This is a rare one – Ariel’s taking a nap! She hasn’t done that in several weeks, and hasn’t napped this early in the day for a year, maybe two years. She was telling me earlier her stomach was hurting. I have a bit of a bug too, but it’s not enough to slow me down so far. Gage is just sniffly and extra clingy.

I was going to head out grocery shopping today; now it looks like I’d better wait until the kids are in bed. I don’t like taking sick kids out and about.

On the plus side, I might be able to get some extra online work done… maybe. So much depends on Ariel and Gage’s needs whenever they’re awake. I can work with Gage on my lap, of course, and he enjoys that most of the time. But a sick 3 year old can require more.

Good thing I have some chicken soup in the cabinet! I know what lunch will be for Ariel today!

I think I like where this one is heading. I’ve made some improvements, added a calendar, and just have had fun figuring out what sort of information to include. This one is focusing on work at home needs, but I’m thinking of doing others. It’s challenging thinking of ways to make these pages appealling, and I hope I have done a good job.

Ah, the price of success. I spent a lot of time this weekend helping my brother-in-law get his first website up. It’s Family Camping and Fishing. Took a lot of work getting things going for him, but I think he has the basics down now. So far we’ve put up a store on it and he’s added some articles. He still needs to do some of his own writing and submit to directories so his site starts getting indexed.

Given the topic and the time, I don’t know if it will be well indexed in time for Christmas, but it should be quite ready when spring and summer come along, which should be a good time for it.

Ariel had so much fun, since it was three days in a row that she got to go visit with her cousins, a rare treat.

Then last night we camped out in the back yard, to prepare for a camping trip near the end of October.

It’s a work in progress still, but I’ve put up a Work at Home Page. The idea is to create a good home page for work at home parents. I’m not sure I am quite satisfied with it yet. I need to improve how it links to Craigslist, since there are so many cities to search there, and maybe a little more work on the layout.

It’s a challenge finding the right resources for this. There are only so many good resources for work at home jobs, of course. I don’t want to overburden the page with advertising either. It’s an interesting challenge deciding how I want to do all of this.

This was a good weekend. I found out at the last minute about a community event going on just a few miles from home, so I called my mother to invite her. We took the kids and Ariel had an absolute blast on the rides. I had never been to that particular park before – great playground!

Ariel loved seeing the animals they had there too. She almost got pecked in the face by a turkey just as we were warning her not to put her face so near to it. I’m pretty sure the turkey missed, or at least didn’t leave a mark, but it gave Ariel quite a scare. They also had horses, goats, rabbits and a pig.

I spent yesterday working on a new work at home scam section for the site. I’m trying to cover the common scams work at home parents face. I have a pretty good number up already, but if you know of something I’ve missed that ought to be there, say so. I’m not doing individual companies; I’m explaining how each scam works and what the warning signs are. Many scams, of course, are in competition with very similar legitimate opportunities.

He got his helmet off yesterday. Pretty long appointment – they did a final casting of his head as well as pictures. Gage wasn’t too cooperative for the pictures, but amazingly enough took the casting much more calmly than he did last time.

It meant I was a half hour late getting Ariel to school, and somehow the teacher had missed me when she handed out the packets for picture day, which was yesterday as well. So Ariel was something of a mess after running around so much in the morning – at least the photographers brought throwaway combs so I could neaten her up a little, but I wasn’t able to order, so that will have to wait until the makeup session in October.

It feels so good to be able to hold Gage again without that helmet cutting into me. He’s learning that he can bump his head now; it’s been pretty well protected in the past, so this is a new experience for him.

There’s a fire right now about 7 miles from where I live. I don’t consider it to be a big risk since it’s on the other side of the freeway, and would have to burn through pretty much the entire town to get to me, but the smoke is annoying. I really feel for the people near it. There are mandatory evacuations going on for them.

Still, the memory of the big fire two years ago is strong, and my mother is nervous. I looked at the location by using Google Earth and was able to tell her that while we are very near the backcountry, the fire would have a lot of work to get anywhere near us. Wind conditions aren’t right for that, thank goodness. I have the news on a local news-only station, and it looks like the fire will be under control soon.

I have to get going early tomorrow! In order to be allowed to help out in my daughter’s preschool class, I have to get a TB test, which the school is offering tomorrow between 7:45 and 8:45 in the morning. Thank goodness my husband doesn’t have to leave for work until about 9:30 – I won’t have to haul the kids along.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I’ve finally gotten around to adding a worthy causes section to the charity pages of my site. It’s been on the list for a while; now it’s there.

I’m truly horrified by all that has happened to the people whose homes have been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. That it is taking so long to get even basic help to them is a disgrace. It is quite clear that our ability to help our own people after a disaster – one we had a few days’ warning of, no less! – needs a great deal of improvement.

However, I am quite inspired by how individuals outside the areas directly impacted are rising to the occasion and helping out as best they can. Everything from time to food to money to places for people to live is needed.