Just about exactly 6 years ago I was publishing the Introduction to this Blog.

After months of research and preparation I published the post on the evening of July 4th, 2005.

Independence Day was a symbol of how I felt about my work on the Internet, and it felt right to begin this adventure on my favorite holiday.

I had been participating on the internet since 1997, and had begun with a web site called Millennial Family in 1999.  It feels like a lifetime has slipped by since those early years of figuring out how to share my story…

I snail mailed my first book to five publishers and they all rejected it.  My brother Dave helped convince me to publish the book on the internet as an E Book.  When I think about those early efforts to convert my Word file to a PDF without the formatting being lost in transition, I have to laugh thinking about the same problems cropping up 14 years later when publishing Word files to Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords.  (Note to anyone interested – DON’T even bother putting your word file into a PDF before publishing on Kindle…just save it as a Rich Text Format (RTF), and publish away – it will look best on all hand held devices as an RTF *This is a publishing tip that Independent Writers can take to the bank)

During those early years of writing, I wrote so many sentences with a baby nursing on my lap that I believe I could win a one hand typing contest.  Paul purchased an awful digital camera and I spent hours uploading pictures to share cooking tips with Mom Readers.  When my daughter purchased a digital camera with video in 2007, I “rented” it from her to create Cooking and Provident Living Blog entries.  I recently remixed all of those old videos at One True Media and uploaded them to You Tube to use as content for the most recent issue of Blogging Mothers Magazine.

I don’t particularly like making movies with the equipment we have here at home and have vowed I won’t make any more movies until I can buy a decent camera.  I don’t regret learning how to make digital movies, it’s just that I could make them so much better and faster with real professional equipment.

I’m grateful to have made it safely to this day and give Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ all of the thanks for making that happen.  This adventure has been unexpectedly difficult and many, many times I walked away vowing never to come back.  But I am still here and believe that because I owe my life to the Perfect Grace of my God, I should respond in kind by mustering on as well as I can manage.

To my enemies I say, Karma is real and what goes around does indeed come around.  To my friends and readers, thank you for sticking with me for all of these years.  To my beloved Family who have endured more than their fair share of distress because of my writing, I probably never would have started this endeavor if I had known how it was really going to be, but I am grateful that all of you are still here with me, relatively healthy and whole, and that Heavens Blessings have kept us alive and safe when at times it felt as if the whole world was crashing down on my head.

Here is to another six years of The Natural Family Blog!

Jenny Hatch