Today a decision was made regarding my father’s health condition. My father has Alzheimer and is totally depending on my mother’s help. He is in bed, with diapers, food must be put on his mouth, making it short: he is a 176 lbs baby, who doesn’t move by himself.

My mother has an hospital bed at home where he stays all day and all night. The bed is very high and my mother is not strong enough to lift him up or put him on a chair, so today we order an electrical bed. This bed has a control attached to the bed and with a touch of a finger it goes up down, lifts the head, the feet and has several positions. I think my father is going to like it because there is one sitting positing and that’s what he begs for everyday.

My mother will be able to adjust the bed to her needs, she can wash him and feed him easily by changing the bed position.

The sad thing is that my parents are retired and the electrical bed costs almost 5 times the monthly payment she receives from social security. We are not really thinking about it right now and we are just interested in getting some comfort to both my mother and father.

I know I’ve been away from this blog but fortunately I’ve been having a lot of paid work on the others, and I barely have spare time to write on this one.

Last Friday the daycare party went really well. The kids where fabulous, all of them.

First there was the Ballet class with the “Spring” dance:

Then, after new clothes and make-up, my daughter danced an “Ali Baba” dance and she was dress like the Ali Baba fairy tale.

My son danced HipHop and he was dressed (more or less) like a HipHop dancer. The trousers are really old but…he likes the way they look.

Before the end of the show a known Reality Show “star” from

around here sang a song and the kids where

all back on stage to dance with her.

After the show there was a lot of food for everyone (each person took something to eat) and I can say we had a nice evening.

With this theme I can’t locate the photos in the right places, sorry!

I’m having a little trouble in controlling my son’s cell phone money. When he has money to spend he sends messages to his friends especially to his girlfriend. Even being both at school, (of course they don’t date, they’re 9 and 10 years old) and they even barely talk so they send SMS messages. Can you believe this? Of course this is a curious situation once they are so young but it’s getting annoying to me.

Another unpleasant situation is that he calls me 2, 3 or 4 times a day while I’m working. I usually cancel the call and call him from the office phone but sometimes I’m so busy and the bosses are next to me that I’m caught in a difficult situation. I already explained this to my son, he understands but he just wants to say Hi or make a silly question.

My big problem right now is the real use of the cell phone: emergency situations or really important ones, once he gets out of balance too quickly he’s not able to call me if something happens. We’ve had several conversations about this, he says he understands but he keeps sending SMS and calls his friends. He was grounded 4 days without cell phone but he keeps using the cell phone and spending money.

I’ve read some articles regarding teaching our children how to use money but although I know he’ll get there it’s complicated. I’ve been having a hard time with this situation.

Here are some articles I found and read about this subject:
http://life.familyeducation.com/money-and-kids/personal-finance/34481.html
http://life.familyeducation.com/money-and-kids/parenting/36332.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/pfg/e37children/
http://www.essortment.com/all/kidsmoney_revb.htm

If someone has written posts about this subject please leave the link, your personal opinion is welcome.

Portugal is a small country by the sea that happens to be in Europe and I live there, or better here. I’m Portuguese, writing in a foreign language in blogs that are not Portuguese.

Why you may ask.

I’m not ashamed of being Portuguese but I happen to live in a country where SEO, Page Rank, paid posts and blog advertising are unknown subjects for most people. I found all this “paid blog world” in March 2007 while reading and commenting in English blogs, it was the rainbow gold coin pot for me. Having huge financial problems at the time, the opportunity to get paid for doing something I liked (blogging), was a dream come true.

Being a full time worker, mom of two kids and a house to take care of, it was really tough to find time (still is) to write but I couldn’t let go this great opportunity to earn some extra money. I started writing for PayPerPost (now IZEA, Inc.), but my mom “job” came first so I lost a lot of opportunities for not having the time to write them in the period of time given. I reduced my sleeping time and lunch time to blog.

Over the last year, besides earning some extra money, I also met wonderful bloggers, some working mothers like me struggling to have some free time to blog.

If you are a mommy blogger you can also earn some extra money and if you haven’t started yet, now is the right time.

Have you heard about SocialSpark? SocialSpark is still is Alpha and only a very restrict number of blogger have access to it. SocialSpark gives you the opportunity to write about products and services and earn money for doing so. Join the mailing at SocialSpark and you will get a notification when it goes public. You’ll then meet other moms like you making money online without even leaving home.

Daycare is having a party on Friday night and the kids will be the Stars of the party.

This daycare where my children stay after school has children from 4 months to 12 years old. Depending on the age of the children the daycare has several classes and therefore several rooms and activities. My daughter is in the pre-school class and my son in the basic school (1st to 4th grade) class and they only go there after 3.30pm when they finish public school.

So, talking about the party, all these children, all classes, will be the Stars of the party, even the little ones will have their share in the show.

My son will take part in a Hip-Hop dance and I still don’t know what he will be wearing.

My daughter’s actuation will be more complicated, she will be in two actuations actually, ballet (from ballet classes she attends in daycare) and one from her daycare class. For the ballet I already requested my mom (she has a sewing machine) to make me some wings. For the other actuation a mini-skirt is needed as well as make-up, red shirt, scarfs, etc.

As you can imagine, parents are not told what the show is about so we just have to follow the instructions the teacher gives us regarding clothes and make-up and go to the show.

Having a good RealRank on my blogs is an objective of mine, the problem is: where do I get the time to regularly update my blogs?

Being “what those that follow this blog already know” (full time worker, 2 kids, I do my own laundry, cleaning, shopping, etc) even with the help of DH, I’ve got little time left to write.

Since I started paid blogging, I have no time to watch TV or to read a book because all my “little” free time is to blog, to write posts, some paid posts, paid reviews and, guess what, I really like to blog even if I have to leave some other duties behind.

The money I receive for paid posts is not that much but it helps in the monthly bills and although I know I could make more money online, I have no time to research and optimize my blogs. I know keywords are important but when I’m writing I’m not thinking about them and therefore no special keywords are written.

I wish I could dedicate myself to blogging and have my full income from online money, but that’s not possible right now. I also know that continuing writing the way I am (not regularly) I will never get a good RealRank and therefore only a few opps are available for me. Also who wants to advertise in low traffic blogs?

My blogging future is, at this point, uncertain.