This morning I went through all the swag that I am bringing to IZEAFest. I made up bags for each of the winners of the Ultimate IZEAFest Prize Pack and some more bags for other folks as well. I also packaged up the swag for the winners of my twitter contest for members of the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew. I also shipped a box of swag back home to share with family and friends as well as bloggers who live near me. What is this swag I am talking about? Here are two hints.

You may have noticed that I’ve truncated the blog posts to the 1st paragraph. I can’t tell you exactly why or share much about this but like I said there are big changes ahead. Today I got to see what the changes will look like firsthand. I’m so excited about the changes that are coming this Friday, yes this Friday there will be some MAJOR changes to this blog. I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say about this. When the new blog goes up I hope that you leave many comments about what you like and do not like about it. I suspect that you are gonna love it! I do.

Later int he day Allison, Eva and I took a ride over to the beach. We’ve been here many times since Dan and Marcia moved to Boynton Beach but we have never actually been to the beach together. I had to get us out of the house and enjoy the great weather. We hopped into the car and made a quick stop at the post office (the people working in the Boynton Beach post office were really polite and helpful) to pick up stamps and mail out all the swag. We drove the less than two miles to the beach and when we arrived Eva was out like a light. We moved her to the beach and to a towel with another tented on top of her. She slept for another 1/2 an hour. While she slept Allison and I took turns going into the water. The water was like Bath water it was so warm. Then we noticed this strange sound like a sudden rain shower. When we looked at the water it was churning with tons of little fish. Apparently there were some larger fish chasing them towards the shore. Standing in the water as the fish shot towards the shore was a weird feeling around my feet.

When Eva woke up we figured that she would love the water. However we were very wrong. For some reason she wanted nothing to do with the water. She swims like a fish in the pool and up on the Cape. So what was it about this water that bothered her so much. Was it too free of rocks and seaweed. Was it the beautiful seashells that wash up on the shore. We have no idea. Eva only wanted to pick up the sand and move it from one place to another. We left when there was lightening off in the distance. But not before Allison took this shot with her Xshot.

Back at the house we got Sonic for dinner. Allison and her Dad love their Cherry-Limeade. Eva was a bit of a nudge tonight. and nudge is said with the “u” sounding like the “o’s” in the word “good”. So because she was driving Allison nuts I took her out to the back yard. We walked down to the fence to watch the water. I saw the bird from the photo above it was trying to swallow a fish that was twice as large as its head. I ran back inside and grabbed my camera but missed the whole fish thing because the bird dropped it but I shot a bunch more photos of the bird. Can anyone identify what type of bird it is? Here it is again.

Today I also worked on the blogs for three of my clients. I am now doing some blog consultation for three awesome people and things are heating up for each of them so I worked on each one of the blogs for quite a while today. We’ve got some great things in the works and I am very excited to be working with each person. Today I also came to tough decision to resign my role in a company that is being formed by some really talented people. I realized that I couldn’t keep up with everything nor dedicate enough time to the project and still work on all my other projects. I had to take stock and refocus on what is most important, family, sanity, blogging, freelancing and career.

When I got back from the beach and back online tonight I had a couple of tweets from Nika Catbagan (@nikacatbagan). Nika is a blogger from the Philippines who writes Chronicles of Nika. She wanted me to pass along links to places where people could help with the relief effort for the people of #ondoy. Ondoy is the local name for Tropical Storm Kestana. This tropical storm struck the Philippines with heavy, torrential rains on Saturday, September 26, 2009. The devastation is insane and there are over 450,00 people displaced by the major flooding. A group of bloggers has gotten together to create http://www.philippineaid.com/ to raise money to be given to the Philippine National Red Cross? The reason that they set this up was so that donations could be given via paypal or credit card as the Philippine National Red Cross only takes checks or bank deposits or wires. Here is the Chip in Widget so you can help out and also see the progress. Here are a couple of other sites with information about the devastation in the Philippines. Google has a page with the latest information. There is another Google site up about Ondoy as well. My heart goes out to all the people there especially the bloggers that visit this blog. If you can help please do.