November

Long time, no blog.

I tallied up the words I've written since January and right now, I'm sitting somewhere around the 150-160k mark.  That's spread over multiple pieces - a novella, several short stories, two incomplete-as-yet novels and one nearly-finished novel.  I intend to have the latter finished by Christmas.  Then I'll clean it up and start querying agents sometime after the New Year.

So... quick summary of the last few months?  The summer was hot (gasp!). E started Year 1 (first grade equivalent)... okay... I'll sprinkle some pics in because why not?

Dad came to visit and was there for the first day of school.  E is doing really well although he's tired at the end of the day.

C is going to playgroup two mornings a week and is really flourishing. She will start proper nursery school in September of next year.

Dad's visit was absolutely wonderful.  I have INTERESTING PICTURES. I'm trying to decide whether I should retain them as blackmail for one of his homemade apple pies, or whether I should give in to instant gratification and post them. Hmm.  Maybe I'll go for the middle approach.  Here's one.

Incidentally, the kids were absolutely AMAZED that he climbed up there.

Personally, I was amazed that he arrived beardless:

Reader, I probably would have passed him in the street had I not been looking closely.

Anyhow, I have plenty of photos and some stories of what we did - lots of museum visits, Kew Gardens, biking around Hyde Park... there was nothing fancy in that list, but we had a good time. I had visions of a Paris daytrip via Eurostar, but that will have to happen next time.

What will also have to happen next time is more photos and a longer post, because I am totally hitting my bedtime and I would love to crunch out another 500 words in the steampunk novel I am writing.

So until next time...

June

We went on vacation last week! Or, as the Brits say, "holiday."

We stayed in a Centre*parc*s again - this time in a different location, in Wiltshire. Slightly easier to get to than the other ones, at least from our area of London, there was also the perk of driving past Stonehenge en route.

The kids really enjoyed themselves - and B and I had fun too.  E and C are small enough to enjoy the free parts of the resort - swimming, playgrounds, the "land train" that you can catch from the cabins to the central area.  B got a massage, E went to a pirates playgroup one morning, and we all generally hung out.

What's that you say?  Pics or it didn't happen?  Well then...

Kids enjoying the tire swing in one of the large adventure-type playgrounds.  This place also had huge wooden structures for kids to climb up/in.  Designed for 6+ but my kids shrugged that off and went gleefully roaming.

Feeding time for the goblins kids.  Note huge wooden structure in background.  Did I mention they were alll over that?

Oh yeah, and on the zip wire.  They both loved this.  There was actually a larger one that we stumbled upon later, but this one E could do by himself, and C wasn't too intimidated by.


Gonna leave you with one last picture because I'm running out of time to blog.  Here's E at the Pancake House enjoying a kids cocktail, a real treat for him.  The view was amazing.  I never knew how much I missed redwood trees until I left CA.  Being among them again was really nice.

That's all for now!  We have been really busy - we came home to the school fete (summer fundraiser) on Saturday and a classmate's party today (swimming party!).  Tomorrow we're settling back into the groove of school, sports class, C's playgroup, etc.  C and I are a bit under the weather but nothing terrible, probably just a bug picked up in the last few days of vacation.  Looking forward to winding down the last few weeks at school and enjoying a hopefully not-too-rainy summer.  I'll come back as soon as I can to post the last few photos.

Recent Photos/Days Out...

Got a photo backlog, so grab a cup of tea.

Easter... we dyed eggs using food coloring and shaving foam.  It didn't work too well, but the kids were pleased and, well, the eggs smelled nice and masculine.

For UK Mother's Day I got a very nice breakfast in bed with a homemade card and ornament.

A few weeks ago, we went to a farm in Surrey with animals to pet and a huge outdoor playground.

I have no pictures of the kids actually playing (we went with another family and their trio) but here's the aftermath:

I built a playhouse (plastic, flat-pack) in the garden.  Humphrey the classroom bear came home with E to enjoy our home life for a weekend.

We visited Kew, multiple times.  Went yesterday, in fact, and traipsed to one of the far corners and saw a tower we'd never seen up close, plus the bamboo garden.  Here's C on a swing in the playground.

And that brings us to today.  We went to visit the Bekonscott Model Village.  There's a scaled-down train that takes you for a short ride through the grounds.  Here's E, C and their cousin S enjoying:

Then we traipsed through the model village itself.  It was a wonder of detail, and frozen in the '20s/'30s or thereabouts.  Of course, many small model trains ran through the place, under bridges, through detailed stations, etc.  The children paused many times just to watch....

E found the signal box.

So much detail in this village, very impressive.

And... that's me, 99% caught up with photos.  I have a few more I'd like to post, but the site's being slow now.  So there may be a small Part 2 to this model village post.  For now - I'm planning to get cracking on my wordcount for the day.  This novel won't write itself, etc.

Whew....

I just haven't had the time/inclination to sit down and write down what's going on... mainly because I've been too busy living it!  I went to a large book fair in London (the LBF, to be precise, but I'm trying not to make this post Googleable since privacy and all).  It was amazing!  Reader, I felt like a grownup again.  I wound up going to dinner with editors, publishers, agents. And it was nice to connect with other authors. I feel like I'm going somewhere with this whole writing thing.

My novella is going to be published in 2 weeks.  I'm not going to link it here because I'm writing under a pen name... and at this point I think I'd like to keep the specifics of my personal and business lives separate.  This blog is mainly for family stuff, recording how the kiddos are doing, blogging about trips and days out, maybe a rant here and there.

And pictures, of course.

Top - climbing a tree.  They have helmets on because they'd ridden their scooters to the Common.  I'm not one of Those Parents.  Below, exploring one of the structures at Kew.

Up until a few weeks ago, the above is how C did a "thumbs up."  At the time I snapped the pic, we were going down the Strand, near Fleet St, on our way to visit a museum.

'Scuse the quality of these snaps - they're all from my Dumbphone.

I will have more stuff later... once I get a bit more time to sort my head out.  Right now I'm writing two novels at once.  I'm 9k into one and nearly 16k into the other.  The former will be shorter - 55-60k.  The latter is a big undertaking, different than anything I've done before, touches on socioeconomic stuff that I don't often see tackled in fiction, and should run 80-90k.  Right now my editor is looking at three of my pieces, a short story, a novella, and a novel.

We are going off to Wiltshire in about 6 weeks, staying in a little family-friendly resort type place (Center*parcs) for four nights.  I think that'll be our big trip this year, due to car issues (the sucker was in the garage for 10 weeks or something ridiculous, and did I mention that we bought it with only 25k miles on it?!).  Fees here, fees there, Tories cutting things left and right - it just seems prudent to live a slower life.

So since this post is totally stream-of-consciousness, tonight I made a smoothie from fresh bananas and strawberries and a few splashes of apple and beetroot juice.  Nothing else.  It was pretty tasty.

At some near point in the future I'd like to post a) a more extensive Dumbphone set of photos and b) "regular" camera photos.  Right now I am off to get the kids in their pajamas and into bed.

Basically

Kinda keeping on top of things, but mostly feeling like this:

E is sick and I may be getting sick and there is Drama of various sorts and through it all I cook, clean, find time to write and construct wooden train tracks with the kids.

It snowed on Monday (I know, right? It's March.) and is forecast to rain this weekend, so I guess it's okay to lounge around in the house and recuperate.  Hopefully some warmer weather will come sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, I'm off to snuggle under a blanket in a kind of too-tired-to-do-anything-yet-refusing-to-go-to-bed funk.  Happy Friday.

Busily Beeing

I started 2013 with the intention of blogging a little more often than twice a month.  I may have to downgrade that to "at least" twice a month.

I started a new novella on Jan 31 and broke 17,000 words yesterday.  Got my cover for the piece accepted for publication last month and am tentatively scheduled to go to the London Book Fair courtesy of the publisher for a bit of promotion.  I'm hoping to finish my current piece in the next few days (projected 20k word count), let it sit for a week, then edit and submit.

In the meantime, the kids have been growing and developing, funny things have been said, sibling rivalry waxes and wanes, and a lot of train sets have been built and dismantled.  Today we put a dress on C (she is not convinced by such things) and E immediately said "Oh, you look very stylish!  You look like.... a cooker!"  He meant a chef, but C was very pleased.  (It also helped that the dress had huge pockets.)

Yesterday B and I got a (relatively) fantastic night's sleep and woke up energetic.  So we took the kids to Morden Hall Park which is surprisingly easy to get to via public transport.  The most difficult part was the walk down and up the hill to our local train station.  We took scooters plus a lightweight stroller as a fallback for C/holdall for random stuff.

The most exciting bit for E was the fact that we got to ride on A TRAM!!!!!! as part of our journey there.  BOY was he excited when he realized we not only rode on a tram, but also got to go over level crossings.

And the park?  That was good too.

Here's some pics.

Riding back into the park proper after a spot of lunch at the nearby cafe.

Tire swinging in the "natural play area" which had some interesting things to do.

C having a turn on the zip wire.

Floating sticks in the fast-moving river while watching a dog retrieve his ball.

Decommissioned mill wheel.  We floated LOTS of sticks under this bridge.  The water was very fast-moving here.

The very exciting crossing.  Yes, we looked both ways.

Waiting for the tram on the platform.

Chillaxing after one's bath.


Anyhow, that's all for now.  I'm now mostly caught up on photos - there's a few from last month I'll try and slip onto the blog at some point.  E is off school this coming week due to half-term break so I'll be even more busy this coming week.  Going to be drinking lots of tea and practicing being zen in between planning days out/adventures on busses etc.

North London Pics

Taken by my brother-in-law in November last year. These are just amazing.

2013, Finally

Been very busy - got offered a publishing contract for my novella, which of course I accepted.  Then there was paperwork, and there are edits to do, and school is ramping up homework a bit for E, and C is needing lots of attention these days....

Anyhow, snow has come to London, bigtime!  We went to E's friend's house after school today... on sledges.

It was fun!  Apparently it's supposed to keep snowing for the next few days (at least lightly).  E is off to a school friend's birthday party tomorrow, and then we're all going to their cousin's 3rd birthday party on Sunday.  Busy weekend!  Busy everything, really!