Blood Donation 2014

There's no way to take a good photo laying down, but donate blood for 2014 (At least once a year--Goal #8) gets a check.

A Rude Awakening? Goal #1

This past week was something else. We had planned a family vacation to Tennessee. A camping, boating, family reunion fun time! Four hours into the drive we got a phone call from my husband's family. His father had a stroke.

The next few days were full of mixed blessings. His father is improving a little more each day, but it's going to be a long process. We felt blessed to be half way to him when the call came in. It was good to see him and many others in the family. What a blessing it is to have such a strong family around to help lift and support each other.

Now for the wake up call. Between my father-in-law and the family reunion, Nathan and I were reminded that we need to take better care of ourselves. No one can make us eat healthy and exercise. No one else can make those decisions for us. But we can decide to do those things so we can spend more years with our children and future grandchildren.

Nathan and I both decided last weekend that NOW is the time.

We are going to run the Country Music Marathon in April. The full. We've decided it's going to be our way of celebrating turning 40.

Training starts Monday, but today I started with walking and weights.

Goal #1--Run a Marathon will be checked off on April 25th, 2015

The Country Music 1/2 Marathon 2008

Mentally worn out!

It has been a busy month. Lots of running here and there, wrapping up the end of the school year, getting kids ready for summer camps, cleaning the house (Boo!) and every once in a while the opportunity to work on a goal.

The two goals I'm working on at the moment are #40 and #15. That's:

• Start my own high school short story contest
• Get Fade Into Me published

I've finished a lot of the ground work for the contest. The webpage is up, so is Facebook. The best part is I now have four amazing authors signed on to help with judging this fall. Go check out their Bios! Now I just need to get the word out to students and high schools. Hopefully the dominoes are already falling on the student side, but I'm waiting until August to start contacting the high schools. Summer is the one glitch in my starting a fall contest!

Fade Into Me is mostly complete. I've sent several queries and received some requests. Those have turned into no's along the way but I'm not discouraged yet. Thanks to some great feedback from readers I'm going to add a few more scenes to build the relationship between Ryanne and Caedmon a little more. I've also had the discussion with my hubby regarding the question to keep seeking an agent or see if my current publisher is interested. 

I really enjoyed WiDo and will gladly turn to them in time. Part of me just needs to try for that larger dream a little longer. My ambition is bigger than what I think they can accomplish at this time, but I know my skills have to improve as well. 

You may recall that I started goal #34--Update Family History Book. That screeched to a standstill when I realized I would have to start completely from scratch. I just don't have the mental emotional strength to redo all my previous work at this time. So, I'm shelving it again for a while. 

#40 Update

I've created the webpage, email and facebook page for the short story contest. You can find it at boldnewworlds.blogspot.com.

And here is the link for the Facebook page.
For questions email boldnewworlds @ gmail.com

Starting #40 Set up a high school scifi/fantasy short story contest

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Perhaps it's because I just finished judging a short story contest for high school students. This was my third year and I've learned a lot from the experience. I think I'd like to do my own contest that is genre specific.

Imagination Begins With You is not specific and the talent is widely diverse. Which is wonderful! However, I keep thinking that if I could judge areas that I am more invested in, I might be able to give better feedback to these young writers. They are starting earlier than I did and therefore I feel they have the chance to really excel at this craft.

The plan:

• Talk to the creator of IBWY and see how he pulls it off each year
• Research some different methods for the students to submit their stories
• Find scifi/fantasy authors who would be willing to judge
• Pick a topic
• Market, market, market!

Goal:

Have the rules and regulations, a website, facebook page, twitter account and judges ready to go by August 1st. With a November 15th entry deadline.

Summer project! 

Starting #34 Update Family History Book

I've started looking into updating the descendants book that I made for my grandmother ten years ago. To be honest I feel a little overwhelmed. The program I used before is no longer on my computer and I don't know where the file is anyway. That means I will have to start from scratch. The original book was over 100 pages with scanned documents, photos and stories.

Where to start?

I believe I'll start with typing up all the stories. Maybe even try using the Dragon software my hubby bought me. Then I'll have to start begging all my relatives to scan and email me pictures for the book.

I also downloaded a new program that is compatible with my old PAF genealogy file. Hopefully that will make adding the pedigree charts and family group records easy to include. It's called Ancestral Quest 14.

I'll let you know what I think when I get a chance to sit down and play around with it.

Goal #12--Set up a dining room--CHECK!

Yay! After nearly eighteen years of marriage, we now have a formal dining room. I feel so grown up! And I think it's time to plan a dinner party...if only there were a free weekend between now and June.

 It started with paint...at 8:30 PM on a Friday night. 

Yeah, these are our favorite kind of dates, sad but true!

 Today we drove around checking out Craig's List finds and brought home this 

$20 table to fill this empty space. A pop of red and some family pictures make it feel homey.

I still don't know about the piano, but there isn't anywhere else to put it right now. 

Eventually we will get a nice plant to put in the corner by the window. 

But all in all, I'm really happy with the clean lines and modern feel to the room. Some day we will also find the perfect rug, maybe. Nathan is still trying to convince me that's a good idea. I'll also start collecting different color runners and look for some kind of centerpiece to put on the table. Maybe something for each season and holiday! Yep, that sounds like a good plan. A little here and there throughout the rest of the year. 

What do you think?