Today is the day my Youngest was born, eleven years ago. At 8:45 AM via emergency c-section. A very scary moment, but one that has turned out to be one of the best of my life and made me appreciate her all the more. We are having her party today, complete with friends, family and gifts (animals stay home today) with good food. The house has been smelling wonderful since 4 AM when Hubby and I put two Boston Butts in the BBQ Pit as we are serving lunch with the party. Not a whole lot for us to do this morning to get ready as we did it all last night, which I think has been wonderful. We can spend a nice quiet morning together and she can enjoy her major gift, which we gave her shortly after we woke up.
Yes, we are keeping Ghost and we gave him to the Youngest specifically. She’s quite attached to him and she even named him. He was originally to be named Hunter, after the Left 4 Dead Zombie, but she insisted on Ghost, so we let her. And she picked well for him, as a lot of times he’s not there and then you blink and he’s there!
I can’t wait for her party. This will be the first party where she will have more than just family and maybe a friend or two at. In the past we’d send out invites and one year no one showed up (we still had a blast though! Gamed and saw Over the Hedge and she didn’t care, she had fun with us! Just her, myself, her sister, Hubby and my BFF), and most other times one or two friends show up and that’s it. This year looks like it will be our biggest turnout and I have a feeling the Girl Scouts have had a lot to do with it :). She’s been making some great friends through it and several will be there today, so I can’t wait. They can all get together and do things that aren’t related to the Scouts. My only worry is since I don’t know an exact guest count, is I don’t know if I have enough food for everyone. I joked last night and said if not, everybody’s forking over a few bucks so we can go grab pizzas from Little Caesar’s! But the two Boston Butts should be enough. And I have yet to come across someone who doesn’t like Pulled Pork. Which Hubby is debuting his homemade BBQ sauce for it today. We’ve had it at home and it’s good, so we’re trying it on others now!
And I know, it’s been a while since I’ve updated. Things are still very busy here, between work, the house and writing. Also some sad news to update you all on. Hubby lost his job at the restaurant. I wont say more than that, as I will leave that rant for Live Journal later on when I update that one. But I will say it was bullshit and I hope the involved parties are happy and can live with themselves. So we’re trying to regroup and figure things out and make sure all at the same time that Youngest still gets her birthday. Which we have. I am so thankful that for the most part both of the girls (Youngest and Oldest) seem to be very understanding when things take a downward spiral and we may not be able to do this or that for them. We do make up for it when we are able to, and we do other things in place of it, but I am thankful that there doesn’t seem to be any resentment. It’s like we explain to them, sometimes things happen that you have no control over. You can either go with the flow and work your way out or sit there biting your nails worrying and fussing and not get anything done. We’ll spend about five minutes with nail-biting and then we pick ourselves up and move along.
Youngest also graduated from the fifth grade last week as school ended, and she did really well! I went to the graduation and was surprised to see just how grown up some of those kids looked! They were not the same ones from when they were kindergarten that’s for sure! Wow. And the school secretary put together a few surprises for the parents. Instead of just handing out the diploma’s to the kids, they also included with it a picture from that morning that was taken of each child in their nice clothes (which came out awesome!) and a DVD of the slide show that she made up of the kids through the years, which was beautifully done. We’re gonna miss that school, but she will be doing well at Middle School this next year. She’s still very excited about the prospect of joining up with the Media Center and working in the library. Also the school is right next to where I work, and the kids will often take field trips to the restaurant and we put together some special stuff for them. She’s looking forward to that so she can see everybody and show off a bit with some insider information ;). Her words!
Let’s see. I haven’t updated you all on the writing front in a while, huh? Well, making some progress, even if it is slow with how busy things have gotten. The first three chapters are completely re-written and I’ve made a few structural changes to the books, which used to be four and will probably be shortened down to two or three. No, I haven’t cut the books down themselves, I’m just looking at a more bang for your buck kinda thing, since each book wasn’t that long to begin with, and with the publishing route I’m taking, I’m looking out for my audience and their wallets :-). Perhaps next month I can release more details on just what is going on and all that, but for various reasons, I’ll leave you at this :). I will say that doing the research for the re-write has been a lot of fun and makes me miss my historical studies all the more. *sigh*
I guess this is it for now. I have to get myself and the family ready now, and go party! Hope you all have a fantastic day! And I leave you with a pic of Vader:
It's a bit messy around here... 