Thumpety Thump Thump

It snowed in my neck of the woods. Oh boy did it snow!!

Little Sweetness had his Christmas Concert last Friday so we pulled big brother, Light, out of school, which was only supposed to be for a couple of hours -- but it had snowed so much while we were in the church hall that we decided not to take him back, just to turn around and come home on a school bus a few hours later... in white out conditions.

We spent the rest of the day, snuggled inside watching Christmas movies. Then we had an old fashioned Christmas sing-a-long which started out to be much fun,... until 4 yr old Sweetness, who is completely stuck on Frosty the Snowman, decided to add "thumpety thump thump, thumpety thump thump" to every other carol.

Silver Bells didn't ring-a-ling, they thumpety thump thumped, Silent Night wasn't very quiet with all the thumpety thump thumps going on and On the First Day of Christmas my true love actually gave a thumpety thump thump to me.

On the other hand, none of the Kinsons can carry a tune so those thumpety thump thumps probably improved our attempts.

Here's a pic of 9 yr old Light on Saturday. Despite the frigid temps, Daddy Kinson had the boys outside for most of the day - tobagganin, building snow forts (pictured) and getting them good and tired out! He's totally up for Daddy-of-the-Year, ain't he? :)

Oh - and the Christmas list of many-things-that-must-be-done is more than half complete, which is a big 'whew'. One more trip to the mall, one more trip to the grocery store, one more trip to the sanity store...

Oh crap. They don't have one of those, do they?

I'm screwed.

Thanks for the advice and support!!

I'm over at Six Degrees of Sexy with a classic poem from Lord Byron. Please do stop by and leave a comment, or your name - or heck, just have a read of 'She Walks in Beauty'.

But before you go...

Thanks y'all for your advice and support about my little 'Bright-faced Sweetness' problem. Leading by example is the best bet (I'm afraid if I make TOO much out of it, it will backfire) and reading lots of books with hidden messages is part of the game plan.

That said, my older son had a birthday party over the weekend and the guests were very diverse in ethnicity (out of 8 children, only four could be classified 'caucasian') and Sweetness didn't blink an eye or make any untoward comments. In fact, he was stuck to one little boy with a face 'not bright like mine' the whole time. Maybe (with fingers crossed) it was a one-off episode triggered by another child's comment.

AND - Christine d'Abo has a new release!!! I haven't had a quiet moment to read it yet -- not without trying - but alas, the shovel beckons. It's called Chasing Phoenix (great title, eh?) and you can buy it now from Ellora's Cave. Just click HERE.

15 Hours and Counting, and Oh Nuts!

It just dawned on me that school starts tomorrow...
*guffaw*
Seriously, I've been counting down since July 3rd or thereabouts. Now that we're down to less than 15 hours, I'm practically vibrating with anticipation. My oldest son will begin grade 3 and my baby boy, who's not such a baby anymore *sniff*, will begin Montessori preschool 3 precious mornings per week. But young Sweetness doesn't begin until next week...
WAHOO!!
If I seem a tad excited it's because I'll have roughly 7 hours per week of dedicated writing time. SEVEN! That might not seem like much to you, but to me -- every minute of that will be golden. And quiet. And productive (hopefully).

My sister and brother-in-law left yesterday. We had such a lovely visit -- I was a very sad bear when they left, knowing that I probably won't see them again until next summer :(
I shall dedicate this week's TT to things we did on our visit.

Here's the latest conversation overheard in the Kinson household:

Sweetness (aka 3 yr old boy): My nuts hurt.
Light (aka 7 yr old boy): Do you have to go pee?
Sweetness: No. There's no pee in my nuts. They just got stuck in my willie.
Light: Pee doesn't come from your nuts.
Sweetness: ye-es!
Light: No it doesn't! Pee comes from inside your tummy. Nuts just hold the ingredients for when you and your wife want to have your own kid. When she goes to the hospital, your nuts crack open.
Me: (trying to quell my silent but hysterical laughter) Honey, I don't think they crack open exactly...
Light: Well of course not. They're not really nuts like peanuts. They're made of soft stuff, like boogers...

Welcome to my life.
I wonder what it would be like to have girls *takes a moment to imagine a quiet game of Barbie-dress-up...*

Pirates are finally talking in my head

Yipee - school starts tomorrow!
It's not that I haven't enjoyed having Light (aka older son) home from school, contantly looking to me for amusement, but I have missed the day-to-day routine that accompanies school term. Meanwhile, during the craziness that is Christmas, Sweetness (aka younger son) decided that the holidays were the perfect time to outgrow his afternoon naps. It's been rough going the past few days, but I believe we're over a major hump. Though I cannot, under any circumstances, take him into the car after 4pm or the little minx will fall asleep by the end of our street.
I made the mistake of dashing out to the craft store for model glue with Sweetness at 3:30 today, and after a suspicious silence, noticed his wee head bobbing in the rearview mirror (fellow parents - you know that if I let this child sleep, even for five minutes, he would then be up until midnight!) So I sang, told knock-knock jokes, pointed out fascinating oberservations about anything I could find out the windows: lights, trees, cars and people going by.
I put on a bloody good one-woman show! *ta-da DA*

Starting to make headway with the pirate story - finally. There were too many odd bits floating in the space that is supposed to house my brain. Loose ends that didn't fit, bits and bobs that wouldn't gel. As usual, these things usually begin to weave themselves together about 3am. More again at 4:30am, etc... through a sleepless night. I awoke this morning determined to get the new scene committed to paper. A new opening scene to tie my two central characters together. I scraped what I had before (it was only about 1000 words, so no great loss. My goodness - did I really say that? This time last year I held on tightly to every sentence I wrote and now I'm willing to sacrifice 1000 words!?! I must be growing...), and managed to scrape together about 2,500 NEW words. Ahhh... nothing like starting over. Perhaps I'll sleep tonight!

In other writerly news, I received the contracts from Ellora's Cave this weekend and it renewed my excitement for the next-step - editing. Tomorrow I'll tackle the POV glitch in one of the scenes, and then the real editing begins. The nit-picky stuff that makes both you and your editor want to claw each other's cheeks (not really - but I'm feeling dramatic tonight. Must be the one-woman show thing.)
I also had to come up with a bio. How to make one's self interesting... not as easy as it should be. Of course I chose the tongue-in-cheek approach. What else can one do with an alias?! It's not really me, for heaven's sake...