Photo 365 #160

January 14, 20154 Comments

Kids are only kids once. Here are some of my favorite kid-related stories and things I will miss about them as they get older.

misst Miss Tadpole

Several years ago, we were down at Seymour’s parents’ house helping set up for a garage sale. Bubbles and Miss T. were in the house watching The Lion King while I fixed dinner and Seymour and his ma were out in the garage. As I was serving the kids, they asked me if I’d seen the movie before. I said, “Yep. This movie came out when I was a kid.”

Miss Tadpole: “Wow, that’s an old movie.”
Bubbles: “Yeah, really old.”
Miss Tadpole: “So…why is it in color?”
Me: “What?”
Miss Tadpole: “Well, I thought old movies were…

Photo 365 #159

January 13, 20156 Comments

IMG_20140228_143517 Winter, in all its monochrome glory, is now firmly entrenched in my backyard. Since my current view is something like the image to the left, I find myself longing for a bit of color.

What? There’s color in that there picture? Well of course there is! It’s just that it’s the color cast upon an ocean of snow by a setting sun, and it’s mostly blue. And white. And some sort of odd mixture of the two. It’s monochrome. And while it’s beautiful in its own way, it’s also boring.

I want color! Color that pops off the page, or better yet, color that pops out of the dreary winter landscape. I want color that makes my eyes sing and my heart soar, color that is so deep and rich and vibrant that it’s practically alive.

I’ve been trying to organize the scads of pictures that live on my computer and in so doing, I ran across these pretty, pretty pictures that I took last summer:

Photo 365 #158

January 12, 20153 Comments

We had our final family Christmas get-together last night with my sister and her family. At the end of the evening, we were talking about pictures and the respective hundreds that we have on our phones. Bubbles walked up and said, “Mom? Can you take my picture?”

bubbles

I was pretty happy with how this one turned out, but a little sad, too. He used to ask me to take his picture when he was little, and then he’d immediately want to see it. If I was using my digital camera, it worked fine, but he just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t immediately show him the ones I took with my film camera. Actually, he still doesn’t get it, but anyway.

Cricket and Thumper used to do the same thing, but now when I try to take their pictures, Thumper won’t sit/stand still and Cricket says, “No, Mom – don’t take my picture.”

Guess this means I’m gonna have to improve my stealth skills. 🙂

Photo 365 #157

January 11, 2015January 10, 20154 Comments

Yesterday Miss Tadpole decided to take the boys outside to play in the snow. Thumper was all excited to bundle up, head outside, and build a snowman.

That lasted all of about five minutes. Then the cold got to him and the screaming began. At least I got some nice cuddle time while he warmed up under a pile of blankets.

Cricket, on the other hand, didn’t start screaming till he was forced to come inside. He wasn’t ready to be done playing, but he wasn’t listening, either, so in he came.

This weekend has given us the warmest temps we’ve had in quite a while – mid-twenties above zero! – but there’s a breeze, and it’s knocked the wind chill down well below zero. Still, at least it’s better than the last week.

Photo 365 #156

January 10, 20154 Comments

It’s been a long day already, and it’s not even noon yet.

“But Mom, I just wanna watch Dungeons and Dragons!”

Thumper was up bright and early at 6:30 a.m., which was shortly after Seymour woke up for work. Naturally, then, I was also awake bright and early, first chatting with Seymour before he left for the day, and then snuggling with my favorite little bunny.

The rest of the morning has been spent supervising a grumpy Bubbles, who’s doing penance for letting a shed door get torn off by the wind the other night. If things keep on this way, I’m gonna need a stiff drink by the end of the day.

How are you spending your weekend?

Photo 365 #155

January 9, 2015January 9, 20154 Comments

Looky what I found in my mail the other night!

This picture doesn’t do justice to the vibrant colors of what will soon be in a frame gracing my office wall. It’s a signed print I won from Aädenian Ink, and it’s signed by the artist, Myka Jelina! I was pretty dang excited to finally get my hands on it, and now I can’t wait for my office to be done so that I can hang this beauty up.

After all, every fantasy author should have a little bit of fantasy in their writing space, right? Right. 😀

Photo Friday returns!

January 9, 2015January 9, 2015Leave a comment

I had actually planned for Photo Fridays to return last week, but since last Friday was my first day back to work and generally insane, I decided to push it back a week.

This week’s Photo Friday post (and next week’s, and probably at least the week after that) is a throwback. You know, like Throwback Thursday, but on Friday. I have a huge archive of old photos, and I thought it would be fun to share a few.

100_1668

This one, clearly, is from 2010. We traveled south to see Seymour’s cousin get hitched, and as always, had a heck of a great time. Her wedding was the day before our first wedding anniversary, so we made a fun weekend of it.

Don’t Bubbles and Miss Tadpole look little? It’s hard to believe how much they’ve grown in the last four and a half years.

Have a great weekend, everybody, and don’t forget to check out Charnele’s blog to see what she’s got going on!

Photo 365 #154

January 8, 20158 Comments

Some people complain about working lunch breaks, but really, I don’t mind them. In fact, I think they’re a heck of a lot of fun.

lunchbreak

Maybe that’s only because my idea of a working lunch break involves taking off to parts unknown and spending time with all sorts of crazy characters. 😀

Photo 365 #153

January 7, 20156 Comments

2013-04-29 12.10.19 I’ve been hard at work on a couple of projects this week. It’s nice to feel that I’m being productive again, after an extended bout with the lazy bug.

Oh, who am I kidding? I needed an extended bout with the lazy bug. 🙂

Anyway, I finished rewriting chapter 16 of The Price of Mercy and got a decent start on chapter 17 this noon. I’ve been polishing my query up a little more, too. I’ve finished formatting the e-book version of my new poetry book and have moved on to working on the cover. And have I mentioned the story that Miss Tadpole commissioned? I’ve been working on that, too, and have set it in Lokana, about a thousand years before the events in The Price of Mercy. It rhymes and is rather like a fairy tale, which has been both interesting and challenging because it’s not the sort of thing I normally write.

There’s still lots to be done on all of these projects, but I’m having a lot of fun with them. What are you working on right now?

Photo 365 #152

January 6, 2015January 7, 2015Leave a comment

I love my boys. I love that they get along so much better than my sister and I did when we were little. Cricket and Thumper are best friends, and it’s wonderful.

brothers

That said, they’re also three and four (read: they don’t always share well). So when they were playing nicely together the other morning (i.e., sharing) while watching Dungeons and Dragons, I had to take a picture. Lately there’s been too much fighting over who has whose toy car, and I relished the morning’s relative peace.

I know I’ll miss this stage one day, and I hope they can stay best friends as they get older.