Thankful Thursday

I have been totally a lame blogger these days.  I have only kept to my Thankful Thursdays.  And I could say something even more lame like "I've been really busy" and although it probably would be true I still think I could do better.

Tomorrow we leave to visit Andrew's brother and sister-in-law in the cheese state of Wisconsin.  I am thankful for the chance to visit with them.  I have been excited to go to their house and see them for months now.  The kids have not seen these cousins in like two years and so it is about time.  Woot!

I am also thankful that I have such awesome friends who have supported me by acting like a bunch of crazed groupies when it comes to my book.  They have read every chapter and given me praise and suggestions.  It made the writing process that much more fun and exciting.  I loved getting to hear what they thought of some surprise or twist in the plot.  It was fun because at those times I forget that I wrote it and I can be just as excited about it as they are.  It feels like I am playing chess with myself sometimes and I get silly enough to feel excited when I win.  This week, actually yesterday, I finished my book.  I formatted it and compiled all the chapters into one document and then printed it for editing.  The thing is 200+ pages long (1.5 spaced of course) and over 108K words!!  Think of a half a ream of paper full of words.  I look at it and cannot believe I did that.  It has been fun because I was looking back at the early chapters and thinking to myself, "Ohh I remember when that happened" and I realize that a book's amount of things have happened to my characters. 

I am thankful for my nephew who started his mission at the MTC yesterday for the Singapore Mission.  He is one of my dearest friends and I am so proud of his commitment.  He was one of those who was a book groupie for me.  Yay Micah!

I am also super thankful for my three incredibly nutty, adorable and smart kids.

Thankful Thursday

 I am thankful for days in the park.

PS: Sometimes this is how we wash our kids.

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful for my new camera - my old one was in serious need of being retired.  We were lucky if after pressing the button the picture took within a few seconds or so it felt.  I was getting tired of taking pictures of my kids as their smiles faded to half smiles and odd grimaces because the shutter was so slow that it never captured their sweet smiles quick enough.

It is a present from Andy for my birthday. 

I am thankful also for the bright sunshine we have enjoyed the last few days.  It is so warm out and delightful that we have spent lots of our days during the day outside enjoying the fresh air.  After such a long winter I don't feel too bad that the house chores are forgotten in the delight of watching my kids play outside.

I am thankful for the sweet little boy that I have.  He has such a cute little personality.  I watch him wait for the bus every day and nearly every morning he finds some stick out in the grass and fights a vicious and terrible imaginary foe in a life or death sword fight.  Then the bus comes and he flings the stick back into the grass and runs up the steps of the bus.  I chuckle to myself at the scene of his impressive dance across the driveway as he valiantly swings his sword.  I am also thankful that he is big enough to read and write.  This means he writes me love notes and stories.  He made me the cutest book at school about me.  The pictures and things he wrote in it about me were hilarious and tender.  Nothing compares to the feeling a mother gets when their child learns to write "I love you Mom." 

Thankful Thursday

I am thankful for the sweet kisses Ruby gives.  I love how she even makes the "ohh" sound when she gives them.  She is such a sweet little girl.  I am thankful for the delight she has whenever Dad comes home from work.  She laughs and squeals in impatient excitement for him to come in the door and pick her up.  As soon as he does she gets the biggest self satisfied smile on her face ever.  It is really sweet especially since I know how much Andy loves it too. 

I am thankful for my clean house.  I spent the entire day doing a deep clean on it.  It feels nice to see everything so sparkling.  I am less thankful for the kids who seem to think a clean house is an invitation to find creative ways to mess it up.  I banish them to the basement or outside as often as possible under these circumstances.  It is that or tie them to their beds which I am told is child abuse.

I am thankful for happy words from dear friends who encourage me in my goals.

Birthing a book

I was speaking to a friend today and trying to describe the feeling I am getting from attempting to write this book.  I have completed about a third of it now amounting to six chapters.  As I struggled for the right words to describe the difficult but fulfilling experience I am having I realized that this experience with the book reminds me a lot of the experience of motherhood.

I have found it mentally stimulating - though ultimately exhausting at the end of each time I work on it.  It is not a unhappy exhaustion though because there is a feeling of accomplishment in it.  It has been intensely satisfying to see the culmination of images and scenes in my head turn into descriptive words on a page.  My hard work as a mother is the same way - exhausting, mentally stimulating (sometimes), but rewarding to no end when you see the efforts you are making with your children start to bear fruit. 

I have written over 40K words and after curiosity drove me to find out what the average word length of a fiction novel was and upon finding it to be about 120K I was pleased to see that what I imagine will in eventually actually be book length. 

The writing process has also proven to be similar to parenting.  I am constantly having to think both in the hear and now and in the future.  When you write a story you have to make the current plot interesting even as you set up for and prepare for future events.  What I do now will effect what happens later and if I do not prepare well enough now the end product will not be the ultimate happy accomplishment I hoped for.  It is all the same with parenting. 

It is exciting to me to see myself complete something that I never imagined being able to do before.  It will have been one of the single most difficult things I have done and I anticipate the satisfaction I will feel will be great considering the rewards I am already feeling for having put in the effort.