The Sword of Senack and the Co-op

20 March 2012

Today EC Stilson my good friend released her first YA Fantasy book today. It is called The Sword of Senack. I read her first draft of the book and am anxious to read the final! It is about pirates and mermaids and witches and all sorts of fun underwater magic. Ra absolutely loved the first draft and I am going to read the kids the published final as soon as it arrives. When we have read it I will post my annotations of it in a link at the top of the page.

Wayman Publishing, the publisher of EC's books is holding a Writing and Art Contest to celebrate the book. They are also doing a raffle give-away of a Kindle Fire! I am going to go over there right now and enter. How neat would that be! For information on all these awesome goings on visit her blog at the link below. 




I had the kids help me pick up the house before computer's were allowed to come on today. While they piddled around on the computer I cleaned and got ready for our day out of the house. I had to run some errands down in the south end of Salt Lake County today and so I also planned to visit some family while we were there.

My nephew, Sk broke his leg while jumping on the trampoline over the weekend and so we decided to stop by there and visit him. He is Ra's age and both Ra and El enjoy playing with him. They all played Wii for a bit and the kids rotated playing outside and playing on the Wii with Sk. I told my sister about a LEARN group that was to be meeting tonight in Farmington that I wanted to go to but I didn't have anyone to watch the kids for me. She offered to watch them for me which was extremely nice of her.(u c wut i did thar?)

At the LEARN (Learning Enrichment And Resource Network) meeting I met some new people. We talked generally about some of the things each of us has been struggling with and we brainstormed ideas for each other. It was a really good way to get to know each other because you could tell what their passions and interests were based on their ideas and response. I met several mom's with children the same age as mine and I hope to get to know them better.

The biggest thing I took away from the meeting was that I am going to start a co-op. I have been looking for one to join but they are all full, or not the things I am interested in or the segregate, only allowing certain ages of children.

So my project for the next couple of weeks is to come up with a structure for the co-op and a basic premises-model to build each meeting off of. I would like to have it a twice-a-week affair. I would also like to try and get about other families involved. I feel I would be comfortable hosting about twenty kids, so long as I had other mothers/fathers willing to participate in the teaching efforts!

I will probably separate the kids into a few different groups depending on skills, abilities and interests. There is a ton of brainstorming I need to do on this idea so it will probably be a few weeks in the making before I even try and approach others with the idea and an invitation.

Pi - In the Face

14 March 2012

I watched Elisa's two younger kids for her briefly this morning while she dropped off her two older ones at school and ran to the store real fast. When she got back I went straight from her house to my brother's house because my sister-in-law was called in for jury duty and they couldn't find anyone else to watch their kids. Now mind you they live an hour away, which is fine. And they have seven kids, which is also fine because most of them were at school. So I didn't get much accomplished in the way of myself today. I was babysitting from about 10:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. when my brother and his wife both got home.

Because it was Pi Day today I made Shepherd's Pie for dinner, but that is all I was able to do. Oh well, there is a Pi Day every year, so plenty of time to do all of those fun Pi Day activities I would like to.

My brother has been my idol in the realms of art for as long as I can remember. My friends tell me I am a great artist, but that is because they have never seen my brother at work! He can do anything her puts his mind to. Drawing, painting, sculpting, graphic design, advertising, logos, anything! A few years ago he even helped my other brother add light sabers to a film he had made with his boy scouts. Pretty neat.

Well a package had arrived for him while he was out and when he got home and opened it he was as giddy as a schoolboy. He showed me that it was software for Adobe Aftereffects. Then he showed me all the cool things you could do and they more he showed me and the more he explained, the more I felt like crying.

You see, all day yesterday I had worked on designing those bookmarks for Elisa. I was using Microsoft Paint, because my Adobe CS5 doesn't work on my old, slow computer. All the cool stuff he was doing was so out of my league right now I felt like everything I had spent so much time on and was so proud of yesterday was like preschool scribbling in comparison to what he was working with.

I know he is the oldest of the six kids in our family and I am the youngest, but I was so envious, and have been for a while, of all the tools he has at his disposal. I don't even want to try art right now because I feel so inadequately equipped for it. I doodle and sketch, but in this digital world, if you can't get your art onto the computer to be sent by email then it may as well not exist. Rather depressing considering I feel this way about so many subjects. Math and science and language. But at the same time it burns a fire of hunger. I want to know more, to do more and be more for myself and my kids. I can do it, I just need to stop wasting time being idle during the day and get to work!

We ended up spending the night here too because it was really late by the time my brother had finished showing me all the cool things he has been doing that I was not in spirits for the long drive home. It has been a very long week away from home. I plan on going home tomorrow and not leaving for a couple days at least!

I've Got My Eye's On You

13 March 2012

Having barely recovered from the weekend trip to Hurricane I slept in till 9:00. Though this may sound late to some of you and early to others, it is both for me. I used to sleep or doze in bed until 10:00 sometimes as late as 11:00. Since starting homeschool I have had to try and change this habit. It is hard and has taken me quite some time to get used to waking up and getting out of bed by 7:30-8:00 on a regular basis. I am very much a night owl. I am very much NOT a morning person. I would rather stay up until 4:30 working on something than have to wake up at 4:30 to do the same thing. I believe full heartedly that this is a learned trait as everyone in my family has the same tendancy. I used to say it is genetic, but that gives you the impression that there is nothing that you can do about it and I have come to see those types of responses as cop-out answers. If you say there is nothing you can do about it, then the responsibility is taken from you and you no longer have to try to be a better person because it is out of your control. I call B S.

Anyways, when I got up I had the kids help me clean the house. While cleaning I got a phone call from my friend Elisa asking if I would come help her make some bookmarks. She is releasing her second book on St. Patrick's Day and has been invited to talk in two weeks at an elementary school about writing and being an author. Since she only has so many books to give away she decided to have bookmarks for the kids.

I of course, decided to make it complicated because I found some really cute bookmarks on Pinterest. I designed a witch bookmark for the girls and a pirate one for the boys. The witch is basically eyes with a big green nose with a wart and the pirate has an eye-patch and a mustache. It took me until about 3:00 pm to get the proportions and measurements just right. We fit eight to a page and emailed the file to AlphaGraphics to be printed. When we picked them up they offered to cut them as well for a small fee and I am so glad we did. Even with the individual bookmarks cut apart we still needed to hand-cut around the nose of the witch and the mustache of the pirate and then fold them and add a sticker. The bookmarks are this idea, though much different.

They turned out super cute and I hope the kids will like them, unfortunately we didn't even finish getting them all done and by 11:00pm we called it quits and spent the night at her place.Pinterest, I love you for making my life more creative and I hate you for making it complicated by making it creative.



If you want to know what Elisa's book is about or buy it go to her site! She also has an Art and Writing Contest going on right now in celebration of her book release. Winners prizes range from a Kindle to publication in an anthology published by Wayman Publishing to cash and more. So worth stopping by.