More Summer Fun=Less Blogging

I will likely not be making regular posts to this site for the rest of this summer-there's just too much fun to be had and then there's much downtime needed after it all. Almost every day is booked for something: story time at Wheeler Farm with a wagon ride, splash pads, swimming pools, kids club at the mall, birthday parties, farmer's markets and petting zoos...the list just goes on. In between those I've been trying to make the front of the house more presentable by painting the hideously peeling lattice. I would have liked to just replace it with vinyl but me with a saw, measuring, and hammering just spells the Money Pit disaster and my husband has neither the time nor inclination to do it so I do what women usually do-use paint for a face lift on the worst of things. :)

Anyways, this will be the last post for a while-I plan to resume it in Fall. Happy Summer!

Summer Fun

Although I'm typically an Autum, October, Halloween type of girl, when you have kids there is just no better time than Summer! Before I had kids, I only thought about what it'd be like to have them around the holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. But Summer is truly the best time for my daughter and I. There are just so many things to do and most of them are free and the ones that cost are open earlier during the summer than they are in the cold months when stay-at-home-mom's really need them to be open.

Yesterday the Library threw their Summer Reading Program at West Jordan park, complete with a juggler on stilts, people dressed as The Incredibles (my daughter loves them) and 5 gigantic bouncy houses. Gardner Village has started their Saturday Farmer's Market and also have their petting zoo and pony rides, Wheeler Farm has Sunday Farmer's Market as well as wagon rides and animals. The splash pads are open and my daughter cannot get enough of the water, not to mention the little backyard waterpark we have going and the nice walks down 90th to hit some stores or just peruse all the flowers at Home Depot. Airborne is now open at 10am and Jungle Jim's has $2 Tuesdays, tons of fun.

This week was the last Mommy and Me class at The Little Gym. This week starts her one day a week for six weeks dance class. 60 minutes long instead of 45 and the parents sit in the waiting room and watch through the glass. It'll be interesting to see what Janessa thinks of that as when it comes to dancing she's an absolute fiend...providing I'm dancing with her and swinging, twirling her around.

The potty training is coming along nicely, however. No accidents and even when she's in the middle of playing, inside or outside, she tells me she needs to go and we run into the house. We still have a couple hurdles, however, one of which is that she'll only use her training potty. My husband and I found toilet seats in Home Depot and Lowes that have the toddler training seat built in so you don't have to use a portable one that never seems to fit properly and is more of a threat to her falling in than not. I haven't gotten them yet but I wonder if I do, will we still have a problem getting her to use the restroom anywhere else where that isn't an option? Ugh. Just when you think you've got the whole training mastered you realize you have a lot further to go.

Without Pride

Without Pride is officially e-published and available for Kindle through amazon.com! The paperback version is still pending the arrival of my proof copy. I had taken a picture that I wanted to use for both covers but ahhh Createspace, ever the more difficult of publishing services, needed the picture to be in a PDF file, not a Jpeg-very unusual for a picture. Not having anything but Adobe Reader, I was initially unable to upload the picture because I didn't want to pay $7.95 a month for the full Adobe that would allow me to convert pictures. Praise to Youtube, however, that allowed me to find a free way in which to convert the file. However, Createspace doesn't add the title, author, etc to the cover so I had to spend more time trying to add that and I suspect it will only be on the cover. It is very likely I'll get the copy and see nothing on the spine and nothing on the back but my picture. If that's the case, I'll be forced to use one of their very few, plain cover options-so frustrating since it's a physical book but at least I'll have the proof copy with the picture I chose. Being the author, I don't care how the rest looks on my shelf but I won't have it that way for any other purchases. Such a hassle but there it is.