Like I said in the last post, Amanda ended up with 2 birthday parties this year. Her second, smaller one was on her actual birthday. Mostly we just played together a LOT that day, and then she got to open the rest of her presents. She also chose to go to the doggy store for her special birthday outing. Totally her idea. She loves the adopt a dog store in the mall. (I also tried to buy her a treat at the mall, but she wouldn’t eat it.)

 This was hilarious. We bought her a new crown to replace her old, broken one from last year. It didn’t quite fit right, and she was not too happy about it. I think it’s actually supposed to go on sort of like Cinderella’s crown does, around the bun in her hair, and not actually around your head. So the crown did not pass the royal princesses approval.

This was much more to her liking. You can’t see it, but what she’s holding in her hands is a bucket full of dinosaurs. She loves them. She likes to dress up like a princess and play with them.

Amanda has been trying to figure out rhyming lately, so we thought this would be a great book for her. She was quite excited about it, once I told her it was all about rhyming. Of course, we haven’t read it yet…

So, Amanda got a lot of Princess gear. A LOT. And what could be more fun than putting it all on at the same time?

The “less is more” approach. I can’t believe how pretty and grown up she looks. She’s excited to be a princess for Halloween too.

I just love this shot of both the girls. They’re smiling, but not so much fake smiling. And for the moment at least, they’re getting along quite well. Katie was actually very good about her sister’s birthday, I have to give her credit. She didn’t try to open her presents or take her gifts away. And she probably ate more cake and ice cream than Amanda. So everyone had fun.

Amanda just recently turned 4, and here are the way overdue pictures.

Amanda playing with Aunty Erica and cousin Nadia outside after birthday lunch.

Getting ready to blow out the candles on the strawberry cupcakes and oreo cupcakes.

Trying to figure out that the fluffy, foofy skirt (which is totally her style) was actually a skirt, and not more tissue paper. She loves it.

She actually kept asking us if she could plant flowers for her birthday. Aunty Erica managed to find her the perfect sized watering can and flower pot and seeds. I’ll let you know how the flowers turn out.

The John Deere green dump truck was also a big hit. Especially once she made it all pretty with stickers.

Our little baseball fan now has her own glove – pink, of course! Now, if only we had a yard for her to play baseball in…

Amanda loves lollipops. And balloons. And hats. And pink. In case you didn’t know that already. She quite enjoyed her party. (This was actually her first party – she had two. One the week before her birthday, with all her family in our area, along with one of her aunts and one of her uncles whose birthday’s are about the same time. Pictures from the little family party on her actual birthday are coming soon.

This isn’t really news; we’ve always known she was funny. But she got me good today, and I had to share it.

I was changing Katie’s diaper, and she reached over to grab her blanky and her pants. I said, “Oh, you’re collecting soft things?”

So Amanda asks me, “Katie likes soft things?”

“Yes, Katie really likes soft things.” (And she does. She loves blankets, pillows, clothes, stuffed animals, anything cuddly.)

Amanda’s reply? “Oh. I like NOISY things. Like fire trucks, whooooo whooooo whooooo! and motorcycles! Vroooom! And french fries! Crunch crunch!”

She paused for a minute. “Mommy, you like QUIET things?”

“Yes, honey, Mommy likes quiet things, like books, and music, and naps.”

She’s got us all pegged. It’s pretty funny.

Last November, I participated in an event called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. Your goal is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to write a story. There’s a website devoted to the event, nanowrimo.org, which I loved using. They have a word count tracker, so you can monitor your progress. Things to keep in mind: You can’t write a word of the novel beforehand. You can plot, outline, and think out all you want, but you can’t start the novel until November 1st. Another thing to keep in mind: When you’re writing in just 30 days, your goal is not to have a polished product. It’s a first draft, and the idea is just to get the main story out on paper. It will need revision later.

I think that’s why I enjoyed the event so much. As a writer, it forces you to let go of that obsessive need to edit and revise while you’re writing, which is a great way to get bogged down and never finish the story. It forced me to keep going even when I got stuck, and because I really wanted to finish the event and fill up my little stat bar, I managed to do it. It was a great motivational tool.

So after I finished my novel (or novella, really), I let it sit for a little while before I started revising. I was lucky enough to have a few friends volunteer to read it for me and critique it a little. And now…

You can buy my book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440483914?ie=UTF8&tag=2donecom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1440483914

I am so amazed at all my friends and family members who’ve already bought the first few copies – you guys can’t imagine how good it makes me feel to know that you believe in me enough to spend $9.99 on my book.

So here’s a little synopsis for those of you who might be interested in reading my book. It centers around a society of winged humans, who live in isolation from the rest of humanity. Lady Vara, the heroine, is engaged to marry Prince Markus, the heir to the throne of Angelus. Vara finds herself drawn to Markus’ liege man, Phillip; neither of them want to hurt the prince, so they fight their feelings for each other.

But Vara finds out that something sinister is happening beneath the surface of Angelus. Evil forces are gathering in an attempt to take over Angelus, and Vara realizes that she is being drawn to Phillip because he is the only one who can help her save her city.

The book ended up being a lot more about eternal families than I thought it would be. It’s not pure Mormon doctrine; the book is fantasy, after all, and so there are some fantastical elements in it. It is very clean, though; it’s not aimed at middle-school kids, but the book is clean enough for them to read.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what the story’s like, and whether or not you’d like it. There are a few formatting issues with the book, and those will be fixed someday. If you have any other feedback about the book, I’m open to it. Just leave me a comment, or you can post feedback on Amazon too.

On our way to church every Sunday, we drive along a little curvy section of road next to a good sized open field. The squirrels love that area, and they, unfortunately, run out into the road fairly often.
As we were driving to church this morning, I saw one sitting by the side of the road, watching our car coming. I crossed my fingers, hoping he would run out of the road, instead of towards us. Luckily, he did.
Amanda noticed the squirrel as we drove by, and she said “We almost drove the squirrel! And we smush it!”
(Picture the adults in the car laughing at her, and wondering how she learned that we would “smush” the squirrel if we ran over it…)

My dishwasher and I are in hate with each other. For one thing, it doesn’t clean the dishes very well. For another thing, it’s ridiculously noisy. It scares Amanda out of the kitchen quite often. We very rarely use our dishwasher – it’s just easier to do it by hand, and considering the age of this thing, it might be more water efficient too.

But worst of all, my dishwasher likes to eat my dishes. When it’s being noisy, it sprays water so hard that it knocks things off the top rack. Then they fall all the way through to the bottom, and get burned up on the heating element. We’ve damaged a few large plastic mixing spoons this way, and a tupperware lid or two. This last time, though, my dishwasher took its evilness to a whole new level. It did this:

Hopefully you can’t imagine the stench from our dishwasher. Luckily we caught it before the cycle had finished, so it hadn’t completely ruined everything else in the dishwasher, but the knife’s a goner. I seriously thought for a few minutes that we were going to have to evacuate our house because the smoke was so obviously dangerous, but we managed to get it cleared out quickly enough that it was okay.

Of course, then we had to run the dishwasher empty, with dishwashing soap, to get rid of the smell, and then we had to reload all the dishes that had been in there and wash them again, to get rid of the smell, and to finish cleaning them. I may never use that dishwasher again.

Having no yard, we’ve resorted to a windowsill garden. They had these little pots with seeds and dirt at Target for a dollar each, so I bought 4 of them. Amanda loved helping me plant the seeds, and she loves watering them with me. It’s so cute to watch as she concentrates really hard to do everything just right.
We planted our little garden a week ago, and they are growing like crazy! I wasn’t too optimistic, since they were cheapo seeds from Target, but so far, things are going great. There even were enough seeds and leftover dirt to plant a second batch in some styrofoam cups.
Call me a nerd if you like, but I’m proud of our little garden. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it once the plants get so big they have to get repotted…

(In case you’re curious, we’re growing oregano, chives, basil, and mini sunflowers.)

but it sure is funny. I don’t know where Amanda got the idea to do this. It’s not how we pray, and we haven’t been watching any evangelical preachers lately. I think she’s figured out that we think it’s funny, even though we try desperately not to laugh, and so she hams it up even more.

My favorite is how she does the baseball sign for safe. We have trained her well!

It seems like Katie’s learning something new every day lately. Here’s her new favorite thing to do:

She feels like such a big kid, getting up on the couch by herself. She’s not always successful at it yet, though, and it makes her EXTREMELY mad when she can’t get up on her own.

She really likes watching TV on the couch. It’s probably the main reason she climbs up. And it’s the best way to get her to sit down when she’s on the couch, so she gets her way about this way too often.

As a side note, I absolutely love her in this outfit. She fits into Amanda’s baby jeans now, and it makes her look so grown up. It’s adorable. In fact, the jeans probably fit her much better, and much sooner, than they ever fit Amanda’s skinny patootie. (How do you spell patootie, anybody know?)

You think she might be happy?

She’s so proud of herself, it’s adorable.