn’t go through to renew my site. The next day some nasty, I mean NASTY photos and web links took over my blog for a day until I got it all sorted out. That was fun. Not really.

This time wasn’t as bad. After some inquiring on Facebook I had dozens of people respond saying they could access this site just fine. Everyone except for those using a certain internet service provider. Which is weird. We still don’t know for certain, but I guess it was some technical problem with a DNS server… thingy… I think. I dunno. I’m back now, and that’s what matters.

So now that I’m back what am I doing? I am glad I asked. Every year I say this is going to be the year I make some big changes to my blog and it never happens. One of the issues I ran into when my site was down was that I had little to no control over the inner workings of this blog and no way to contact the people who do. Blogger.com is a free site, so you can only be so picky. On the other hand, if I want to go to self hosting we are talking about venturing out to an area beyond my expertise. Not to mention I don’t have any extra money to spend on a hobby right now so if I am going to pay to play then I need to be bringing in some return on my investment. In other words, if I am going to dump any money into this blogging thing then I need to figure out how to get some money back.

J and I talked whenever this debacle happened and he encouraged me to consider making that step. I agreed, and looked at this server nightmare as a bit of a confirmation that now may be the time to pursue some of the ideas I have been tossing around for the past 7 years of this blogging journey. It’s exciting and nerve wracking. We’ll see if I actually do anything about it, but I just posted it on the real live internet so that’s worth something right?

Effective immediately, I have been networking a little. I was featured in the 4 Real Moms newsletter this month! Remember my blog post about Taking Pictures Alone VS. Taking Pictures With Your Family? Here is a little cutout of my spot in the newsletter-

You can view the entire newsletter HERE and subscribe to the monthly 4 Real Moms newsletter HERE. That was an exciting opportunity that I hope to do more of. Then next month, on Tuesday February 24th, I will be doing a guest post on Holly Barrett’s blog sharing some of my testimony. This will be a first for me and I am definitely looking forward to it. On top of that I just scheduled some guests post on this site as well, and I am super pumped about that.

Lot’s of stuff in the works. I could use all the prayers and encouragement I can get and if you are a WordPress user or you monetize your blog then please comment, message, or email me! I would love need to hear from you.

That’s all for this little announcement, but stay tuned as the proverbial ball slowly starts a rollin’.