From the Cinco de Mayo DC United soccer game. We had a fabulous time. DC United scored a goal and in celebration, B tossed up the confetti she’d made from shredding a game program. Unfortunately, confetti and cotton candy don’t mix. But she didn’t care…

Today was a Mother’s Day program at B’s daycare. The 2-year-old class did some nursery rhymes (and were so adorable doing it) and the 3-5 year olds sang a variety of songs including “You are My Sunshine” and “Doe-Ray-Mi”. The first song, though was an animal song I’ve never heard before and each child was supposed to dress as an animal. Supposedly, Brianna chose to be a pig, though this morning, in a fit of dramatics that would do Elizabeth Taylor proud, she sobbed uncontrollably that she didn’t want to be a pig and that the teacher had said she had to be a pig. Regardless, we moved past the dramatics and B went on to be a very cute little piglet.

As generally happens, I got a lot of great shots of other people’s children, but most of the ones of B didn’t turn out that great. Except this one, which I adore, because it shows her singing her little American Idol heart out. Most of the kids were incredibly shy and either sang quietly or not at all. Not my diva. She belted out those tunes like she was born to the stage. This picture? Makes me laugh out loud every time I see it. She looks so earnest, doesn’t she?

I promised myself on February 1st I’d turn my attention to breathing life back into my poor blog. It was never my intention to be absent this long, but my energies, by necessity, had to be focused elsewhere. However, I have no intention of closing down this blog or letting it die, so I’m going to pour some of that energy into thinking of how to be interesting on multiple blogs at once. Wish me luck!

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog since the beginning–five years! I missed my blog birthday back in January during my blog hiatus– have also been watching Brianna grow up, and we’ve gone far too long without pictures of her on the blog. I share them on Twitter, but I know many of you aren’t on Twitter (or aren’t paying attention on Twitter) so I have to show you how .5 (her name before she was born because we refused to tell anyone what we were naming her until after she was born) has grown up. She’s such a little girl, with quite the (stubborn) personality. Incredibly fun, and funny, bright and imaginative, and way too charming for her own good, she’s really an amazing joy to spend time with.

We got about ten inches of snow dumped on us this past weekend. More snow than we’ve ever gotten at any one time in the decade I’ve lived here. Brianna was beside herself with joy. I grew up in North Dakota but she’s the one who longs for the snow they get there (I don’t get it, myself). Here’s a few quick pics of her, and the dogs, romping in the snow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Something else exciting happened! This weekend, we took a trip to Washington D.C. for the weekend. We’d gotten tickets to the Metropolitan Food Show, and to see Guy Fieri give a presentation (he was an absolute riot, really. Very funny guy and I’m so glad we got to see him). I got us a room in Inner Harbor of Baltimore so Sunday we could walk around the Inner Harbor and visit the Aquarium. The weather cooperated so well, it was almost 70 for our walk around the Inner Harbor. Brianna loved every minute of the aquarium and kept saying it was “the best day of my life!” I got some good shots of her, here’s a few:

From 2009-11-10

Read the rest of this entry »

Confession: I’m completely exhausted and only the thought of failing out only the second week of the Friday Confessional kept me doing it. Brianna has the flu and was up all night last night throwing up. After the second time (and second bedding change) I slept with her, nearly got barfed on the third time (and third bedding change) but after that she figured it out and managed to tell me with enough time I could get the bucket under her. I don’t either of us slept more than an hour straight at any given time. I’m just a little groggy. She had a spurt of energy for a few hours this morning but has since collapsed back to the couch and is now upstairs sound asleep. Poor thing.

I was going to post about how I think seeing other people vomit is the grossest thing ever (I’m a sympathetic puker). I worked as a nurse’s aid to put myself through college. I could deal with anything, any bodily function. Just not puke. I once discovered a body after the person had been dead for three days in the Arizona summer heat. No one but me was able to enter the apartment without a mask. I’ve dissected a number of cadavers. I can handle disgusting things. But vomit gets me. I was going to post all that and then realize there’s one thing that gets me more than vomit: maggots. I can’t handle them, not to think about, not to look at on TV, nothing. Ew ew ew ew. Now you know my weaknesses. Vomit and maggots.

Moving on!

Quick question. I’ve been using a new Firefox addon called Zemanta to help add links to my content. Some things you see (like Zemanta) are linked for me by them, just by clicking on something on my dashboard. The program will also add related content links of my choosing to the bottom of the post, have you noticed them? It does other things, but so far those are the two most useful. Oh, the “Reblog this” that you see at the bottom of the post also comes from that. What do you think? Useful or intrusive?

For Readers:

I’m sure everyone has seen this, but just in case:Harlequin is giving away 16 free books as part of their anniversary celebration. This is very cool. There’s something for everyone! You can also download them via Stanza (also very cool).

Leah (Madame Butterfly) has a rant about DRM and why one publisher has lost her business because of it. I’m not a fan of DRM from the publisher side, and Leah’s post illustrates why.

An interesting blogpost on the Kindle, what it is and how it might affect trends.

SciFiGuy lists the February 2009 paranormal, fantasy and urban fantasy releases.

Agent Nathan Bransford asked: will you ever buy mostly ebooks? Only 10% of the almost 1000 respondents said absolutely yes. I wish I knew the demographic breakdown of people voting. That would be interesting!

Twilight fans will enjoy this: Twilight done by bunnies (in 30 seconds) via Katiebabs

For Kindle owners. MakeUseOf.com tells you how to read feeds on your Kindle device for free.

In the Kitchen:
If you’ve ever had any questions about using your bread machine, you must read this post, Bread Machine Basics. I stumbled across it Googling for something and it’s an amazing source of answers for all your bread machine questions!

What do you get when you combine a pound of bacon and two pounds of sausage (besides a non-kosher heart attack?): the bacon explosion. This horrified and fascinated me so much I had to share it. via Tastespotting

How to make Skittles Vodka from tipnut.com You know you want to. Heck, I KNOW *I* want to.

For the Crafty:

Lisa begins a series of bag making for beginners. The first post is about sewing terms. Part two is choosing fabric and interfacing. I’m really excited about this series because when I sew, purses are one of my favorite things to make. I actually thought about making something and donating it to the Brenda Novak auction but that hasn’t solidified in my head.

How to make an old cupboard door into a serving tray. I love their finished product.

For Authors:

Epublishing and traditional publishing compared by an author published with both.

Agent Rachelle Gardner did some posts on the “elevator pitch”.

Agent Jessica Faust discusses the form rejection letter. It’s a fantastic post and she lists many of the reasons we use a form letter at Samhain.

Author Ilona Andrews is doing a series of one paragraph critiques. It’s interesting to see how she tears down and rebuilds each paragraph. The first one is here and she does a terrific job of relating POV to camera angle.

Anyone who’s seen my workshop on epublishing or read the articles I’ve written has heard me talk about Yog’s Law. Agent Jennifer Jackson takes this time to remind you: money flows toward the author.

For everyone:

Domino, Wondertime, Country Home and Realms of Fantasy magazines will all be shutting down or have shut down. Ouch.

Interested in politics or what President Obama has been up to? Follow the new White House blog. It’s been interesting for me, to get updates on what’s going on. I like it.

Agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a post about Twitter. She doesn’t want you to use Twitter to try and do business with her. I feel similarly. I wish I had written this post. I almost reposted the entire thing here. I might still. I like Twitter, but it’s not where I conduct business. Like Rachelle, I rarely discuss business related things there and anyone hoping for brilliance from me on Twitter is going to be sadly disappointed.

SuperBowl Sunday is this weekend (I can’t believe it’s going to be February already!) and whether you’re staying at home with just your family, having a big bash or attending one, you must check out these two posts full of delicious-looking dishes to make. The first is from Cathy at Noble Pig and oh man, did this post make me hungry! I think I’m going to try a few of those. The second is from Pioneer Woman *insert fangrrl squee* who also has a post full of dish ideas. Both posts have photos, and I dare you to go look and not drool.

Something fun: Karen Scott posts the best complaint letter ever. Ewww is all I have to say!

Picture of the week:

I’m going to give you a couple. This one, because I saw it last week and immediately marked it to use for today. The emotion of the moment is so beautiful. via Huffington Post

Then this one from Paperback Writer’s blog because, hello, who doesn’t love a picture of a cute puppy?

And from Brianna’s photos this week. This elephant is no bigger than a tennis ball but the perspective on this one makes it look much bigger. I love this picture.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What if you threw a “break-the-Kindle-DRM” party… (kindleville.blogspot.com)
• Sexy Peta Commercial Banned From Bowl (takepart.com)
• Homemade bread (momblognetwork.com)

We had swimming lessons last night and sadly, my daughter was “that kid”. Oh, you know the one I mean. The kid that’s bratty and disruptive to the class and the other kids trying to learn. The one that doesn’t listen to the teacher, doesn’t pay attention and goofs off every time his back is turned? Yeah, that kid. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one frustrated with her–the teacher seemed frustrated too. What’s sad is that she really needs these lessons, she loves the water so she needs to learn how to swim. And watching her compared to the other two boys in her class, their skills are a lot better.

She spent a lot of time being “girlie” too. You know, screaming and shrieking when the teacher tried to get her to do something. Picture a woman with a high-pitched falsetto saying “save me, Mr. Baron, please save me!” *hand to brow* Yeah, that’s my daughter.

So she didn’t seem to get much out of the swim class and I don’t think the teacher felt too interested in teaching a shrieking, screaming, obnoxious girl when he had two boys who were attending to what he was saying and doing a great job of performing.

No amount of me talking to her seemed effective either. The child believes she can just smile charmingly at me (or the teacher) and we’ll think she’s so cute that all is forgiven. I’m not sure where she gets that idea, it’s not like it’s worked for her in the past (at least not with her father and I, I think a few past teachers have fallen for it).

Anyone want a cute, charming, irritating 4 y/o girl to come live with them for oh…14 years?

My friend Trish posted about Project 365 as something she’s going to do this year and I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The idea is that you take a photo a day for 365 days. I think this seems like an ambitious goal for me, but Brianna has shown a lot of interest in using my camera to take pictures recently, so I’m going to do it “with” her and use a combination of her photos and mine. The first three days are all pictures she took.

One thing I did make sure to clarify was that I don’t have to POST the pictures every day. I just have to take one each day and can post them in batches once a week or whenever I get around to it. That sounds more doable than promising to post a picture every day. I already know I’d fail that. What I did do was set up my Flickr account and add it to the sidebar, so if you’re curious about my project, you can either check out my sidebar or add the RSS for my 365 set to your feed. If you hover over the picture it will tell you the title/date, but if you click on the picture and go to it, I’ll add a little blurb about each one on Flickr. And if you’re interested in other photos, there’s also a 365 Flickr group.

I have to say, looking at some of the pictures is a little intimidating, because people are taking these amazing photos, editing and photoshopping them and creating some beautiful art. I, uh, I’m just going to slap photos up there. If I get all anal about this and try to take the perfect picture every day, I’ll give up in days. So don’t expect to see any works of art here! Some days, you may even see camera-phone pic and anyone who knows the iPhone knows it doesn’t take the most amazing pictures.

I didn’t find out about this project until yesterday, so if you’re like me and want to join a few days late, Trish said it was okay to post pictures that represent those first days that you missed. The idea here is to create a photo journal of your year, both the memorable and the mundane. I hope you’ll let me know where to follow your photos if you decide to join in!

Whatever your holiday, whatever your beliefs, I hope that you celebrate the beauty of the season surrounded by family, friends and laughter. Thank you to everyone who’s stopped by and made this blog a wonderful place. Happy holidays!

photos and card courtesy of Bluebug Photography

Okay, not really, but he is on GalleyCat today. Go see!