Monday, November 23, 2009

That Little Stinker!

The kids had their dance recitals tonight and they did an excellent job on stage!


Finn has us absolutely SHOCKED! This was Finn's first recital and he is in the First Steps dance class through River Falls Parks & Rec. He got up on stage and did all of his dances like a pro. By watching him on stage, you wouldn't believe I was telling the truth when I say that he refused to go on stage for rehearsal and for the majority of the dance classes, Torey or I had to be out there dancing with him. Nice.


As always, Julia was a beautiful princess dancing on stage with her Let's Dance 2 class. She chose to wear the rainbow tutu she bought in Oregon over the summer. She looked lovely!

My favorite part of the recitals is seeing the kids up on stage with the biggest smiles ever on their faces. It definitely helps a person to let go of the stress of their day and relax in the presence of the simple pleasures in a child's life.

Priceless.

Thank you, Miss Jennifer! We are grateful for your dedication to the children of River Falls. You bring happiness to these families each and every week.

Friday, November 6, 2009

NaNoWriMo Update 2

Everyday this week I've wanted to update the blog with how I'm doing and some basic info about the story and everyday I'm too tired and just want to go to bed. Tonight isn't any different, but I thought I would just throw something together quick otherwise I may never get around to making an update.

Things have gone well so far. There have been some bumps and some questioning of things on my part, but I haven't faltered in finishing my daily goals. So far I'm about 600 words ahead of schedule and I hope I can increase that number by the end of the weekend.

The title of my work in progress is, Finding Methuselah.

You can follow my progress here:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/558986
It shows how many words I have so far. I update it nightly after I finish writing.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

NaNoWriMo Update 1 and Halloween

In the previous post I explained about the writing contest I'm attempting. I thought I would provide some more insights. I've always felt strongly that I would not attempt any large piece of fiction until I had a lot of finished short stories under my belt. I still feel that that is the right way to do it, but one of the biggest things I struggle with is motivation. I do well when there is some sort of outside motivation. I figured if I signed up and took this endeavor seriously, it would lend itself well to a solid foundation of a good writing habit.

Today I wrote chapter 1. My thought was that if the story broke down into 30ish chapters, I could write one a day. Well I was a little disappointed when I finished the first one and only had 1350 words. Do I add more to reach my 1700 goal for the day or move on to the next chapter? I decided to start the next chapter and I was glad I did. The words came out much faster and chapter 2 was much more fun than chapter 1. It wasn't long before I reached over 2000 words for my first day. Not bad.

The website for NaNoWrMo lets you update your progress and share it with others. It's really slow right now, so I can't update mine, but as soon as I can, I'll also share a link that anyone can go to and see my progress.

The kids had a good time trick-or-treating last night. Julia was a princess and Finn was Bob the Builder. It was cold outside and so the kids had to have some extra clothes on underneath their costumes. Finn thought it was pretty funny that he had a pair of feety pajamas under his costume. While we were getting ready we kept getting kids coming to door, so that slowed us down a bit. We all had a good time and after a few houses of seeing Julia walk up to the door and yell "trick or treat!", Finn got the hang of it and had no problem joining right in. There were a few scary houses that the kids wanted to skip, so we did. At one of them Julia said, "I'm not going to go to that one until I'm a teenager!"


After we got back, the kids dumped out the goodies on the table and selected a few things to sample. Amanda and I also sampled our fair share too.

The morning after the holiday, the people at the grocery store were giving away their extra Halloween balloons. The kids thought that was the bees knees!