A Letter to Running

Dear Running, 

 I have a love/hate relationship with you.  

Things I like about you:

• You make me feel good, refreshed, energized.
• You make me lose weight. (or fat, actually)
• Feeling proud to say, "yeah, I run."
• Seeing the beauty of nature around me.
• Jammin' to my 80's cardio playlist.

Things I'm not so fond of:

• You make me sweaty.
• If I've been away from you for a while, you make me feel old and creaky. In other words, sore.
• You are time-consuming, and I already have trouble with managing my time.
• I'm sure you make me look ridiculous. (I have a feeling I am an awkward runner...)
• Did I mention the sweaty part? Yeah, and I turn super bright red. NOT attractive!
• Also, when I am home with the kids alone, I can't get up and go while they are sleeping, they have to go with me. They throw off my pace, and we always get distracted and stop a few (hundred) times.

Well, no matter what our relationship, I have decided to become buddies with you again. I am participating in the Blue Bell Fun Run 10K tomorrow, (http://www.bluebellfunrun.com) and I am wondering if I am ready for it. We'll see come tomorrow... In my "training" I have only run for just over four miles, the 10K is 6.22 miles. Hmmmm, slightly worried. I just haven't had enough time to run the full six, take a shower and continue with my day, you are just difficult to fit in! Here's the course: what do you think?

My goal this weekend is to finish in 60 minutes. Then, as a reward, I will get to eat all the Blue Bell ice cream I want. That's fair. Don't even try to make me feel guilty. I am taking my mother-in-law and the boys with me up to Brenham and Spencer is participating in the kids 1-mile race. I am pretty excited for him. I have a feeling he's going to have the same torrid relationship with you as I do. He is pretty sure he's going to win the race, but when I see him run (especially lately, in baseball) it's as if he's going in slow motion. I really do hope he does well and likes you after this event.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know where you and I stand. It feels good to get some of this off my chest. Please be good to me and I will try and keep you in my life. We are good for each other, you know.

Yours Truly, 

Jennifer

I'm not UNpublished, I'm PREpublished!

So, I go to the SCBWI Houston conference last Saturday and I loved it! We have SUCH a great chapter here and I am SO thankful for all the hard work they put in to pull together a winning bunch of speakers and presenters.  WOW! I learned a ton.

Here are some of the highlights, because, I if I can do one thing well, it's ramble. Here goes the cutting it short:

Conference Speakers
From left to right: Susan Sherman, Kathleen Ortiz, Jenne Abramowitz,
Dan Yaccarino, Heather Alexander, Connie Hsu, Jennifer Rofé

First off, the keynote speaker was Dan Yaccarino, he was simply fabulous. He has written or illustrated over 13 children's books, worked on children's TV shows, and is just plain cool. You can visit his website here: http://www.danyaccarino.com  He was extremely funny and talked about how the simple word "yes" took him great places in his career.

Dan Yaccarino

We had two agents speak this year one was Jennifer Rofé, from the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc. and the other one was Kathleen Ortiz from Nancy Coffey Literary Agency & Media Representation. They talked about the "So What?" Factor and Author websites respectively. Both presentations were VERY well done and gave me a lot to think about and more for my to-do list. (GET A WEBSITE!!!) Also, both were very fun and made me think, "I want an agent!"

Susan Sherman is an Art Director for Charlesbridge Publishing and she had a nice presentation about How Pictures Make the Words Work. I couldn't agree with her more. How I wish I had some sort of artistic talent and then maybe I could be the author/illustrator that so many "just plain authors" wish we could be! :)

We were lucky enough this year to get three top-notch editors to come and give us the low down on what is going on in the children's book market. Again, I loved them. They just oozed information that I desperately need and want to hear. Heather Alexander, from Dial Books for Young Readers, had a presentation entitled "The Hard Sell: How Publishers Sell Your Manuscript In-House and Out" It was a great insight into what editors are looking for and how they pitch your manuscript to the rest of the company.

Heather Alexander

Jenne Abramowitz is an editor for Scholastic and she is a native of Houston. I really enjoyed her talk about writing and publishing chapter books. Chapter books are the next step for kids who have moved past easy readers and are ready to read a bit more, but aren't ready yet for the middle grade novels. I have a feeling that someday soon, I might try my hand at writing a chapter book or two.

The last to speak was Connie Hsu, a bubbly, smiley young lady who's presentation was about "To Do or Not to Do: Knowing the Basics of Children's Book Writing" It was great, since I am still learning a lot of the basics and all.

I turned in a manuscript to be critiqued by a local author, Kathy Duval and an editor from the conference, Heather Alexander. Both of them had good things to say about my picture book. Many things they said I already knew weren't quite right yet and have to tweak, other suggestions were just what I needed to hear and still other suggestions weren't quite right for me. If I have learned anything so far in my journey it's that everyone has their opinions and you can't change what you are to please just that one person. Whew! So, no...no one offered me a contract for my book on site, so back to writing...my journey continues!

I will leave you with the reason for this title. Dan Yaccarino came back and closed out the conference with some great inspiring words. He said that by being at the conference we were doing what it takes to become published. He told us to keep learning and working at our craft because we aren't UNpublished, we are PREpublished authors and illustrators. I truly believe that quote was meant for me. I'm gonna run with that one!

Panel discussion with the speakers

The Birdhouse

Saturday is the annual SCBWI conference and I couldn't be more excited! I have so much to learn and what better way than to cram a bunch of that information in all in one day! Also, I can't wait to feel a little "starstruck," because you get to see and chat with published authors, editors, illustrators and agents. Woo Hoo! Can't wait!!!

This year one of the fundraisers is a silent auction for birdhouses created by the members of the Houston chapter of SCBWI. Hey, that's me! I can do one!!! So, of COURSE I volunteered. There was only one requirement when creating your birdhouse: it had to be children's literature themed. OH, MY! Here comes the lists...What should I do? What should I do? Many MANY ideas floated in and out of my head  and onto paper, but nothing really stuck.

I went to Michael's to find a prefab birdhouse that I could decorate and make my own. One spoke to me. A simple, little barn shaped birdhouse. Charlotte's Web had come to my mind, but didn't make it on my list of top three themes. Now, it shot straight to the top! Yay! And it's Charlotte's Web's 60 Anniversary this month! I don't know about you, but Charlotte's Web is definitely one of my top five novels that I read throughout childhood. The theme of life being precious but short, friendship that crosses boundaries, conquering fears and never giving up really resonate today. What a timeless piece of literature.

Anyway, long story short (because I am beyond tired tonight) it took WAY longer than it should have because of a bad paint choice, an incident where someone in my household (not naming names) thought Charlotte's Web was garbage and because my days are stolen in a classroom, but it is DONE. And I am pleased. I know it is not perfect, but it looks pretty good and close to what I had envisioned.

SO, if you know anyone going to the Houston SCBWI conference this weekend, tell them to bid on the Charlotte's Web birdhouse, here are some pictures:

Charlotte's first web for Wilbur said, "SOME PIG"

Wilbur looking up at Charlotte and Fern
watching all the farm animals

Templeton with the goose and gander's egg
The taunting sheep

A close up of Charlotte's web, yes I did cut
that out, and Charlotte herself. She is hanging
from a string of hot glue! :)

I added my business card to the bottom, in case anyone wants to
contact me regarding their birdhouse. I love the quote, taken from the book, "It is not often that someone comes along who is both a
true friend and a good writer." - E.B. White

Also, I didn't take a picture of it, but the I have Garth Williams signature (The wonderful illustrator for Charlotte's Web and many other beloved children's books) Mod Podged to the back, giving him credit for the images on this birdhouse. Let me know what you think!

Grandma and the 5K

Grandma Linda is Adam's step-grandmother. She is a spunky gal with a fun spirit! A few years ago, she had a rough battle with colo-rectal cancer. She fought like no one I know, all with a great sense of humor. We're not talking about any ol' sense of humor, I'm talking phenomenal! She actually named her polyp (LaMia, I believe) and stuck funny notes all over her body for her doctors to find while examining her. She dressed up in over the top outfits to put smiles on EVERYONE'S face in the hospital, one of them a very stylish 80's tutu that yours truly let her borrow...all while facing this horrifying, painful disease. She is a hero of mine for sure. So, three years ago, when she asked me to walk a 5K with her, I didn't hesitate! I got to spend the time walking and talking with this amazing lady who loved keeping up with our family on facebook even though we were the "step-grandkids" (And I am even an in-law!!!)  

The year after that, she brought a group up from her retirement village in south Texas and we walked it as a team. This year one of them couldn't make it because of a surgery, but she was with us in spirit and even on the phone. (We called to wake her as we started the race, and kept her up to date at some of the checkpoints!) This was our third year walking together and I couldn't enjoy this tradition any more! She truly is an inspiration and it's such a treat to get to do this with her. Now, if only we could make it down to visit her and Grandpa Ed more often...

The t-shirt is for the fifth member of the crew who couldn't make it this year.

The Georges Go Camping!

I love camping. I have many, many fond memories of camping as a child. I was a camp counselor for four summers. I love to camp.

However, the George Family had never been camping together...Adam and I had gone a few times together before we had kids. That was pretty easy, though. Not a big deal. I have to admit I may have been a bit scared to go camping with my kids. Scared, you ask: Why? I'm not sure, maybe it's all the extra "gear" little ones need and the lack of room when packing. Maybe I was afraid they wouldn't sleep in a tent and keep me up all night. Maybe it was the fact that I have one child in particular who seems to have a mission to hurt himself in any and all ways possible, and emergency rooms are hard to come by out in the "wild". Whatever my reasons may be, I always could come up with an excuse not to go when we discussed going camping as a family. 

Well, the stars aligned and Adam had some time off during the kids' Spring Break. I decided to give camping a go, although I was secretly hoping the weather would be bad and we could all forget we agreed to do this. Tuesday morning, however, the reality hit. Adam had gone to the store and bought a ton of missing camping equipment that we would need, including a bigger tent. We had set up the old tent in the toy room and the boys had been "camping" in that to practice. Adam's memory about how big it was quickly faded as he realized we would all be crammed into that 7' X 7' space. Hello, eight person tent!!!

Since I hadn't prepared for the trip in hopes  because we could have had bad weather, Adam was in charge of packing our gear and food while I took the boys to the gym and taught my classes. He did super great and when we got home, I quickly packed the clothes for me and the littles, we had a bit o' lunch and we were on the road! The two hours up to Martin Dies Jr. State Park went really well, we bribed Elliott to take a nap and it worked, Spencer got a little game time on Mom's phone, and Adam and I actually had a nice conversation. Could this camping thing actually work???

On the way, I realized I had left my pride and joy, my camera!!! How could I??? Horror of horrors! I could have taken so many great shots of our first camping trip! Adam: "But you have your iPhone." Gee, that's great. The shutter is so fast and it has so many cool settings. I was mad. But, over the course of the camping trip I realized that I wouldn't have loved carrying that bulky thing around on hikes, definitely wouldn't have wanted it on the canoe ride, and my kids were either covered in dirt or food of some sort in their less than attractive clothes I packed so that I didn't care if they got ruined. Oh, well. However, they say necessity is the mother of invention, so I am going to work on creating a digital SLR camera that you can just implant somewhere on your body that is waterproof.  Problem solved! I did take a few iPhone photos, which I will share with you now...

On the bridge to the Island Trail

Huge pine tree 

Hiking on the Island Trail

Spencer shows off our tent and the beautiful sunset!

Getting ready to cook some dinner!

Now, for some of the highlights:

Although, I must give Adam the highest compliments for his packing job, when it comes to food, he came up a bit short. He got the basics: Hot dogs, hamburgers, corresponding buns and s'mores, but as far as "side dishes" go, not too much in that department. As Spencer put it, "We had barely enough to survive!" :) I guess it could be that when I have gone camping in the past we pack a plethora of food, lots of snacks and an overload of drinks. We were on rations, here, folks! The first night I had packed up all the food to take back to the car, but, um, it never made it back to the car. Getting to sleep that night was fairly easy for the kids, but Adam couldn't get comfortable on his mat, (it wasn't inflated all the way) I was restless and just being a light sleeper. Some time around three in the morning, I heard an animal outside the tent. I knew it wasn't that close, but it was SO loud! Crunch, crunch, crunch!!! I tried to wake Adam, but he was out. I grabbed the flashlight and located the animal by a tree about 20 yards away. He just looked at me (Creepy lighted eyes) and as soon as I took the flashlight off of him: crunch, crunch, crunch!!! I tried Adam again. I tried to scare the animal off with the flashlight and some noise this time. Nothing. The noise I had made roused Adam a bit more than the last couple of tries and after telling him about the animal, again, I thought he was going to go back to sleep once more. However, after hearing the crunch, crunch, crunch!!! He sat straight up and said, "He's eating my chips!" Funniest thing EVER! He then proceeded to be my hero by going out and scaring the raccoon away and putting the rest of the food in the car once and for all. He even saved some of the chips (since that was our only bag and all) Spencer and I didn't care to try any of the raccoon chips. Elliott and Adam had no problem with them.

Another great highlight was when Spencer was playing "where am I?" with the walkie-talkies. He would hide and then we would guess where he was. Elliott was just kind of tagging along. It was just after twilight, so he had a flashlight with him, but it was still fairly light outside. The first couple of tries Spencer was too close and we could hear the walkie-talkies and it gave away his location. The third time, he went into this little cut out area of the "woods" where they put downed trees. I heard him ask us where he was (I knew) and then he cut out and I see this little streak of white bolting toward us. I mean, he was running faster than I ever saw him run in his life! He was whimpering and had totally left Elliott to fend for himself back there! :) I asked him if he got scared and he said there was something rustling in the leaves and it was coming straight toward him! He was done playing that game after that! Poor Elliott wanted to keep playing.

There were many other great times on this trip, so I will count it as a HUGE success. Yes, there are things we are going to do differently next time and have made note of them, but all in all a really great trip! I will leave you with this last story from one of our hikes. While hiking in alligator and mosquito territory, Adam was walking up ahead a little bit. All of a sudden he covers his mouth and muffles a scream while jumping back a few feet. He tells us he saw a giant snake. The boys want to see it, but it's gone. Adam's reaction left a big impression, however. It made it into several of our campfire stories that night. Here are the boys' impersonations of the "snake reaction" I hope you enjoy.

Garden Update

Last Sunday, I decided it was time to plant the vegetable garden. Adam had completed the drainage system (which, by the way, works great. Yay!) and it was a nice, cool day that we didn't have anywhere to be. Spencer and I managed to get last year's bed cleaned out and we mixed in our compost. I got THE WORST blister from hand tilling the compost in, even with gloves, ouch! Adam made us a new 4 X 8 raised  bed on the side of the house and we decided to put broccoli and a few types of onions in there.

In our "main" garden we had three pepper plants from last season which I had planned on taking out. However, I just couldn't do it because they were blooming up all over the place! I decided to let them fruit once and then put in the replacements. Two tomato plants from our garden last year seeded new plants and I replanted them on the tomato side of the garden and added four more to make six total.

By this time, Elliott had awoken from his "quiet time" and came down to join us. It was time to plant the seeds for lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots and peas. Elliott wanted to get his own radish seeds and ended up spilling them everywhere. We tried to pick them up as best as we could, but as you will see in the photos, didn't get them all. We planted two to three rows of each of the veggies and called it a day.

It has been a week since we've planted, we've gotten a lot of rain this week so we've gotten to see our handiwork sprouting up already. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story, enjoy!

Yay for the drain!

Cute little flowers for color in our "flower garden"

I will have to look up what kind of bulb I
planted, but it's coming up!

New jalepeno plant

One of the "old" pepper plants that is bursting with blooms.

Little lettuce and radish sprouts (notice the "extra" radishes
in the upper left hand corner from when Elliott spilled the seeds)

A look at the garden from the tomato side. You can see the two
bigger plants are the ones that seeded from last year.

Herbs: Mint, parsley and chives

Pea sprout!

Our second veggie bed! Broccoli and onions!

Hmmm, looks like someone's been in this garden...

Who could that have been?

Some onions sprouting up

Pretty garden!

These little "wormy" things are SO annoying!!! But at least
all the yellow pollen is gone from them. I will clean these up another day.

One week later. Hands down THE WORST blister I have ever had.
It was SO gross and hurt SO bad!

I

Teaching Kindergarten

Well, it's been a while. No, I am not considering slacking this blog off. Yes, I have been a tad to busy, even for me.

Let me just sum up. I started substitute teaching in kindergarten last week. Enough said. This could be the end of this blog, and probably should be, because it's 10:30 at night, I haven't been sleeping much and I am getting up at 5:00 am to go running. (Another blog, later)

But alas, I feel compelled to tell a bit more. When Adam and I first moved down to Houston, he had Daddy Duty quite often. I worked teaching third grade full time and he had quite a bit of time off. One day, he was strolling through Wal-Mart with a 10 month old Spencer along for the ride. As the story goes, Adam spotted another adorable-looking tiny tot that looked strikingly similar to Spencer. He does what any normal person would do, and asks the mom and dad if he can take a picture of their baby and send it to his wife. (I'm surprised they didn't just wheel their cart away then!) Thankfully they got to chatting and found out that they were also from Iowa and oddly enough, Adam went to school with one of their relations. SMALL WORLD! They were a great couple, she taught and he liked to go ocean fishing. We hit it off. Unfortunately, time, busy schedules, and you know the drill, we didn't hang out much anymore. Bummer.

Anyway, that was a great story...what does that have to do with teaching kindergarten??? Well, that same great friend, the teacher, the mother of the look-alike baby, called me up because she had an upcoming surgery and had to be out for four to six weeks, could I fill in? Well, I told her sure, I'd have to talk to Adam and my mother-in-law to see if we could work it out logistically with taking care of the kids and getting them to and from school and all. Also, I teach a sports class and a mommy and me class at Life Time Fitness I just couldn't walk away from. But, we worked it all out. We have a schedule. Between my mother-in-law, Deb and Adam, we have childcare all lined up and another sub is stepping in on the Tuesday and Wednesday mornings that I teach at LTF.

It is a busy schedule. Errands have to be done after work. (What!?!?) This week I have all but one night booked. But next week is Spring Break! Maybe I will get more blogging done, I have ten other posts floating around in my head that need to get written or they might cause brain hemorrhaging. Things will be all right. I promised myself.

I just hope they fix the thermostat in my classroom. After suffering immeasurably yesterday, I complained and got one of those air temp thing-ys and it read 55 degrees. NOT cool.