Here We Come A Caroling

Miss Golden Delicious and her group of cronies went caroling.  I loaned her the beret Grandpa brought me back from Paris several years ago.  So adorable!  Paris!

G. D. showing me how freezing it is. (and trying not to laugh)  Have fun caroling!

Quilting

Mr. Bechtel's sister's children came up to stay at our house for a few days before Christmas.  E. and I decided to have a little fun making a table runner for her mom.

She did a great job.  Unfortunately, I forgot how to bind quilts and kind of messed it all up.  I gave her the extra material.  Hopefully she and her mom can fix it!

Happy Birthday, Boys!

The Spy Twins turned 15 this year.  What!  I am in shock at how quickly everyone is growing up!

We had a great little party with Grandpa and Grandma.  They gave the boys beautiful brown brushed cotton shirts with their names on them.  Mr. Bechtel made them leather holders for their leatherman tools, and I gave them belts and cowboy scarves.

Nova Spy couldn't decide what cake he wanted so I made him oatmeal.  He liked it.

Happy Birthday Nova!  I hope 2013 is a perfect year for you!

Prairie Spy wanted German Chocolate cake.  I ended up putting regular frosting on it though, because I did coconut for the oatmeal one... confusing!

Happy Birthday Prairie!  May all your dreams come true!

Buckaroo Tree

The Christmas Festivities are beginning at our house.  Granny Smith finally persuaded us it was waaay past time to get a tree up and decorated.  When we were almost done, we realized we didn't have a star or angel for the top.  He said, "Just a second!"  and disappeared back into my room.  Pretty soon he came back with my hat.  He said, "I saw this at Barnard's.  I think it would look good here too."  and put my hat on the top of the tree.

I like it too.

Happy Thanksgiving

This is late I know!  

Thanksgiving was at Crabapple Farm this year.  I had such a nice time that I barely took any pictures, plus my camera ran out of batteries, which was horrid.  But we did have a very nice time including lovely food, a sing a long, a good backyard football game, and lots of left overs.

Little Honey Crisp was a big fan of the pickles.  I'm not sure about her mom :)

My brother, Gravenstein, set himself up at the kitchen sink and helped with dishes and did the potatoes.

My other brother, Winesap, created an incredible scavenger hunt involving clues everyone was amazed at.  He mined the family trivia, including what Braeburn is doing on his mission.  Impressive!

Nova Spy entertaining Honey Crisp.  (I am a bad photographer!) Sorry Honey!

And Golden Delicious setting the tables.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The Hopeful Hunters

The boys keep trying to get a deer, or an elk, or anything, really... but no far nothing.

I love how this picture has all the junk from the previous nights book signing (more on that later.) and how it is still completely dark outside. (miracle that I am awake enough to make breakfast and take this picture.) The boys were just waiting for Bro. Burnham to come pick them up.

They've still got a little time though before the season is over.  Maybe they'll still get something.  Our freezer is pretty empty.  I would love some elk roasts for sunday dinner.  That would be really nice... and much less expensive than buying half a beef.  

NaNoWriMo

And here we are:  the super heros of writing, the official contestants of National Novel Writing Month -  the 30 day race to write 50,000 words,  the crazy Miss Delicious and me. 

I was dragged into doing this because because Golden Delicious is writing a book for her senior project and she says she needs a support system.  I thought it sounded moderately easy, how hard can writing a book be, right???  But now we are on our second week and things are getting a bit dicey.  

We did have a hilarious time last Saturday, though.  We decided to go to an official "write-in" at the Villa Coffee House.  We were a bit nervous, having never done something like this.  We parked several blocks away and as we were walking towards the shop we saw a tall, greasy, slightly overweight young man clutching a lap top computer in front of us. 

"What do you want to bet he is going to the write-in too??"

"No!"  

"Yes!"

He walked in the door in front of us.  G.D. and I scurried to the back and hid in a corner to observe... and we can now report that everything you have ever heard about authors being strange is...

ABSOLUTELY TRUE!!

All the authors were seated at one long table.  There was an enormous man with a vintage star wars shirt on with a straggly red beard, our previous greasy fellow, and lots and lots of larger ladies with uncombed hair pulled back in severe looking buns.  We overheard random snatches of conversation such as, "I totally agree, Johnny Depp is the most overcast actor of our generation."  and "Perhaps a small story will illustrate the point I'm trying to make..."

Golden Delicious and I ordered our hot chocolate and decided we'd stay for one hour.  We forced ourselves to work, slavishly writing down lots of words, while the rest of them talked and laughed.  We later found out they spend the first hour socializing and then get to work, but by that point we were already done and headed for free bread and a peanut butter bar at Great Harvest.

We did have a very nice conversation with the "master coordinator" for our area.  She was helpful and super friendly (she didn't think we were with nanowrimo at first because we were hiding) but she gave us all sorts of hand outs and stickers based on the super hero theme for this year.  Our favorites are the Zorro masks which we wished we had gotten several days earlier for Halloween, and which she told us we should put on "whenever we were stuck because they are magic and will help you write."

Fantastic!!

I do not think they work though,  and I am writing this blog post instead of my 1,667 words that I need to do today for my future best seller novel. Actually, it's all complete rubbish.  But the whole motivational tone of nanowrimo can be summed up like this:

"Of course what you're writing is terrible.  Of course it's awful.  Press ON!  Keep writing!" 

and so we are.