I want to tell you about a blog by a gorgeous and smart work at home mom. Her name is Tracy and her blog is Mom’s Niche Blog.

Her blog covers many areas faced by us moms, like saving money, organizing our lives, and doing the best job that we can to parent our children.

She also has a bi-weekly newsletter full of all kinds of helpful articles for moms, that you can sign up for right on her blog.

And my favorite category on her blog, is - of course - books!

She, and a fellow mom, have done some book reviews - and I love the way the format in which they review the books - you can check out this category on her site here: Mom’s Niche book reviews.

I may be a little biased, but, I hope they tell us about some more great books!

GO READ A BOOK!

Ebates is the way to go when shopping for anything online these days!

Membership is free and all you need is an email address and you can save money at more than 800 stores!

You can go to Ebates whenever you are shopping online and save money, or they have a reminder service that you can download called the Moe Money Maker - and Moe will remind you!

And not only do you save money, but, you also earn 25% cash back! How cool is that?

I definitely need to tell my brother about this service - he travels a lot with his job - and Ebates has great car rental coupons, deals and cash back!

GO READ A BOOK!

I find some of the best books right here in my own house - in my children’s bedrooms!

When we lived in Dallas, we would go to the school district used book fair every year - and just load up on books!

We all came home with so many, that it is easy for me to have forgotten, or even overlooked, some books that the kids brought home.

So I find gems in their rooms all the time! It is so much fun!

It is like having a used book fair in my house!

I went in to wake up the boys this morning, and I found this:

It is called, Beastly Tales - Yeti, Big Foot, and The Loch Ness Monster.

I grabbed it up out of their room and brought it into the office with me to read today!

It is obviously too young for both Shawn and myself, but, those books are actually really good. I guess you could equate it to getting a World Magazine. Little snippets of very interesting information!

Uh oh! I just got caught! Shawn found his book on my computer tower! Oops! Heehee!

GO READ A BOOK!

Do you remember yesterday when I said that I was going to tell you about that great astronomy website that I found?

You are just going to love this - it is very educational, and extremely funny! I love the ‘new look of science’ these days!

Making it fun! Where were all of these people when I was in school, struggling to understand these concepts as they were so boringly presented to me?

Where was Bill Nye, The Science Guy? Where was The Mad Scientist? Where was The Magic School Bus?

And where was The Deep Astronomer? (I think he was in school, too!)
Well, they’re all here now - and I am loving science! Who knew?

I am just glad that I can love it now so that I can influence my daughter in a positive way, as I know girls often struggle with science.

And with scientists like The Deep Astronomer around, I will have lots of help!

I absolutely love his story about overcoming his math blocks - it is so powerful.

So often, we resign ourselves to just being inept at something - when the only problem is we need another way around.

I was completely sure that history was so not me - that I didn’t get it, couldn’t memorize it, and purely hated it!

How funny, then, when as an adult, I took history classes at the junior college, and not only aced them, but, completely loved them! I ate it up!

My discovering my love for history doesn’t really fit in there, but, my obssesive love for computers definitely does!

I couldn’t stand them! My parents talked about them constantly, and I just thought it was ridiculous, boring, and way too complicated for me to ever begin to understand.

Then the internet came around - and now you cannot get me off of the computer!

See? Now that was another way around - I got to computers through the internet.
The Deep Astronomer got to math through computers.

Interesting!
GO READ A BOOK!

This will be my first year to ever be away from my mother on Mother’s Day! And I am 36 years old! Wow!

I am sure I am going to want to send her something really special and one place that has fabulous mothers day gifts is Dot Flowers.

They have some of the most beautiful flowers - there are two arrangements - one pink and one yellow - that I absolutely love! And that’s ok, because I’m a mother, too!
If, however, you think your mother might be sick of getting flowers, they have so much more to offer, as well! They have wonderful gift baskets, delicious cookies, and even gourmet foods!

They offer same-day delivery, for those of us who are the forgetful or last-minute type shoppers. And they also offer direct delivery from the farms where the flowers are grown! Both of those options sound great to me!

GO READ A BOOK!

I wanted to let my readers know that I am going to be making more efforts to monetize this blog by doing some paid posts.

I have tried to keep any paid posts I’ve done in the past somewhat related to the bookworm world, but, that has left me only doing one post in a period of a few months.

As I am making a concerted effort to make more money with my online endeavors, I am going to try taking a few more posts on different topics.

I do hope to keep this blog as bookworm-y as possible, but, at this time the bookworm crew having electricity takes precedence over ‘un-niching’ my blog.

I hope you will understand and bear with me.

Thank you, sweet bookworm friends!
GO READ A BOOK!

I wonder how everyone handles that? I would love to get a conversation going on this, because, often - I am at a loss as to whether or not I should let my child read a certain book.

Are they ready for it? Is there even anything in it that I should worry about?

When they were younger, screening books was easy - the books were either very quick reads, or my actually reading the book was not necessary, as it was clearly not a book I would worry about. An example being, Little House on the Prairie. Although, I did read about a rather disturbing episode of the show the other day…hmm…wonder if that one is in the book?

There is no possible way for me to pre-read their books nowadays. I read books so slowly, anymore - I am usually in the middle of several books and several magazines and very busy with computer work all at the same time. And by the time I get to bed and get to read, I doze off after a page or two, if I’ve been lucky enough to read that much!

My poor boys would be waiting forever to read books! LOL!

And they devour books like nothing I’ve ever seen! That is one thing this mama bookworm cannot relate to - the super fast reading of a book. Even in my pre-mama days, I wasn’t that fast reading my books. I’d read some every night before bed, and books would take me some time to go through. Occasionally, I would get my hands on one that I just could NOT put down, but, usually, it was a long, slow relationship I had with each book.

Not my boys. Nope. They eat books up like there is no tomorrow! I would never be able to keep up with them!

In fact, the other day I found a really neat website by an astronomer (maybe I’ll blog about it tomorrow…) and Patrick and I were trying to read it together. “Roll up, Mom! Roll up!” Continuously!!

I think part of it is my ADD - I often re-read sentences and eat them up one word at a time, as opposed to one fluid ingestion, you know?

Anyway, so I’ve veered completely off-subject - how ADD of me!
The subject is - pre-teens and teens - how do you make sure they are reading acceptable books?

GO READ A BOOK!