Winter 2014 (So Far)

So, following on from last post... NaNoWriMo happened in November, and I wound up writing 43,000 words in a month. Not too shabby. We're in a decent routine that gives me some free time in the morning before I collect C from her nursery (which she goes to from 9-12).

E was chosen as a narrator in the lower (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) school's production of the Nativity, one of only four children tapped for speaking parts out of sixty. He did a great job, and as a bonus, the Nursery class came in to watch, and I was able to sit in the same room with both children!

C had her 4th birthday.

We toasted marshmallows, sat around the campfire, built forts, and got generally muddy and dirty at the outdoor party of the son of family friends.

Dined out on pizza in Highgate.

E and I went to the Christmas service/carols along with Granny and several of her friends. He is currently enjoying a two week break from school.

Merry Christmas! We had a good day today with family and friends. Tomorrow we are going to Kew Gardens for the evening trail, seeing cousins and uncles and aunts, and probably spending a great deal of the day doing stuff like this...

(The track's slightly the wrong way around but that was quickly rectified by a kind uncle.)

Long Overdue...

...update.

We have been busy! We pulled E out of school a month early (since we were moving to North London anyway) and went to California for 7 weeks. What we did there... well, that warrants about 5 blog posts on their own! Suffice it to say we had a family reunion and did a ton of stuff that was almost a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Uncle Howard, his wife, and son Jack (7) were there, and we were able to see many good old family friends. B, the kids and I also traveled to Mendocino for a midweek break at one point.

I hardly know where to begin with this update. Certainly I want to catalog what we did in CA, but maybe I should start with mundane matters. We're now living in the top bit of B's parents' house, with much more room than in our old flat. E is in Year 2 in a local school, and C is at the same school in Nursery, going 5 mornings a week. They seem to be settled-ish, although we have our doubts about that particular school. We may try to get them into a different one. This is mainly because a lot of the school's funding is focused on bringing children with skills below their age level up to an appropriate one. E doesn't need that, at all. Neither does C. So... we wait and see. Meanwhile, he is not unhappy there although I don't think either of them are challenged quite enough.

This year, we've taken life by the horns and really lived it. I've learned that sometimes the actual doing of things is difficult, but having done them is awesome. Like flying that Cessna in Cornwall. This year we have been to Cornwall, rural Norfolk to stay with family, California, moved to North London, and this weekend we went back to Norfolk again. We're so lucky to have family members who have access to a holiday cottage up there.

So, since CA will have to be its own updates, here are some pictures from this weekend.

E catches a crab! All the kids caught some, and we wound up with 20+ seething in our bucket. Drama ensued when a little girl next to us went right over and into the water! We helped her and her grandfather (who went right after her) out.

C stirs her witchy cauldron at the festival we went to. She was making a potion (with leaves, water, mud and her magic wand).

E and C at the top of the biggest "drop slide" in the play area we went to on Sunday. Yes, they both went down it, multiple times!

The boys conquered this tandem zip wire. It was enormous.

One last photo, from the festival's candlelit procession. The children carried jars they had decorated earlier, with little tea candles inside. There were drummers and fire dancers. It was a very cool thing.

And that's it for now. I'll do my level best to update again soon, but National Novel Writing Month begins Nov. 1. I am going to try to write a heist/thriller in about 30 days. I won't finish it, of course, but it will be fun trying.

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...

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.

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.

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!

Speaking Too Soon...

...or rather, writing too soon.  Or too little, in this specific case.

While I managed to average 1200+ words per day for the entire month of November, and over 2k per day for almost a week, it wasn't enough to reach 50k by the end of the month.  Well, technically I have a few more hours... but it still ain't gonna happen.

But!  I have over 36,000 words on a new novel.  Given that my last few novels have wound up somewhere between 65-80k words, that's about halfway done.  I think this one is going to run a bit shorter, probably around the 60k mark.

I went into NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) thinking there was no way I could pull it off.  A week in, my opinion changed.  I found time to scribble down passages at C's playgroup, over a cup of tea at a cafe while she played with crayons and paper, during her naptime, after the kids went to bed.  500 words per day seems easy peasy now.  1k is a bit more of a stretch, but I proved I can do it.  So I may not have "won" NaNoWriMo, but I've come away with renewed confidence.  Now if only these editors would get back to me about my submissions....!

This month started off slow, then rapidly became very busy.  There was chickenpox times two in the kids (jury's still out on whether B gets it), a vomiting bug that hit the day after I wrote the last blog post (needless to say, we didn't get ready for school the next day, we sat around the house recuperating - or rather E did, he was the one who got hit).  Then two days ago I came down with a muted version of the cold the children have.  So it's been an interesting few days.

Still, through it all, we dance.

November, Mostly in Pictures

I've been lax about posting pictures... mostly because we've been so busy.  E went through a round of chicken pox and was off school for nearly a week.  That was two weeks ago, and now C has it.  She developed her first spots yesterday and so far it seems like a worse case than E's.

So... what did we do in November?

Well, there was Bonfire Night, where we braved the crowds at an official firework event and stood in squelchy mud while more and more people jostled in (at 20 quid a family they were making money hand over fist).  Still, the kids loved it....

There was a big bonfire (pictured) and fireworks set to music, which they also enjoyed.

Larking about in the nearby green after school.

This weekend we went up to Suffolk to visit friends in the countryside.  Bracing late November walks on the beach....

...led to tea, hot chocolate and checkers (the Brits call it draughts, but I'm sticking to my Yankee ways) in the beachside cafe.

In case you're wondering, E lost the game.  But our friend was very patient teaching him the basics of the game.  We had to use chess pieces in place of actual checkers, but that worked fine.

When we got back to the house, C sat on the tractor as the older kids chopped wood in preparation for hauling it to the woodshed.

Of course, then it was back inside to sit by a roaring fire (cats included), movie and popcorn, building a gigantic wooden train track with bridges, loops and two railway stations in the playroom, and listening to the wind and rain that rolled around mid-afternoon.  On Sunday the three older children did 2 hours of rugby while C and I stayed behind to pack and putter around.  E did pretty well with the ball so we might be looking at getting him into rugby next term.

The next few hours will be spent creaming up the not-quite-two year old who is very poxy indeed, and prepping for school tomorrow.  I've been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and have 34k words or thereabouts... not quite sure I'll make the 50k mark by next week given how many curve balls November has thrown, but it's the fastest I've ever written, and it's not trash, so there's a small victory.

And that's all for now! 

And, Just Like That...

...it's October.  School continues to go well for E.  I gather he is receiving a bit of extra attention/instruction off to the side.  He tells me he and a few others are taken off to play games or do projects with Ms. K-- who works with the special ed area (this area also covers gifted children).  I guess I'll find out more later this month during parent-teacher conferences.

I am overdue posting photos from last month's visit to Hever Castle... here are a quick few.

(It didn't rain on us!)

 E doing the Water Maze.  Step on the wrong tile and you get squirted!  He got pretty wet but fortunately it wasn't very chilly.

Couldn't take pictures inside the castle - but everyone enjoyed traipsing through and seeing Anne Boleyn's old bedroom.  After the water maze we took a walk near the Italianate gardens, past a fountain and waterfall, and smelled some of the most beautiful roses I've ever seen/sniffed.

Exit to the hedge maze, decorated for the Queen's Jubilee.

Not pictured: the adventure playground.  They had good fun there - zip wire, wooden maze with slides, swings etc.

We went to the Science Museum on Sunday.

Here's C (with E in the background far left) exploring the water feature in the part of the museum designed specifically for young children. 

E was absolutely fascinated with how he could change the flow of the water with the removable plastic dams.  There were also plastic boats to float down the stream and squirting jets that the kids could change around. 

Taking a break from the water table to explore cause and effect, heights and pulleys together.  The kids at the top threw these beanbags down the chute....

...the kids at the bottom wheelbarrowed the beanbags to the other side and loaded them into the pulley to transport them back up top again. 

Brief visit of the Flight exhibition.  Lots of real old planes and a decent overview of the history of flight.  The kids were on their last legs by this point so we went home--a surprisingly short drive, maybe 20 minutes--so C could have a much-needed nap.

Think I'm caught up on most of the photos.  I'm due a Dumbphone download soon but I've been busy editing my novel in order to submit it to a publisher.  Still haven't heard back from the other place but it's only been a month and they're holding a big convention this week.  In the meantime I wrote a 20k novella that has the potential to be part of a series.  I plan to edit that after I finish revising the novel (I'm about halfway done).

So that's all for now!

Summer 2012, Part 2

LOTS going on lately.

Here are a few shots of Legoland back in July.

In the last picture, C is wondering why the water park is closed - there was a fountainy area that they'd blocked off temporarily.  Other pictures - E in miniland looking at the lego boats (afterward, we went to the Build and Test place and found out how simulated earthquakes affected our lego structures!), E and Dadden in the helicopter, E and I taking a ride on the lego monorail.

Legoland was good fun - I didn't take as many pictures as I could have.  E did a "Learner Driver" ride - I didn't have the camera with me, so if I do another Dumbphone upload I'll post the shots I got on my phone of him driving a Lego car at 2mph around a track.

Going back a bit further in July - here is E watching the Olympic torch procession near our house.  He was a little bit underwhelmed and we only got to see the torch for about 3 seconds.  The highlight for him was playing with neighbors' children at the local park afterward.

And jumping back forward....

...a shot of E at his birthday party.  He wanted to dress up as a knight, so he did.  There was dancing and pass the parcel and superhero moves and cake and lots of playing - and a sackful of presents afterward, pretty much perfect for a 4 year old.

The day before he turned 4 we went on the London Eye so that E could get on free.  It's fun to be a tourist again even in the place you live.

The weeks have gone quickly even if the days seemed to sometimes drag out (especially in those long afternoon hours when everyone is a bit crabby). E went to sports camp once a week for four weeks and really enjoyed himself, played with friends, met up with cousins and uncles, went to lots of parks (including new ones - we are branching out and getting more adventurous with catching the bus to different places), splashing in the paddling pool in the back yard, and generally toodling about.

We have been enjoying Kew Gardens with its huge adventure playground (I'll post pictures someday, I promise!) and generally being busy busy busy.

E and his friend A met up twice this week - on Monday they had scooter races and today they went to visit their new classroom (they're in the same class at the same school which is nice since the boys have known each other from a previous playgroup they started at age 2!).  Tomorrow we are going back in to talk with the teacher and let E get used to the classroom a bit more - then he has some time off before he starts on Sept 20!

In other news, an editor at a publishing house has asked me to revise and edit a novella I sent in - she says she really enjoyed it and suggested a change I might make.  Of course I emailed back right away thanking her and taking her up on the offer.  I spent two weeks revising and polishing the story and resubmitted yesterday.  Writing something else now and trying not to be on pins and needles... it may very well get rejected.  To be honest, even if it does get a rejection, the place I've subbed to is a well-respected publisher with lots of clout and history, so the fact that an editor enjoyed my writing is a pretty big ego boost.

I'm sure there's tons I'm forgetting to record here, but this post is getting long  now so I'll sign off.