In the summer of 2004, we didn’t have a blog. Phoebe had two Xanga accounts: one for her own diary, and another for her homeschooling journal. For my part, I would sometimes take on the moonbats in online forums from AFF Brainwash to Mothering.com.

But this was unsatisfying. What we needed was a blog of our own — or more like three blogs of our own, but in one place. And so, on September 27, 2004, The Gleeson Bloglomerate was born.

Our first posts were of the “testing, testing, is this thing on?” sort (and we ported some older posts from Xanga to the new blog, which is why some of the dates are from before Sept. 27), but soon we started really, honest-to-gosh blogging. Along the way, we live-blogged the birth and rebirth of our youngest child, we won the 2004 Weblog Award, and I crowned myself “the go-to guy for 2008 blogging.”

One of my very earliest posts, “Apologizing to Saddam is Groovy,” is still the record-setter for visitors. I stopped keeping track at 100,000. Another early creation, the Autorantic Virtual Moonbat, now graces the sidebars of numerous blogs around the world.

I’ve listed some more of my own favorite posts from Year One over on sean.gleeson.us.

We would like to thank you, whoever you may be. We really know nothing about you, other than that you are reading this page. But thank you for reading this page! Please return as often as you like.