Crescent City Aquarium

My kids are the cutest. My husband is the best. REALLY. Sorry all of you have kids and a hubby who are just ALMOST the best. :-)

Lately, since I've been feeling so crappy, Whit's done all the: laundry, cleaning, dishes, kid watching, dirty diapers, baths, well, let's be honest--EVERYTHING, PLUS he's been making a LOT of crazy runs to the store at 10 pm to get me orange juice or almonds so I can make almond pretzels like Auntie Anne's... Yeah I know--I'M LUCKY.

Now if this new baby will just get with the program... IT'S DUE June 5, since you all keep asking. :-)

Now on to the next catch up blog... We went to Crescent City the day after Bandon--and saw their cute aquarium. Here are some shots.

Ouch! :P
Now really touching a starfish...

The guy asked for someone brave. Eli volunteered. Then when the guy explained he wanted someone to touch an anemone, Eli volunteered me. I said okay, and then when the guy said he needed someone to LICK an anemone for 20 seconds, I said NO WAY and volunteered POOR DAD! Here are some shots--HE DID IT. It shocks you when you lick it!

EWWWW!!

We all got to pet the sharks--they are TOTALLY sandpaper-y--NOT SMOOTH like a dolphin. Pretty neat, though.

Ahhh! We were being eaten by a shark!!

The sea lion show was fun!!

Beach in Bandon

So, like 2 or 3 weeks ago now, we went to Bandon, OR on a mini-vacation. Our hotel was right by the water--which would have been cooler if it wasn't so cold!

Whit and the kids still had a great time.

We had been to see the animals earlier that day and Dora got this striped purple purse with a Tiger in it. She would NOT put it down, so we took it to the beach.

Whit plays so much with the kids!

Isn't this seaweed gross?? You can see in this photo how Dora's doing her favorite thing--Eli showed her this game. She grabbed handfuls of sand and threw them at the waves. (SO WEIRD.)

Here are the kids running around--oh, and Dad, too.

You can see our resort back there.

This was really sad. I was taking photos instead of paying attention and this big wave came up--Dora had no idea it was coming--she'd just thrown a handful of sand into the water--and this totally came up and got her--to her waist!! I have this one photo before the catastrophe struck. We only had one pair of shoes for Dora (dad packed) and ... it was an adventure. Whit and I didn't coordinate and we both waded into get her--AND she dropped her tiger and purse which got all soaked and sandy. Eli was the only dry one among us...

Here we are eating dinner that night. YUM--right on the water. We bathed the kids in the sink--since the place had a shower only and so Eli had to get a bath when Dora had one--of course--so they are in pjs! Spiderman--OF COURSE.

Dora got cold--so she got my sweatshirt. It's a little too big for her.

This was the view from our back porch.

Eli's Santa Requests

When Eli went to the sitter's earlier this week, they were watching a Christmas show--so, of course we have been watching Christmas shows here, too. I guess you can't start too early?

Tonight Eli started listing all the things he wanted from Santa. The list was pretty ridiculous. I told him Santa would only bring three things. He came up with the following:

1. Bike (duh)

2. Spiderman Helmet (Good job mom, right?)

and after much deliberation...

3. A marble game like Connor's (his friend)

I pointed out, "Uh, you got a marble game last year. Is Connor's different than yours?"

He said, "Yes. It's like a lion."

Huh?? What in the world does that mean? So, I said, "Well, I need to know how it's different so that you can get one like his--since you already have one. You wouldn't want to get the same thing twice."

He said, "Mom, you don't need to know what it's like. Just tell Santa I want one like Connor's. He'll know."

Great... He's already a thinker.

Baby # 3...Incoming

Some of you already guessed this, but our third baby is on the way, and this kid has made me sick as a DOG from the very beginning. You can check out Whit's blog to see the preliminary ultrasound. Heartrate is good--just one baby. Eli was convinced there were two. Or four. HA.

Hooray for Baby 3--Hopefully I will feel better soon.

A for Effort?

There are two big reasons I've been so LAGGY on my blog lately, so I figured I'd update you on one of them. Some of you may know I'm an aspiring author--some of you might not. My chosen genre is urban fantasy. I wrote a book years ago, and it was horrible. (Which I am not saying for pity--it was truly really awful.) Anyhow, I then rewrote it--and rewrote it again.

Then my brother died. After that, I wrote in a tricky ending, which everyone hated. (Everyone but me, and I'm the one who counts!) So, I decided instead of cutting the part of the story I liked, I'd make it bigger--show those readers WHY I liked that part...

I rewrote it another dozen times or so--sometimes small edits, sometimes large. Then at another famous author's advice, I gave up on that project and wrote a second novel. I realized that second novel was also crap.

I went back to the first one again--this time rewriting the story line entirely. I went to a real writer's conference in New York and stayed with my friend Chase. The agents there didn't like my second novel. They said my query letters sucked, which I now realize is correct. BUT, they liked my pages for the first novel.

I was reading a book on my Kindle in February of this year and saw it was by a small press--BelleBridge Books. I looked them up and discovered they accepted unrepresented partial manuscripts--hot dog. On a lark, I sent mine. I mean, at this point it had to be in pretty good shape, right? I'd only re-written it about 40 times.

Months passed. I'd given up on books one and two and had the first chapter of Book Three almost finished when... I got an email. It was from BelleBridge. They'd finally read my partial. It sucked, but they actually liked my characters and story line and thought my writing had some glimmer of hope. They recommended some extensive changes and said they'd like to see a full manuscript if I made them.

So, folks, I ignored the negative, brushed off my "promising" manuscript and started reading. To my horror, I realized it was Bad. REALLY BAD. Like CAPITAL LETTERS, BOLD FACED BAD. I read their recommended book. Then I read it again, taking notes. Then I began a wholesale rewrite--as in I cut at least 50% of the words and then built the darn book back up to the same number of words again. Then I rewrote those passages and then I went through and edited. I also had to write a 15 page synopsis.

I am writing this now to tell you that although this project has sucked up every minute of my free time now for six weeks, and some of my non-free time, IT'S DONE! I sent my manuscript in to the publisher not 3 hours ago.

Now it's time for the prayers. Let's face it--even with 50 rewrites, the odds are still against me. And even if they sign me, it will probably be for less than $2,000, which works out to about, oh, $0.02 an hour.

In spite of all that, I am still smiling and hopeful. Maybe the publishing game hasn't beat the optimist out of me yet. :-)

West Coast Game Park

Last week Whit had some time off in the middle of the week. (Tuesday thru Thursday) so we went to Bandon for the day (and stayed the night.) It's about 2.5 hours north of GP and it's right on the beach. It also has a game park, with tons of animals. We're all about the animals at our house and we had fun seeing the foxes, lemurs, wallabies, goats, deer, llamas, birds, etc. It was neat.

Here are Eli and I with the wallabies.

The fam (sans photographer) with an Emu...

Eli had a great time in the free range areas, where there are donkeys, goats, deer, sheep, llamas, peacocks, etc all wondering around.

My favorite part, by far, was the baby cats area. They bring out their baby cats and let you play with them! These are baby black leopards. CUTE!

Here we are holding them.

This is the llama that tried to take out Eli... He wasn't scared, but I sure was.

Here's the 20 week old Caracal. They're really neat--they can jump 10 feet vertically to swipe a bird from the air! WOW! They are also really soft.

Dora didn't really want to touch... Whit spent most of the trip with her watching from up high.

Note the finger in the ear...

Now the double fingers. Poor Dad--he's a good sport...

Now my absolute favorite part of our trip--the BABY TIGERS!!

Eli and I got to feed them their bottles. Dora was a little scared so Whit took photos. WOW, this was SO neat!

I thought Eli's favorite goat was cute in these photos.

We had fun--we'll definitely be back to Bandon!

Pumpkin Patch

A few weeks ago, I got the kids dressed and made it out to the pumpkin patch. I know, Eli isn't wearing his Halloween shirt, but you know? It was the most I could do while Whit was at work that afternoon just to get the kids there at all. So, you get Eli in a blue doggie shirt. Sorry about that. :-) If it helps me sound like a better mom, the dog shirt was because there was a humane society event that morning at the Northwest Club gymnastics class--so Eli was too excited about that to change out of his dog shirt.

The whole way to the pumpkin patch, Eli kept asking if there were pony rides. Yes, Eli, there are pony rides.

There were also big John Deere trikes.

I could not, absolutely, no matter how I tried get a photo of Dora smiling. So, here's a shot of her by a pumpkin, scowling.

We went on a hayride...

She's cute, even not smiling, right?

Oh and a SECOND pony ride. The first one wasn't enough.

Then on to the pumpkin selection. The kids were not very cooperative on the photo front.

Whoa? What was I thinking, letting Eli drive!?

They agreed on this little one. Which I was happy about because those big ones behind it were too much for me to handle.

Also, mom, Dora got your package. Thanks for the hat and purses.