I took 120 pictures in the last week. Here are some of them.

Hey y’all!

It’s Friday, not Thursday! Did you know that? I didn’t. I’m a day off after my long weekend at the beach. Not complaining at all. Just giving you my explanation for being a day late with this post.

May has been an awesome month. Last week, in particular, was notable.

• Monday: Finished my MFA Core class
• Tuesday: Stealing the Ruby Slippers release day
• Wednesday: Turned in the huge portfolio for my Groundings in Fiction class (got my grade back an hour ago, I’m quite happy with it.)
• Thursday: Packed up a bunch of books to mail, packed my suitcase and flew to Mobile, AL for a weekend at Gulf Shores.
• Friday: Hangout Festival.
• Saturday: Flew from Pensecola to Nashville for an awesome wedding with some dear friends.
• Sunday: Flew back to the beach for the last day of Hangout.
• Monday: Drove to Mobile, had coffee with my first Writer’s Loft mentor, then boarded a flight
• Tuesday—got home just before 1:00 in the morning

Now that the book is out and school is over, my to-do list hasn’t gotten any shorter, but I’m trying to settle in to summer. Originally the plan was that I would be able to forgo my morning writing time (the time from 7-9am that I has been blocked out for me to do homework and/or write) because both of the kids would be in summer school from 9-2. I would get up early, walk the dog, go to the gym, get the kids to school, write, and then be able to focus on the kids 100% when they were home. They have been awesomely patient as I’ve juggled everything, but I don’t want them to have to do that anymore.

We found out this week that the school thing isn’t going to work out how we’d planned. At least not for a few weeks. For now, I’m going to keep the early writing time and try to do a little bit of work throughout the day, but always be ready to do fun things like play and go for walks and hang out at the lakes.

The new focus began this week, even though Austin is still in morning preschool and Lily is still in afternoon Kindergarten. We’ve had fun! Lily and Austin each got to take individual trips with me to the library, and Lily has mastered her bike without training wheels. We planted all of our seed cups for our new gardens and started a few house projects. I need to find a bit better balance, I’ve literally crossed one thing off my to-do list (and I haven’t even counted how many have been added) but it’s a great way to go into the holiday weekend.

All-in-all, summer is starting off beautifully.