Two more working days and I will be on vacation. Wednesday my kids are still going to school and daycare so that I can take advantage of the day to do a few things at home, Thursday they will stay with me while dad will be working 3 more days.

Once again we won’t be going anywhere, we will be staying at home, use the pool a lot and go to the beach.

We might have the visit of some dutch friends that are coming to Portugal for their vacation, they intend to go south so we don’t know yet if we are going to be able to get together.

These dutch friends travel a lot, last year they were in south of France for two weeks and early this year they were in Brighton, a city they want to visit again. They told us Brighton is an excellent city to spend a few days visiting, there are several attractions that please grown ups and children.

Near the coast line, Brighton has a Royal Palace, museums, giant sculptures, street artists, surf stores, well known clothes brand stores, theaters, music, beaches and much more. For accommodation there are condos and hotels some of five start and the 400 restaurants bring us all types of food.

My friends told me about so many Brighton qualities that I felt I needed to look for more information. WeLoveLocal.com is a site where we can find reviews and recommendations for several places and attractions we can visit in Brighton.

The real cool feature about this site is that you always have a Google Map on the right side showing the places you are selecting. For instance you want to go to the Riley Snooker Club, you search it on the site and when you click on the link to see the information available for that snooker club immediately the Google Map appears showing the exact location of the club, the streets around it, etc.. This is great when we don’t know the exact location  and directions to take, with the map we are able to check the streets we have to take to get there.

The WeLoveLocal.com has a Brighton Directory featuring local business listings. This is also very useful for instance to check where a car parking or a cinema is. All location are featured on the Google Map.

My friends are really impressed with the city, who knows I will be able to visit it someday.

• Worried about my son. Hopefully the node will return to its normal state, but I already schedule the eco (scan) for July 3rd (there are no appointments available sooner)
• The Noddy surprise was a real surprise. When I said I had a surprise they thought about everything but Noddy.
  School is over for Dani. The hard study and missing soccer classes gave good results and he really improved his grades.
• Soccer classes and tournaments are over.
• I might have sciatic nerve pain. The pain on my lower back is terrible (but nothing compared to the pain I feel for my son).
• I’m not inspired to write and blog but I know I can’t give in to the pain and worries I’m going through. I now what a depression is and I’m doing trying my best to not let me go down.

I read a post at The Domestic Diva called Parents tune into your Kids, this was an interesting post to read. Take two minutes and read it than come back please.

I agree with what is said by The Domestic Diva, completely, we must give our children our best attention and provide them with quality time. I couldn’t agree more.

Now talking about my situation and most full time working mothers with no one to clean the house, to help with the meals, to go shopping, how can we give our children quality time when, even on weekends we have the house to clean, shopping to do and we are so tired that we can’t even walk because our legs hurt so much.

I try to give my kids most of my free time but there are those days that, no matter how much I want to be with them. I’m not 100% with them. There are those weekends when I take them to the park but I just want them to play alone because I’m too tired to walk and play with them. However most of the times when my attention is requested, although tired and not wanting to, I manage to drag myself and play with them. Is it quality time? Maybe for them it is, they don’t even notice that I’m not ok, but that’s for sure not quality time for me. Do they deserve the effort? Yes, of course they do. They are away from me 10 hours a day and they surely deserve a mom that spends time with them and plays with them even if that’s not what she really wants, I mean, I want to, but the tired side says: go to bed, rest and let them play alone.

Most moms (not all of course) I know from blogs are staying or working at home mothers, although I know it is not easy to handle a house and kids full time, at least they are at home and they can prepare some house stuff during the day.

When I come home at 7pm I still have laundry, cooking and some cleaning waiting for me, besides all the other activities (baths, playing) that involve the children. Am I proud of being a working mom? Of course not, my dream (which is slipping through my fingers) has always been to spend more time with my kids, pick them up at school, do the homework with them but the reality is different, I have to delegate those tasks to other people because…I’m working.

Should I have gymnastic classes or swimming classes to easy my stress? Of course I should, but when do I have time, when I should be asleep?

Of course I’m aware there are full time working moms in the US, moms with a career, with high status inside a company, but do they have time to blog? Probably not. The reality I see on blogging world is about moms that follow their kids, who have the computer on all day, who have time to socialize, to participate in forums. I tried to do that but I’m going down the drain, I’m tired because I can’t put up with that because I have little free time.

I’ve been blogging less lately because I’m so tired I can’t stay up everyday until 2-3am and get up at 7am in the morning.

Do I want to be a full time mom? Yes I would love to, but European reality is much different from US. Even if I blog for money, the reality is not good, two years ago if I earned 300US$ I would earn 300€, now 300USD$ means 192€ and it’s getting worse.

Do I want to work from home? Yes, I would love too but in Portugal there are no companies providing that type of work.

If there is a US company that wants to offer me a job I can do from home I will be pleased to accept! ?

I’m not criticizing anyone, on the contrary, I would love to hear from working moms to know how they manage time. I want to improve my parent skills, I’m always looking for ways to be a better mother, that’s why I sometimes instead of writing my own posts I read other mom’s blogs because I learn so much from them.

Are you a full time worker? Leave me your blog URL and I’ll be please to read about your daily life, I’m sure I will learn important lessons from you.

I’ve been having some problems getting up my daughter in the morning on working days. Although I try to get up early to have time to wake her up, I always end up stressing and leaving home already late.

I bought a clock for her room some time ago and I was hoping to wake her up with the alarm clock, but the problem is that the clock has a loud Tic Tac and she can’t sleep well at night. I’m looking for other options now and the Teach Me Time! seems to be a good option.

This clock changes color and when it turns green it means the child can get up. This won’t work of course if the child is asleep, therefore we need to set up the alarm. The alarm works as a normal grown-up clock, we can even press snooze to have the alarm going off a few minutes later.

The Teach Me Time Clock is also very interactive. How does it teach children the time? The child presses the left toe button and the analogical clock will show the time than the child presses the right toe button and the Teach Me Clock will say the time and will display the time in the digital format.

This clock has other features like five levels of learning (we can start with easy level and increase as our child increases his/her knowledge), it can show analogical, digital or both type of clocks, etc..

I thinks this attractive clock will help me with three situations:

• Teach the time to my daughter
• Make her wake up on time
• Beautiful piece of decoration

When I went to school yesterday I spoke with his teacher and asked her what she had to say about him.
She told me what I already knew: He’s a very intelligent boy that gets distracted very easily therefore his grades are not as good as they were supposed to be. The teacher says it’s unbelievable how he is not still and is always ready to play or join a “out of subject” conversation. He also distracts himself with every sound and conversation there is in the classroom, it seems he has a satellite disk on his ears.

When I went to Catherine school I also asked her teacher about her and the answer was the same she gave me a few months ago: Catherine is amazing at school, she’s very advanced for her age and if she continues like this the teacher says when she is 5 she will probably start writing and reading. Regarding her behavior she is a little childish and always begging for attention, but it is understandable once she is the youngest at that school.

So I have two intelligent kids, and I’m very proud. I just wish my son could concentrate more, I’m working on that.

Dani was really happy when I arrived at school to pick him up. We both then headed to Catherine school to pick her up. I can’t express in words her facial expression when she saw me. She was SOOOOOO happy, dancing, hugging me, it was one of those moments we can’t take a picture of.

The afternoon, as I expected, was a little busy. They wanted to do everything on the same afternoon because they knew this day won’t repeat soon.

We went out to shop for a pair of tennis for Dani and I ended up also buying a shoes for me (first shoes in two years), it’s a birthday present in advance for me.

Catherine is sleeping in the couch, Dani and Dad are watching the movie: The National Treasure - The book of Secrets, I’m blogging, chatting on MSN and glimpsing at the movie.

Yesterday it was a public holiday in our country, today I took the day off.

I took the kids to school and I already did some important shopping: nail polish. Believe it or not I’m a chronic nail biter BUT I stopped biting my nails a few weeks ago and now I have “some” nails that need some polish. I’m not used to polish my nails but today I bought a brown and a dark red bottle. I’ll be trying them later.

Being a full time worker I’m not used to be alone at home so I can’t stand being all day at home without my kids on a day off. Today it’s going to be surprise day!!

For quite some time my daughter has been asking me to pick her up at school, as I’m always working, I can’t. So today after lunch I’m going to show up at preschool to pick her up and even stay a little with her in class. She’s going to be thrilled when she sees me.

The original plan was to pick her up at school and later pick up my son, but…I can’t wait and I will also pick up my son at lunch time from school. Today most of the kids are not attending school because a lot of parents don’t work so the teacher doesn’t mind of him leaving earlier.

So, they know there will be a surprise today but they don’t know who will be doing it or what it will be. I know I won’t rest with them at home, but I’m happy to have them around, specially when I’m supposed to be working.

Aunt #4 died this morning.

She’s my father’s sister and mother of my dear cousin E. My cousin called me this morning to give me the news. Although very disturbed, she understands that her mother was suffering a lot and that this was better than suffering a few more days. The funeral will be tomorrow.

Rest in Peace Aunt Q.

I just received a phone call from my mother and Aunt #4 died this morning. Her health condition was critical and she did not resist.

I received the bad news quite well what puzzled my co-workers. I believe they expected me to receive the news in a more sadly way. This doesn’t mean I don’t care but she is an aunt I don’t see in many, many years, I was never closed to her, she’s my father’s aunt I mean not a direct aunt and she’s 90 something.

Do I mean she deserves to die? Of course not, but I’m glad it wasn’t someone younger.

My father has 4 brothers and sisters, my mother has 9 brothers and sisters, from all these aunts and uncles one is in danger right now. The one that died today is aunt of my father and his brothers and sisters, meaning it’s right that she goes first.

I have this point of view because 7 years ago someone I considered my younger sister died at the age of 18 and THAT…it’s not fair. So when someone old from the family dies I always have the thought that: I’m glad it’s an older member of the family and not a younger one.

Rest in Peace.

Well these last 10 days were full of health issues, my tooth problem and four Aunts that ended up in the hospital. Yes, I have many aunts.

• Aunt #1 - Got a back surgery (she’s in her 60’s)
• Aunt #2 - Bronco pneumonia (she’s in her 90’s)
• Aunt #3 - Bronco pneumonia and some neurological disturbs (in her 70’s)
• Aunt #4 - Gangrene in one leg, as soon as she arrived at the hospital, the leg was amputee. (She’s in her 90’s)

Aunt #1 is home already recovering from the surgery the other 3 Aunts are still in the Hospital.

Each time my mother calls me now I ask: who’s sick now?

We have a big back yard, the same dimensions of my neighbors, the big difference is that they have a swimming pool and we don’t. We have been giving a lot of thought to the fact that a swimming pool in the house would be a great help with the kids during good weather.

Although we live 15 minutes from the beach, spending an afternoon there is a little tiring. We have to carry all the necessary items for a good afternoon like:

• big sun hat
• towels
• bottles of water
• snacks
• ice blocks to keep yogurts fresh
• juice

take everything from the car, carry it to the beach and at the end of the afternoon the other way around.

Having a pool at home would allow us to stay at home and at the same time we could use the pool for fun. I’m sure the kids would forget about the beach in no time.

We decided to take a look at the several type and shape of pools available as well as a pool with low maintenance, so that we don’t have to spend a lot of time of our days taking care of the water, pool filters and other necessary duties.

EcosmartePool is the best company I found while looking for pools systems. This company has four products available: Pool system, Spa System, Pond System and Filter Glass Pack. Right now I’m interested in the pool system once it is completely environment friendly.

I had already put away the idea to buy a pool where I had to use chemicals because they are chlorine generators, they are toxic and are a threat to the environment. My neighbor had one pool with chemical system and her son started having ear and skin problems. Salt pools are not a good choice either, salt generators just create chlorine therefore that’s not an option.

Ecosmartepool only uses no-toxic systems that are not harmful for us or for the environment, they are completely chlorine and salt free.

Having two small children, their health is my priority. Both had asthma until a couple of years ago and they are very susceptible to allergies so Ecosmartepool systems is the right one to use on my case. With their system I don’t have to be worried with burning eyes, dry skin, damaged hair and also I’ll be free from that annoying chlorine smell.

Ecosmartepool system also increases the durability of pool equipments once there are no harmful products present.

The treatment they use in the water pool is 100% safe and it’s based in Copper Ionization. What I’ve leaned while looking for what is Copper Ionization is that copper ions are safe and essencial for humans, plants and animals but really harmful to bacteria and virus. Of course this treatment is a good add on to our pool.

This company donates 5% of its profits to environmental charities so besides using friendly products they still help the environment through donations. Wonderful!

What about you, are you a lucky pool owner? What cleaning system do you use?

Tuesday it was our 19th dating anniversary and yesterday it was our 14th Wedding anniversary.

Usual there are no celebrations and yesterday it was not different. Due to the tooth removal I didn’t even have dinner and went to bed early.

19 years is a long time and although things aren’t working out the way I thought they would, we’re still going on well.

Some changes must me made to smooth things out but being full time workers, two kids, a house to take care of, blogging and a million other things, it’s really hard to be always ok. The future will tell.