Once, when I too was a little q, I used to love my snow days; longed for them, prayed for them, maybe even did a few snow dances in hope some pagan deity might have pity on me and induce a foot or more of snow that would shut down the world for a day or two. Even as I got older, it was nice to get those snow days. Who wouldn’t want a day off? Hell I lived in an apartment, I didn’t have to shovel the snow. But now, well let’s just say I’m fed up with the ‘snow’ days around here.  So far they opened late of less than an inch.  Closed before Christmas for a big …

Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Hopefully? So After many months of start and stop, of rewriting while trying to keep the story intact, I’ve finished the rough draft of Book 2 – The Eye And The Arm. Those who’ve followed my blog know I struggled with this. Not because I didn’t have the story set, but because I had to make the story fit within a word limit. I’m having second thoughts now.  Overall, I feel the Champions series is good – dare I say very good, though I know the hubris of saying that.  My issue is I wanted it to be a bit more epic. Nendor has three main continents – Ardus, Laudria & Erd.  My goal was to make each …

So I’m finally digging out from the avalanche that was my holiday. One of the things I’ve developed as a result of this year is yet more new found respect for my parents. It looked so easy to do lights, shop, cooked, a tree – not to mention my dad used to set up a Lionel Train set every holiday for us. But holy moly, trying to do most of those – and travel – really took the wind out of me. But I’ve had some time to recover and I’m regrouping for 2014. So with that, I’m looking to start booking guest posts and blog tours for the coming months.  I’m open to all types of posts – be they …

I wrote quite a bit about the lead up to Christmas ’13, but one thing I didn’t post was that we did a bit a of traveling for the holiday. [No sense advertising our house was empty for a few days, so I keep that info until I get back.] With a family all over, we had to make time for different celebrations. We started with Christmas Eve at our house. As a kid, Christmas Eve was spent at Grandma’s house.  The last two years we did that, but this year we had to switch things up. The next morning – we had to leave at 8:00 am to get a flight to visit my parents. She looked so cute …

I resisted the urge to post a first of the year, state of my authorship, replete with goals and resolutions. My goals and resolutions haven’t changed since the end of last year, the turning of the page to a new year didn’t do anything to make them any more devout.  I still want to eat better, lose some weight, exercise more, do more writing, etc.  But 2013 was quite a year for me, personally and professionally and it will be hard to find resolutions and goals to top last year.  So I’ll refrain from such things. That said, I reached a turning point with Purpose. I’d finished the story arc I started and needed to pick a new direction. When …

As many of you have guessed from the Holiday Event I had on my blog this season, I love the different aspects of Christmas. I also want to create memories for ‘lil q like my parents and grandparents did for me. On Deanna Wadsworth’s blog I wrote about how Christmas is for kids, even the little kid inside us all: Christmas Is For Kids: And onBrita Adams’ Advent Calendar, I wrote about Christmas lights and how ‘lil q and I went out driving to look for them. Christmas Lights:

Every year Mike and I have this debate with ourselves, should we get a tree or shouldn’t we? By the time we get around to buying one, half the Christmas season is over and we ask ourselves, do we really want to spend the time and money on a tree. Every year we come to the same conclusion – yes, we need a tree. This year, ‘lil q understands that ‘she’ has a Christmas tree – and it has lights. Sunday we decorated the tree. We waited until she took her nap to begin. With two of us we just managed to get it done before she woke up.  When she saw her tree she was beaming. Made it so worth …

Trying to shop with a toddler is like trying to herd goats – it sounds hard, but it ends up even harder. But with the Thanksgiving to Christmas time at under 4 weeks, we had to ‘multitask’. One of the tasks I didn’t let fall by the wayside was our weekend daughter/daddy breakfast. Every weekend – usually Sunday – I take her out to eat while Mike walks the dog. I get so little time to see her during the week – she’s still sleeping when I leave and at most she’s up for 2 hours after I get home and that includes, dinner and bath time – that I wanted a time for just us. When asked where she …

‘lil q had her first holiday concert on Friday. Yes, I’m one of those parents who took off work early to be there and to film it. She walked in with her class, looked around but couldn’t see us.  I snapped a few pictures:

This weekend we did a lot of the pre-Christmas things we needed to get ready for the holiday. There have been a lot of fun times  with ‘lil q in the last 26 months, but this weekend was among the best. We started by taking pictures to send ‘lil q’s mother. (I’m not sure what else to call her – surrogate sounds so impersonal and she is not a business dealing, but a friend and I won’t name her because she deserve her privacy so she’s ‘lil q’s mother). Despite a bit of a cold, ‘lil was in a great mood all weekend. Saturday we got up early, had bagels and went shopping. We didn’t get a lot accomplished, but …