Life As We Know It
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Friday, August 03, 2001
Several things of interest have been going on around here the past couple of days:
1. I turned 34 today. Eek! Mark took today off as his first day of vacation, and we celebrated with lunch at Brick Oven Pizza, dinner at Texas Land & Cattle Company (expensive even with a coupon!), yummy double fudge cake, & strawberry ice cream. Mark and the boys gave me some roses (kind of looked like UT colors!), cards, and a massager. I also got some other nice cards and gifts in the mail from other family members. 2. The Half Price Books bedtime storybook with my poem in it has finally been released! I got my 5 contributors' copies last night--what a fun surprise! I was pleasantly surprised to find out they were hardback (the previous 6 collections were paperback), and that mine was one of 20 entries chosen from about 1,000 total entries. I wasn't so thrilled about the typo they introduced ("hair on you head" instead of "hair on your head"), or a couple of minor changes they made that affected the rhythm, but I did like the art they put with it. And now that I have had writing for children published, I can finally be a full member of SCBWI instead of an associate member. Woo hoo! 3. We took the kids to get their first professional portraits together today, and they turned out well. We went to Sears Portrait Studio for the first time and really liked it. We especially liked getting color proofs right away, and the fact that we'll get the actual portraits back in 2 weeks, instead of 3 weeks like at JC Penney or Walmart. It was also amazing that the kids were both really good, because Ryan was overdue for a nap, and Kyle had just been awakened prematurely and was overdue for a feeding! The only thing is, even though the pics are all good (since the kids were being cooperative, they took 9 and we picked the best 6 for the proof...), they are never quite what we wish they could capture...not all the facial expressions we see at home and love. I finally realized it's because the photographers always try to make the kids smile themselves, and never seem to enlist (or welcome?) our help much. So the kids have "surprised smile at an amusing stranger" smiles instead of the "warm glowing look of love" smiles they sometimes give me! The other thing going on around here is staying tuned to the weather reports for updates on Tropical Storm Barry.... We have been planning to go to the Texas coast this week and Ryan has really been looking forward to it, but if a hurricane is brewing that will certainly change our plans!
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