Who Would You Meet?

I got this idea from another blog I read. If I could spend time with anyone, from any time, who would it be and what would I say? Hmmm.... Of course, being the Christian woman I am, I know the 'right' answer is Jesus. But I have to ask myself if that's truly the one person I'd pick. In a sense, I already have the opportunity to meet with Jesus anytime I wish. We meet through Bible study and prayer and yes, He does answer my questions and listen to my ramblings. He also calms my fears, encourages my heart, and shows the path He wants me to take. I'm thankful that I don't have to wish to visit with Him - I just have to set aside time to do it; He's always waiting to meet with me. :) So I've come up with someone else. If I could meet with anyone, from any time it would be my daughters - in the future. I'd like to see and talk to them when their grown, ask them how I did as a mom. I'd want them to be brutally honest so I could take what they said and change the kind of mom I am now. At least I think I'd like to meet them in the future. Scary concept. But wouldn't it be cool to be the age I am now and get transported like they did on Star Trek, to the future where my girls would be, let's say, 38, 34, & 30. They'd all be at a neighborhood park with their own children. One of them would see me and think I was someone new that they'd never seen before. Then she'd see me up close and think how familiar I looked. I would recognize them instantly and probably burst into tears! After I composed myself I'd say hello and start a conversation. They'd all start thinking to themselves that I looked and acted SO much like their mom! After some careful, safe small talk I'd reveal who I was. The air would flood with their questions. We'd laugh, cry, and hug each other. Then I'd ask them how I did as their mom. I am unable to imagine this part of my pretend meeting with my daughters in the future. I hope I'd be met with unstoppable chatter recalling the many happy memories they each had of their childhood. I hope they'd be able to say that I was the best mom in the whole world. The best part of my pretend meeting would be to see them all, grown up, happy, healthy, and living wonderful God serving lives! That is my prayer for all of them - Happy, healthy, God serving lives...

The Mundane

We survived back-to-school Monday. Everyone was up on time and things went smoothly; until Allison and I left Becky's school. Then Little Miss had a great big sob fest over how much she missed her sister. It was pathetic. She sobbed all the way home, then came inside, crawled up on the couch, and sobbed some more. I tried to comfort her to no avail. So I did the only thing I knew would work - I turned on the TV. She was over it instantly.

Today is swimming lessons and groceries. I know, the details of my mundane routine are boring. Can I just say that I despise doing groceries? I'd almost rather clean the toilet- almost. Speaking of cleaning the toilet; I cancelled my dentist appointment to have my wisdom teeth out. Noooo not because I'm a chicken. Because I mentioned to someone about my appointment and who my dentist was and she got very quiet. I urged her to tell me what she knows of my dentist. She gave me a detailed account of how this particular dentist has caused her husband great amounts of dental grief. Hmmm....I decided to mention my dentist to a couple of other folks I know including a dental hygienist. I was met with the same silence. After more urging they fessed up that this dentist is, shall we say, known for causing dental grief. I try to make my own opinions concerning such things but in this case, where I am a bit of a baby when it comes to the dentist, I'm erring on the side of caution and staying as far from that place as possible! (By the way, I would rather clean the toilet than go to the dentist!)

It rained all day yesterday, last night, and this morning. I decided to cancel our soccer practice for tonight. Murphy's Law states that now that I've officially cancelled practice, the clouds will part, the sun will emerge in all its radiance, and the temperature will rise to 60 degrees! That's the way it always works! And as a matter of fact it has stopped raining (hopefully just temporarily!) Yesterday I was sitting at the computer when I heard a bang, banging noise coming from the back deck. I looked out the back door just in time to see the patio umbrella being lifted by the wind. YIKES! I ran outside - in the pouring down rain - and tried to close the umbrella. It wouldn't close! I practically hung on the thing with all my weight to try to close it. I was getting very wet! If anyone saw me, they most definitely got a good laugh! I finally did get it closed! What a sight that must've been.


Speed ahead 2 hours....


We've just returned from swimming lessons. We didn't get to go grocery shopping (Oh Darn!). As we were pulling into the grocery store parking lot Little Miss started making strange sounds from the back seat. She was eating popcorn and I thought she was choking. I quickly checked to see if she was alright and she said, "I'm siiiick," in a weak little voice. I sped into a parking space, threw the ignition into park, and jumped out of the van as she was making more "I'm siiick" noises. When I opened her door she was white but said, "I'm fine." That's Allison for you. No time for being sick. I took her out of the van anyway and let her stand between our van and the car next to us for a few minutes while I dumped out the swimming bag and found something she could throw up in. She didn't get sick. I rebuckled her and we came home. I glanced in the rear view mirror and found her dozing on the way home. Now she is all snuggled up with her doggie and lamb and a cozy blanket, watching Alice In Wonderland. Poor pickle. Hopefully that's it, no real puke to deal with! I know, just what you love to read about...sorry.

FYI - you can get a free kids ticket to Six Flags with $10 off a general admission ticket for an adult in specially marked packages of Lunchables. Now before you go judging me for buying sodium loaded, preservative filled junk for my kids lunch let me plead my case. I don't usually buy lunchables - my neighbor passed on this information to me. I did go and buy a few for the free ticket. Free Tickets, People!

Girls Day Out and Soccer Talk

It feels like a summer day. Really it's felt like a whole week of summer. The girls are home, the weather is wonderful and I have to keep reminding myself that the routine goes back to the daily grind on Monday. It's hard to believe they still have almost 2 months of school left. Allison only has a month before preschool graduation. I think it will be nice to have a few weeks just me and Allie before her sisters finish up.

We went to the Outlet Mall today. It was kind of a girls day out. The outlets have stores for everyone so we had lunch and made the rounds. We found some good deals. On the way home we stopped at BK to get milkshakes. YUM! Now Katie and Becky are upstairs playing - TOGETHER - and Allison is playing cars on the back deck with her friend. I think I'm going to order pizza and find a movie on pay per view to watch before bedtime.

Shop Talk: Assignment 8 is on its way to my instructor. It's always a relief to get an assignment done - on time! As I said before, the market research is so tedious and really slowed me down this time. I had to find three suitable magazines for each of my article outlines and synopsis. My story had a religious slant so I needed to find markets that look for that. There are plenty of them out there but sometimes the age group or word count doesn't match up with my story. I have a How To/History/Informational piece and I'm sure you can tell just by the range in categories that I had my challenges finding a fit for that - although it was the easiest one to find magazines for. And then there's my baseball article. It's a sports/history piece. But again word count and age limits were a tough thing to match with the article. In the end I did find three markets for each and I feel good about the prospects. My neighbor actually subscribes to one of the magazines I chose for my baseball article and she's going to let me look at a couple of issues. That will be helpful! Now I need to prepare something to submit to my critique group by Wednesday - YIKES!

Soccer season is upon us once again. I'm coaching Allison's team of PreK - K kids. There's 10 of them this time. And from what I gather, most of them are PreK (as young as 3!!!) and haven't played before. Do I have my work cut out for me or what?? I'm nervous about the whole thing. I don't have an adult assistant this time. Katie will help with practices and Becky will be there too for crowd control stuff but the pressure is all on me to provide a fun, productive, soccer experience for these kiddos. Parents are tough - I know, I've spent many, many hours on the sidelines as a spectator. Whether they admit it or not, they'll show up with some preconceived perception of what our soccer practices and games should be like. And forget about games. Then they'll be counting the minutes their child played and how the coach didn't let them play in goal, yadda, yadda, yadda. We're going to be playing against some kids who've turned six already and have been playing for a few seasons. They are going to KICK OUR TINY LITTLE BUTTS!! Hopefully the whole thing will be fun and positive for my team - that really is my only real objective. Scoring goals and winning games would be the icing on the soccer ball shaped cake!!

Back From the Big Apple

New York City was a crazy, busy, non-stop, kind of place, like I've never seen before. I drove us into the city just after 9:30 a.m. - no trouble at all driving there. We dropped off luggage and set out for the Natural History Museum and our first subway ride. The museum was HUGE with something like 44 exhibition halls plus a butterfly conservatory, planetarium, and special exhibit hall. We saw a fraction of what was there. The kids lost interest pretty quickly but they plugged along with us with no complaining. The food court there was fantastic with options for every taste - I was impressed - and not ridiculously pricey either! After the museum we ended up at American Girl Place. In a word - AWESOME! Three levels of dolls, clothes, and books - along with a theater, cafe, doll hospital, and doll salon. Impressive. Becky used up her birthday money and other money she'd saved up there. What a fun place. Here's a picture of Becky and her Julie doll. So cute.

Next we ended up in Times Square - which, incidentally was two blocks from our hotel and we didn't realize it until late in the day! Times Square...WOW! Lights, taxis, tour buses, PEOPLE, stores, restaurants, PEOPLE! We brought the kids to ToysRUs where they have an indoor Ferris wheel. They liked that. The M&M store was cool. And we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. A busy day!

Day two we did the tourist thing and took a Duck Tour. Our guide was very informative about NYC's history and little trivial facts - I like that stuff. Then the bus drives into the water - the Hudson River in this case - and we took a little ride. The city skyline was beautiful from the water.

After the Duck Tour we headed to the Staten Island Ferry for a leisurely, FREE ride past Lady Liberty. It was amazing to see HUNDREDS of people waiting to board the ferry and then once we on board the ferry seemed empty! The thing was HUGE. We all enjoyed the ferry ride and the view was spectacular!

The subway ride to the ferry was the most interesting one we experienced while in NYC, probably because it was the longest. At one point a man with a guitar got on the train and announced that he was there to sing to the kids. Our kids were the only ones on the train so it was pretty entertaining. Then he sang to Katie - the girl in the blue shirt who looks like she's in 7th grade, is actually how he described her. Then he sang to me, the "mommy". "I got sunshine, on a cloudy day". He actually convinced other people on the train to sing along with him - which added to my embarrassment! But it was an experience and fun to remember!

From the ferry we went back uptown to Herald Square. Very cool. Lots of shopping, LOTS of people! It's interesting that they have tourist, souvenir shops lined up one right after the other. They all sell the same, exact stuff, for the same exact price. Hmmm... That's Macy's on the left, below.

After the shopping we headed back to the hotel, got our car, and came home, tuckered out! Now we're just chilling out the rest of the girls' school break. Katie would say her favorite part of the trip was the Duck Tour; Becky's was American Girl Place; and Allison LOVED the subway! I liked it all - especially the little Deli we found for breakfast. Ed loves the hustle bustle city thing so he thought it was great! We had a fantastic time and want to go back - soon!

Shop Talk: I need to finish assignment 8 today or tomorrow. I'm pretty much done. I just need to get my market research done and polish up my outlines. I also have a critique I need to do for my critique group.

Time to get ready for the day!

Random Blah, Blah, Blah

We'll be up BEFORE the crack of dawn tomorrow to head to the big city - New York City, that is. It should take about 3 hours, which isn't bad. I'm running on empty right now so this will likely be a short post so I can get to bed.

Katie has made some new friends in the neighborhood and was outside until 9:30 last night playing flashlight tag. She said it's the most fun she's had in our neighborhood since we've lived here. I'm glad she had fun.

Becky and her friend Hayley are having a blast dressing their American Girl dolls and doing their hair - girly stuff for sure! We are planning to go to American Girl Place tomorrow afternoon. They're both really looking forward to that. So am I!

Allison has her friend next door that she plays with but she always wants to be with her sisters. What they're doing always looks like more fun I guess. It must be tough to be the littlest, youngest one out there when all the kids are playing. The kids are usually pretty good about letting her play with them. But sometimes they want to do their own thing and I try to be considerate of that.

Well. I'm tuckered out. Time to head upstairs and catch a few Z's before the alarm clock goes off at 4:30 a.m.! I won't be posting from NYC so I'll be filling you in on Wednesday.

Sure Signs of Spring

Allison is constantly pointing out things that are a "sure sign of spring." For instance, today we were sittting in the grass and she saw our shadow. "Shadows are a sure sign of spring," she said. It doesn't matter what she sees really. If she sees it during springtime then it's a sure sign of spring. So, in honor of spring and Allison's uncanny ability to notice all the signs of spring I thought I'd make a list of the "Sure Signs Of Spring"



1. Seeing your shadow

2. Warm weather

3. Dandelions

4. Frogs

5. When birds tweet

6. When leaves grow

7. Playing with sidewalk chalk

8. When worms wiggle

9. When you can take your jacket off

10. Flip-flops

She's constantly adding more to this list. We are having lots of spring weather this week, actually it's more like summer! We'll take it!

I've discovered that I like shooting hoops. The girls got a b-ball hoop last weekend and I have found myself out there shooting baskets when no one else is around. It's great excersise and FUN! I don't want to play 'around the world' or 'horse' or whatever other games are out there. Just me, shooting hoops. No competition. I've told you before that I'm not competitive-it's true.

Shop Talk: I haven't done great at writing everyday. I will say that I've spent a few minutes each day doing something related to writing though. I probably only missed one day of actual writing. I need to go to Barnes and Noble and get a writing prompts book. Our B&N here is tiny and the writing resource section is almost non exsistent. They are more than happy to order me anything I need with no obligation to buy it but sometimes it's about browsing. Kind of defeats the purpose of browsing if there isn't anything to look at! I'm anxious to turn my baseball research into an article. I've been thinking it may have picture book potential too. PB's kind of intimidate me because I know they are very hard to get published. I've heard so many rejection stories. In a book I'm reading about the baseball Hall of Fame it says that every book ever written about baseball is there. Does that mean picture books about baseball too? Can you even imagine having a book you've written at the Baseball Hall of Fame? How cool would that be??

It has been a long week. I think I feel that way because I only had one morning while Allison was at school to accomplish anything. Monday is the whole library/lunch/recess thing; Wednesday was free; and today Allison's class had a field trip that I went on. Then of course Tues. and Th. Allison was home and I feel a bit guilty for saying things like, "Mommy needs to do some work." So a week like this leads to a tiny amount of mommy burnout. I love my little miss as big as the whole wide world but this mommy needs a few moments of time to myself - and here's the real issue - without feeling guilty. When she goes off to kindergarten in the fall it will feel as if part of me has gone with her each day. I will miss her terribly and long for the unroutined days we've had together. I will long to hear her voice HOLLERING for me every single time I step into the bathroom. And I'm sure I'll sit down to watch Noggin all by myself just because it's been part of our days. Today, however, I need a break. Just a short one. I don't need Calgon to take me away or anything. Just some guilt free mommy time. Big sigh...

I Love Research

Shop Talk: I've discovered that I have a real love for research. I spent two uninterrupted hours at the library this morning in the Local History and Genealogy department. I was looking up information for the baseball article I plan to write. What fun I had pouring over countless newspaper articles and local history information. I know more about baseball's beginnings than I ever thought I'd care to know - and that's a great thing! I even took a drive by Park Square where the incident I'm writing about took place and I think I want to include a couple of pictures with my article. I'll need to head to the museum and see if they have some photographs from the time period I need. That's one thing I learned at the conference - museum curator's and librarians are an invaluable source for information. I got to see that this morning! I've said before that non fiction seems to be a thing for me and this morning's research kind of confirmed that.

We're heading to NYC next week. Should be a fun time! I'm counting on getting in some major people watching! There's some good writing inspiration oozing from that city I'm sure!

I've received my list of spring soccer Pre-K and K players. Once again I'll have a very young team with several who have never played before. We won't win but we'll have fun - I hope! Katie and Becky are my helpers this season. The younger kids just love it when an older child is on the scene to teach them something, at least that's been my experience. We'll have our first practice in a week or so. I'm looking forward to it - I think...

It's gorgeous here today with more beautiful weather on tap for the rest of the week. Happy Wednesday!

Just Shop Talk

So Laurie Halse Anderson, key note speaker at the SCBWI conference, presented the challenge of writing EVERY day for 15 minutes. Of course more time is better, especially if you actually want to FINISH a project. Blogging counts so I thought I'd do that first. I do plan to spend some time on my projects in a little bit. She also suggested using writing prompts to help us work on our weaknesses. I've thought of that before but just haven't done it. Her whole talk was about being COMMITTED to the craft of writing. I came away feeling very motivated but still doubting my ability. Towards the end of the talk she said, "If you have the dream, you have what it takes to fulfill it." Hmmm... I have the dream but... I can list a million reasons why I won't fulfill my dream and yet I listened to the workshop speakers talk about how they were exactly where I am right now and they've achieved big things. Why can't I? I suppose I can. Another inspiring quote I've heard before is, The difference between published and unpublished authors is perseverance. True. I know that I have a tendency to avoid things that I find difficult to do. And yet, I find myself willing to endure the writing challenge. By the way, I told you all of my acceptance last week. Well, on Friday I got a rejection letter from Pockets. Bummer. It's the nature of the writing business I suppose. Anyway, the conference was great. The drive was long to get there, the day was long with workshop after workshop, and the drive home was even longer! But, I'm so glad I went and I can't wait to implement the things I learned.

Good News!

Shop Talk: It's a beautiful day in my neighborhood. I checked my e-mail this morning and found an ACCEPTANCE from Stories For Children Magazine! Can you even believe it?? My article "My Dog Survived Hurricane Katrina" will be in their August issue! YAY! They'll even have a couple of pictures of sweet Lucy to accompany the article! I'm very excited! Becky said, "Now Lucy will be famous, Mom." I thought that was cute! Now I just need to wait some more to hear about the story I submitted to Pockets magazine. I also need to get my writing butt in gear and write MORE! The more I submit, the more chances I have to be published! Now I can go to my writer's conference with an acceptance under my belt! That's good.

Yesterday was Becky's birthday. She's such an incredibly sweet little girl and I'm the luckiest mom on the planet to have her as my daughter. She's kind, compassionate, loving, goofy, and dramatic. I love her to pieces. We celebrated last weekend with an American Girl Mystery Party where each of her friends played a character from the Kit series and together we acted out the story to find out what happened to Mother's pearl necklace. It was really fun! It warms a mother's heart to see her child surrounded by friends who genuinely like her, want to be with her, and appreciate her friendship. Becky has nice friends. Last night we celebrated with Becky's favorite dinner of homemade mac and cheese and an ice cream cake. She opened more gifts and then the girls went out to play for a little while before it was time to get ready for bed. I think she had a nice birthday. No more birthdays for a little while - Ed's is in May but I don't think I need to plan any parties for him and his friends!

Little Miss and I have had a loungy sort of morning. She actually spent about 45 minutes in the tub playing. She's just now all dressed and it's lunch time! We do need to run an errand this afternoon but it'll be quick. The weather has been gorgeous the last few days and today will be too!

Happy Thursday!

Ah, Peace

What a week we've had. I won't go into the details, but let's just say that things I thought would work out didn't. And, ironically, I'm glad they didn't. Something I thought I really wanted turned out to be something I don't want at all. And something I wanted to make happen is something that I'm okay waiting for, for now. Ah, peace. So, onward and upward...

Shop Talk: I'm well into Assignment 8 where I'm preparing outlines and a synopsis of two articles and a story. Sounds easy enough, right? However, I'm finding that getting ideas out of my head and onto paper (or a computer screen) is very challenging. In my head the ideas are chunks of information that aren't organized. They come onto the page that way too but then I can see them and move them around, add to them, or delete them altogether. Getting them on the page is hard. Have you ever thought something but had a hard time putting those thoughts into words? That's how this is for me. Another difficult element is that the research isn't complete with these articles (and it isn't supposed to be yet) and so outlining what I think I want to include is sometimes impossible. According to the expert people who put together my writing course, that's okay! I can fill in the blanks later. I've completed one outline and have started on my story synopsis. I'm pretty sure of my story idea. And I have a good idea for my other article too. I think it will be about baseball. The city I can see from my bedroom window claims it is "the birthplace of baseball" and my article will explore that claim. Should be interesting. I'm hoping I can get lots of good info from our local library!
In other Shop Talk news, I'm going to the SCBWI conference this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure I'll come away with TONS of great information - I just hope I don't get too overwhelmed!

We are enjoying a fabulous spring day! Temps in the upper 40's with bright sunshine! The street sweepers were out in full force swishing up the winter grime and road construction crews are repairing winter's damage. Folks in our neighborhood have begun raking away the debris from dead grass and old leaves and our pool is melted and ready for cleanup! Signs of spring are everywhere with more appearing everyday - I love Spring!

Just Blabbing

Silly me, I didn't even realize that my last post marked my 200th post!! I can't believe I've come up with things to blab about 200 times!! Such a big milestone for us blogger types.

I only have a few minutes to blab this morning. I don't have anything specific to blab about. Things are pretty ho-hum around here lately. We did have quite the thunderstorm last night! It was around 8:30 pm when I started noticing lightning but it was too far away to even here the thunder. As it moved closer the rumbling became louder and louder. Then the rain came down in torrents, the wind howled flinging hail against the windows, and lightning flashed lighting up the dark sky. I decided I'd better head upstairs for when my little dumplings woke, wailing for their mother. Katie was already glued to my side. As soon as I got upstairs little miss started calling. I brought her into bed with me and Katie and we snuggled as the storm continued to rage outside. I got up to check on Becky a couple of times and she stayed sound asleep! It all lasted about 45 minutes. Allison was more than happy to go back to bed and return to dreamland. Yesterday's high temperature was 64 degrees - today's high temp. is supposed to be 34 degrees - Ah! - Springtime in New England.