Moms Talk Every Wednesday at Noon

Starting tomorrow, Lake Ridge-Occoquan Patch will introduce a new feature that families and parents can take full advantage of each week.

I am happy to announce that this site now has a Moms Council of three terrific moms who live in the community. They each have their own special interests and experiences that they will share with you. Every Wednesday at noon, readers can come to this site and ask questions in the comments section. Each week there also will be a specific topic of discussion. If you can't make it at noon, feel free to leave comments and the Moms Council will do its best to answer each question.

This week, the topic is about babysitting and everything you have ever wanted to know about babysitting, finding sitters and choosing sitters will be discussed.

Finally, let me introduce the Moms Council:

Keri Goodfriend

Keri brings with her a ton of experience in parenting younger children, but she also has valuable educational and/or employment experience in counseling psychology, human resources, conflict resolutions and leadership. She is vice president of the Lake Ridge Moms Club, a social club of more than 70 members and she recently became a freelance contributor to this site. Be on the lookout for Keri's article tomorrow on babysitting. This past weekend, Keri compiled a list of summer camp options for families. Check it out here.

Kati Karamanis

Kati has a degree in International Studies and one in Nursing. Her initial career involved research and analysis of the federal, state and local governments' information technology trends and requirements. She then moved on to marketing information technology, software and services to mostly federal and state governments. Like Keri, she also has young children. As an emergency room and forensics nurse, Kati takes pride in being able to help the sick and vulnerable. She has set a personal goal of obtaining another degree in anesthesiology.  In between technology and nursing, she also is a special needs teacher for the county school system. Kati is president of the Lake Ridge Moms Club. She says some of her hobbies are exercising and reading.

Stacey Almond

Stacey is an entrepreneur and her business was actually featured on Patch a few weeks ago. You can read the story here. Stacey loves a good challenge, she's a night owl (I am, too), she loves the beach and she adores the color pink. She is a stay-at-home mom of three young girls. She served in the U.S. Air Force for eight years before she married. Her Bachelor's Degree is in History. She has a ton of creative energy and has experience with scrapbooking, drawing, painting and she also is a self-taught seamstress. But her true passion is planning and hosting parties, which is the basis of her business "Perfectly Pink." There's that "P" word again! She said the business idea was in her head for many years until 2010 when she decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. Her young girls have been her inspiration, she said. 

Everyone, welcome the Moms Council to Lake Ridge-Occoquan Patch. We hope to see you here tomorrow at noon to discuss the topic of babysitting and any other questions people might have during the hour-long program. If you can't be here at noon, that's OK. Just look for the Moms Talk graphic and leave a question in the comments section of the article.