September's end

There really is not a lot to report from this week.

The kids went to school. Dan worked. I taught my online class from home and wrote. Oliver made messes. So, pretty much life as usual.

I did enjoy the women's conference last night: I came away feeling hopeful and at peace. Here's hoping I can keep that feeling!

This past week or so, we've been fighting fruit flies. I assumed they came in with the garden produce, and though I scoured the kitchen, I couldn't figure out where they were reproducing. So we set out vinegar traps, poured boiling water down the drain, and put out more traps.

Then Friday night, I went to see if we had a boy present in the "dirt room" (Evelyn had a birthday party yesterday). I opened the door--and two things were immediately apparent. 1) I could hear buzzing. 2) The whole storage area (we hadn't been in for a while, obviously) smelled like our vinegar traps.

Uh oh.

And then I found it: a box of plums that had somehow been overlooked from our summer harvest. We might have forgotten it, but the flies certainly hadn't. It was crawling with them. And the bottom was covered with eggs.

Needless to say, that box went out into the rainstorm immediately. Now we just have to get rid of the already spawned fruit flies.

In other news: the kids brought home their school pictures. Andrew's is okay (by okay, I mean I would have him retake it but he likes it and it's not horrible enough to protest). But Evelyn's . . . and apparently she's not the only one. My visiting teacher (Evelyn's former kindergarten teacher) said she's never seen so many bad pictures. I took a picture of hers, since I will be sending her to get this retaken.

What do you think?

Just so you don't think our week was *all* struggle: today, when I tucked Oliver in for his nap and whispered, "I love you," he said, "I love you too, Mama."

That was the first time I've *known* he said he loved me. He's said stuff that sounded close before, but never quite intelligible.

Capitol Reef

We spent the weekend with the Wells, Lee, Steadman, and Aiken families this weekend--in other words, another family reunion with Trisha's Dutch siblings and their kids (although Aunt Nellie was really the only sibling there).

We didn't hit a deer this time, for which we are deeply grateful. Dan camped with Evelyn and Andrew for the our tent's maiden camping trip--and Oliver and I slept in a hotel. Partly because we're wusses and not ready yet to share a tent with Oliver (things work better if at least some people get sleep). Also because I've got a bunch of student papers to respond to and I needed some internet access. So I missed the evening games and Sarah's cookies (I'm told they were awesome), but I got some grading and writing done.

The kids had a fantastic time running around with cousins and getting dirty. Oliver especially, though it meant extra exercise for Dan and I, trying to make sure we knew where he was at all times.

In between there was lots of food, good conversation, a nice hike (I'm told it was nice--Oliver and I missed it b/c of a long nap). Mostly though, it's nice to hang out in a lovely area with even lovelier people.

We took the long way home, which took us up over Cedar mountain. The fall colors were gorgeous, especially against the cloudy sky. Every once in a while the sun would come through and the mountain looked like it was glowing.

We got home just in time for me to attend the temple dedication (Dan volunteered to stay home--next time we'll have to switch), which I'll admit I wasn't excited about more sitting, but ended up being just what I needed to hear.

Other news from the week:

My sister is currently moving cross country. I am going to miss her--I'm realizing how spoiled I've been to be close for the last seven years.

Evelyn's newest drawing: a wolf with two wolf cubs, eating a nice hunk of meat.

 

 

Last, a little writing update for me. Most of you know I'm trying to write a novel. Every time I think I'm done, I get new feedback that reveals a new set of issues/opportunities. Luckily, it's getting better each time. But it also takes a lot of time. So if sometimes I look a little abstracted or lost in thought, I'm probably thinking about a plot hole. (For the curious: I'm on the 8th draft. It's currently about 95,000 words, or 325 pages. I have a deleted scenes file that's nearly 60,000 words--so I've cut nearly as much as I've kept!)

 

At the end of August, I entered two different writing contests. The first one is called Pitch Wars, where writers can submit to a mentor, and each mentor chooses a writer (and an alternate) to work through their novel, polishing it before they pitch to agents (unless you self-publish, most big publishing houses require your work to be submitted by an agent, so you need an agent if you want to publish). I was lucky: one of the mentors picked me! Only now this means I'm also trying to revise the *entire* novel in about a month. For some context, there are 75 participating mentors, which sounds like a lot, until you learn that over 1200 people entered. Since you could submit to up to 4 mentors, each mentor received on average 67 submissions.

 

The other contest was called Pitch Plus Five, where we submitted our first five pages (the first fifty submissions made it in), then a panel of judges narrowed the field to 25, we revised the pages and added a pitch, and another set of judges chose the top 10. I just found out that I made the top ten--you can read my submission here. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure what happens in the next round--a group of agents are judging and choosing winners, but I'm not sure how many or what the prizes are.

 

Anyway, I'm mentioning all this because a) this is our family's blog and this has been important to me over the last little while and b) even though I still have a lot to learn as a writer, it's gratifying to know that I'm getting better.

 

 



Weekly Maundering

This wasn't a particularly exciting week, but I suppose that makes pretty indicative of our life.

The kids had school. Oliver got to spend a lot of time with me.

We went to soccer games. I'm not entirely sure why Evelyn wanted to sign up for soccer: her favorite part of her game was clearly seeing a friend from school on the opposing team and two boys from her class on the neighboring field. She wasn't that into the game itself--in fact, she begged the coach to let her sit out the rest of the game after she got a stitch in her side.

Andrew got to play his (second) cousin Zach yesterday and I had the  most enjoyable game so far. I'm not actually sure what happened with the game (I think Andrew won?) but I had a great time talking to Jodi, Zach's mom and Dan's cousin.

Oliver has taken to eating imaginary food, which cracks me up no end. He'll squat down on the ground, pretend to scoop something up, announce what it is--"apple!"--and then make eating noises--"nom, nom, nom"--before pronouncing, "so good!" And because he's two, his "good" sounds more like the German "gut" with a pronounced "t" at the end.

This has also been a week for learning about consequences. We had our first child-caused broken window. Thursday, I sent Andrew out front to pick up his soccer ball (which he'd left on the lawn). He, for some inscrutable reason, decided to kick it at the door. And missed. Instead, he hit the frosted window next to the door, which cracked rather spectacularly. His first instinct was to deny it (we're still working on convincing him he'll get in more trouble if he lies), but it was pretty obvious what happened. Tomorrow we'll get an estimate on how much it will cost to replace it. Andrew gets to contribute to the replacement.

This was also homecoming week for SUU. Thursday morning, Dan graciously fed Oliver lunch while I went to the convocation with poet Billy Collins, a former poet laureate of the U.S. I wasn't very familiar with his poems, but I really enjoyed them. They're interesting, humorous, accessible, and lovely.

Friday was the president's inaugural, which Dan attended and enjoyed (though he said there were two musical numbers too many).

And yesterday, of course, was homecoming, which we did not attend. But Dan marched in the homecoming parade with the College of Science and Oliver got to watch the parade with his Bubby. I watched a little bit of the parade, but the kids had a primary program rehearsal scheduled at the same time and a football game immediately afterward, so I missed most of it. Apparently a good time was had by all.

This morning was the primary program. Andrew impressed people by being one of the few older kids to say his part instead of just reading it--and Evelyn made the whole audience laugh when she said that her class had been learning about creation, and two of her favorite creations were wolves and meatballs.

Also, I finally figured out how to load the pictures on the new computer (Dan very patiently reminded me it helps if you download the camera software first . . . ), so here are the pictures from the last two weeks.

Oliver, being cute at the park by the library.

 

My cousin Erika at Comic Con (She made the costume herself!).

Jeni and Samuel at Comic Con, as Howl and Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle.

Oliver, at same park as above, because he now thinks this spot requires a photo shoot. (He's hiding a rock in his shirt. I eventually persuaded him his pocket worked better for long-term storage).

Our cracked window.

Adventures in Comic Con

So, this weekend I went to my first ever Comic Con in Salt Lake City.

I went partly because I was curious, but mostly because I had family that was going to be there: my sister and her husband were going, and my uncle and cousin were presenting--and my uncle's whole family was going to be there, including the cousin I haven't seen since we were teenagers.

Dan was gracious enough to take the kids to his sister's house and hang out there and let me play. Well, wait through the massive line (it took an hour to get in, even with pre-purchased tickets!) and then wade through the enormous crowds. I'm pretty sure Dan would have hated it.

There were some highlights, though. I got to see the aforementioned family and a few local friends (hi, Helen!). I went to a funny panel with Shannon Hale and Brandon Mull, two authors I admire. I got to people watch (fascinating--though I have to admit I don't think I have sufficient geek cred to really carry off Comic Con--I only recognized about 1/3 of the costumes I saw there). And my cousins and I witnessed a really touching Make a Wish Foundation effort involving a little boy who really wanted a Dr. Who experience and who was given a sonic screwdriver and helped two of the "doctors" repair the Tardis before becoming a Time Lord himself.

But mostly--did I mention the crowds? It was insane. Talking to another attendee on the Trax on the way home, I discovered that during the afternoon they stopped letting people in for a while because the fire marshall had said there were too many people in the building.

The rest of the weekend was a little more subdued. We went to my  niece's baby blessing and then hung out with my brother and sister and their respective families for a while before driving back home. It was lovely to see everyone--and I was particularly touched to see Dan and the other Melchizedek priesthood holders from my family helping to bless that little girl. She's certainly very loved. (I also got to hold her for a while--it almost makes me wish I had one of my own. Almost.)

I don't remember a whole lot from the rest of the week, only that Oliver and I (well, mostly me) were trying to frantically finish canning all our peaches before leaving town. I think I canned 22 quarts of peaches this week (which is approximately 88 cups of peaches--and I must have peeled about 300 peaches). Needless to say, I won't be purchasing any peaches anytime soon.

(I do have pictures, but I'm still trying to figure out how to download them onto our new computer  . . .)