Since I have a minute... or 180

I hate needle pokes.  After finishing up the whole pediatric vaccine regimen thing as a teenager, I figured I was done until I was old.  Ha ha!  Silly me, then I got pregnant.  Of course, this being my third baby, I was pretty well prepared.  I knew all those blood draws were coming.  That doesn't mean I have to like it.  So here I sit at the hospital on a brown plastic couch, having already gotten my blood drawn twice and waiting for two more.  Don't fail your one-hour glucose tolerance test, ladies, because the three-hour test is more than three times as inconvenient.  

On the bright side, the hospital has windows that are letting in the sun, wi-fi, and a very nice lady drawing my blood who has yet to "search" for a vein, so things could definitely be worse.

Anyway, since I'm a slacker, I thought I'd use this time to post a little update.  I need practice writing anyway, because I'm starting to feel like I should be working on something again but not quite sure where to put my creative energy.  Also my first two attempts at writing fiction since October were so bad I wanted to cry.  So here's what's going on:

We're moving!  I can't lie, I'm very excited.  Our relationship with our landlords has never been comfortable and we seriously dislike the apartment we're in right now (we only moved in there in the first place because the place we were going to move into fell through one week before our family moved from Ohio to Utah).  I'm sure it would be a great apartment for someone who is single, newlyweds, or a couple with only one (baby) kid, but for us it's been cramped and depressing to say the least.  Luckily our contract is almost up and this next week we're moving to a duplex down in Provo that has three bedrooms, a great landlady, a yard, a dishwasher, and about twice the square-footage of our current place.  We looked at it once, but went back again yesterday to check it out again (the first time there was still some furniture) and while we were hanging out in our new yard, we met no less than three new neighbors who all have kids the girls' ages!  Yay!  This new place will also be amazing because we aren't expected to let our neighbors into our kitchen to do their laundry, we control our own thermostat, and our internet hookups will be in our own apartment, meaning no upstairs neighbors can A) unplug it randomly or B) use it without paying.  Also the new duplex is a legal rental property, unlike our current one.  Yes, our current apartment is that great.

Anyway, even though it's General Conference weekend (a bi-annual Mormon holiday where we feast on elaborate breakfasts and the Spirit) we're trying to get out of our old place because we hate it so that our landlords can get some other gullible fool renter ASAP and reimburse us for the rest of April's rent.  We're hoping to be completely moved in to the new place by Tuesday.  It would be sooner, but unfortunately the carpets aren't being cleaned until Monday.  In the meantime, our landlady has given us permission to move things into the kitchen, where there is no carpet, because she is great.

So it's going to be a busy weekend for us, which sucks for Will because he has a cold.  If you're in the area we'd love to have you come help, and if not, send healthy thoughts and prayers Will's way (and mine, I don't want to catch it!)

That's pretty much all, except I'm trying to get into this writing thing again.  I'm sort of at a standstill right now because I want to rewrite my old story but I need to do "world building" before I can.  I am the opposite of most fantasy writers (who get "world builder's disease" and never get around to the story itself), instead of getting caught up in the world I keep skittering away from it.  Apparently I'm waiting for it to spring-fully formed into my mind, and my mind is not cooperating.  Sad.

Anyway I think this post is long enough.  Happy Conference weekend everyone!

Writing for Charity 2012

I went to my first-ever writing conference today!  I think it was an amazing choice for a first conference; it was pretty informal and not too massive... probably 250-300 people.  Unfortunately I'm not one to put myself out there, so I only took one sneaky picture when the authors weren't looking.

My sneaky picture of the Fantasy Panel authors:
Mette Ivie Harrison, Brandon Sanderson, and Tracy and Laura Hickman
Not to be overly ecstatic, but *swoon.*

Here's how my day went:

I got there at 9am when registration opened.  I registered, got assigned to Laura Hickman's critique group (she co-writes a lot of things with her husband, Tracy Hickman, who is best known by me for his Dragonlance books, which are great), then proceeded to run around like a chicken with its head cut off because my printer ran out of EVERYTHING at midnight last night and I was three copies short of the manuscript excerpt I needed to participate in said group.  I have to say that the only reason I brought anything to share was because my mom and my friend Diane insisted, but even as I made those copies, I had no intention of having anything of mine read in front of a real author or a bunch of strangers.

At 9:30 the conference officially started off with a huge author panel led by Shannon Hale.  She is hilarious, and I'm grateful that came before the critique sessions, as it gave me a little bit of time to get used to the idea of being in a room with so many famous people and unwind.

Next were critiques.  Lucky for me, I felt a great deal of social pressure to pass my pages when everyone else did.  And you know what?  It wasn't so bad.  Everyone was really nice and I got a lot of constructive comments.  Long story short, I did not pass out.  I also really enjoyed being able to hear snippets from other aspiring authors.  There's a lot of talent out there.

I ate lunch with some girls from my critique group (which was all girls, by the way, and so was about 80% of the conference).  It was amazing to be able to talk to other writers.  Lunch may actually have been the most beneficial part of conference, as me and a few of the other girls exchanged contact info to form a critique group!  Yay!

After lunch were the workshops, which were great, especially considering that I've never taken a creative writing class in my life.  There were four, and even though they were an hour each the time went by fast because the speakers were so good. Also they gave us cookies in between, so that helped.  Then they wrapped up all the official stuff and had a book signing.  Of course, I'm too broke to buy the twenty hardcovers I wanted, but I took my Kindle instead and asked a few of them to sign the case.

Have fun deciphering!  Just kidding.  Starting at the center top and going counterclockwise:
Brandon Sanderson, Bree Despain, Lisa Mangum, Tracy Hickman, Laura Hickman, and Shannon Hale.

All in all, I had an awesome time.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that yesterday my children were the devil and I just needed a break, but I think that was only part of it.  Being able to talk about writing all day and (the most of the awesome of all) meeting people, both aspiring writers like me and well-established authors, made it unforgettable.  Seriously, it was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to go to my next conference!

One last thought: if you live in Utah and want to be a writer (or meet a bunch of awesome ones) you should go to this!  I'm pretty sure they do it every year and it's well worth the registration fee!  Here's a link to the official site and 100% of the registration money goes towards buying books for kids who don't have any!

It's a Girl! Again!

Well, as Kristin pointed out in the comments of my last post, I definitely didn't update my blog "tomorrow."  Probably because, to be completely honest, I was dealing with a bit of disappointment.  I've said that if this baby was girl #3 we'd be done having kids but if the baby were a boy I'd be open to trying again to see if we could give him a brother (and we'd end up with three girls maximum anyway).  

My entire life I have expected to be the mother of both daughters and sons, or at least one of each.  If I had two boys, I would have hoped that baby #3 would be a girl.  I know that raising boys is different from raising girls, and I desperately wanted both experiences.  At the same time, I've always known that I am not meant to be the mother of a large number of children (my definition of "a large number" is  "more than four").

So when we got the ultrasound and found out that we were having our third girl, I didn't really want to talk about it.  I found that I was actually grieving for the son I will never have (barring accidents), which was weird, since he'd never existed in the first place.  At the same time, I have to emphasize that I was never sad about the baby herself.  I never questioned that I would love her, and I will never resent any of my girls for not being boys.  They are each their own person, and I love them for who they are.  I should also mention that Will thought I was silly for being sad about having three girls, since I get a lot of questions about it.  He's never cared about the gender of our kids, only that they're healthy.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there to explain why It's been such a long time since I've blogged.  Now, of course, I'm excited at the idea of another daughter and I can't wait to meet her.  Having three girls will be crazy and amazing!

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On a related note: after much deliberation, HOURS combing through baby name websites, and nagging Will within an inch of his life, we've decided to name her Kairi Jordan (KYE-ree).  We're still trying to decide between Jordan and Jordyn.  Jordan is a family name, but Will thinks Jordyn is more feminine.  I agree, but I worry that since her first name is already going to be... difficult (I'm sure she'll go through life being called "Carrie") I wonder if we should mess with interesting spellings.  Also I worry that the "y" might make her seem a little... fluffy to people who read her name before they know her.  There's a poll up, so vote on which you like best!