A Call For Names

So I've written two and a half chapters of my book.  (Applause goes here.)  The thing is, though, that I think it's about time to stop calling things, "Small Kingdom," "Large Kingdom," "A Kingdom," "A City," "Another Kingdom," "Completely Different Kingdom,"- well, you get the idea.  And even though I've had a pretty good idea of the general location of things in my head, I also think it's time to map everything out for good. 

I had my brother-in-law, Eric, start to make a map over the weekend, but he only had about five minutes and not a lot of information to work with.  At least that was a start.  So I took what he started, and tried working on it last night, but I just didn't have the opportunity and time with having Rebecca crawl around and eat my papers, and having to put the kids to bed, then Becca to bed again and again.  (She has a pretty bad cold.)  Between times putting Becca to bed I told Brian that in order to work on my book I either need to stay up all night long, get up extremely early, or ignore the housework. 

Guess what I picked?  Option number 3!  I haven't even showered yet today (Don't worry Diane, I'll shower before the party tonight), and all I've eaten is cake, which is an entirely different story in itself that has to do with the dog diarrhea-ing twice in her kennel and me texting Brian to bring home chocolate cake.  He brought home the new tuxedo cake from Costco, and I've discovered that if you put your piece in the microwave for about 17 seconds it is just delicious.

Anyway, I downloaded AutoREALM mapping software and have been teaching myself how to use it all morning, and now I am finally putting my map together.  (I'm making mountains right now, and it's fun.)  And this is where you guys come in.  If you want to leave name ideas in a comment, it would help me out so much.  I have a few ideas for names of places, but I need a whole ton more.

First off, I guess you could say this is a fantasy book, but I don't want it to be a it's-hard-to-pronounce-anything type of book.  Whenever people ask me what type of book it is, the only real answer I can come up with is a Shannon Hale type of book.  She's her own genre for me.

What has before been referred to as "Small Kingdom" has a sort of Celtic feel to it in my mind, but I don't want to rip off Irish or Scottish words and just having them all get mad at me for butchering their language, and I also want it to have that Celtic feel, without people automatically thinking, "Ireland!"  Does that make sense?  Small Kingdom is also very farming and fishing oriented and is right by the ocean.

Large Kingdom is more military related, and it has a very Germanic feel to it.

The bad guy's kingdom I have no ideas about yet in that sort of way.

So I think I have the names for those kingdoms, but if someone comes up with something I like better, I'll replace it. I still need names for other kingdoms, cities, lakes, rivers, roads, oceans, etc.  Anything you can think of.  I'll get back to my mountains (oh, and the mountains!  And forests!) and trust everyone else's brains to help me out.  Thank you, everyone!

Conglomeration of Posts

I suppose instead of trying to catch up on posts I've missed, I might as well keep moving forward.  The thing holding me back is that all my pictures from Camp Zarahemla are on my phone, and my phone isn't connecting to the computer right, and we don't have time for me to ask Brian for help in the evenings.  So here's a sum-up, and maybe I'll add pictures of things later.

Camp Zarahemla - So much fun!  We played the Farming Game and other board games.  We ate lots of food.  I think one of my favorite parts about Camp Zarahemla is that I only have to prepare one meal for the weekend, because we all take turns.  Becca and I didn't go outside much, but I did take a moonlit walk down to the lake with Brian the first night we were there, and a short bundled walk with Becca one afternoon.  Ethan and Alyssa played outside in the snow a lot!  Ethan is a die hard when it comes to playing outside.  If anyone was heading out to play, he was with them, and I hear he was fearless on the sledding hill.  All the cousins got along so well this year.  There was only one fight that I head of, and it really wasn't a very big deal.  The cousin talent show was fabulous.  Alyssa coordinated and performed a scene from "The Secret of Kells" with a few of her cousins, Ethan showed his "Lord of the Rings" book that he drew, and Marcus did a hula hoop show with Eliza and Norah when they jumped in and out of hula hoops on the ground. 

my crazy valentine, with the older kids, and Becca's feet

Valentine's Day - We had a fancy dinner at home with the kids - chicken divan, salad, jell-o salad, and frappe punch.  Oh, and my phone sitting on the table: for the last few months Brian's been working on a stereo system that's hooked up to all our devices, so we can play music from anywhere in our house.  We listened to MoZella songs while waiting for Brian to come home and while we ate.  I like her songs, but I can only listen to them for a short while before her voice starts grating on my nerves.

Anniversary - See, this was supposed to be its own post, titled "Two Ones Put Together," because of the song, "Love is Endless" that we've been listening to, again, in short amounts at a time.  Brian's and my 11'th anniversary was that Thursday, and we didn't really do anything.  Brian had a PECCA dinner to go to for work, and he cleared it with me way in advance that he would be going out without me on our anniversary.  I enjoyed just doing an easy dinner at home with the kids, then putting the kids to bed, which is when Brian came home, and we had some quiet time together.  Oh, and he brought me some dessert from the restaurant, which was really yummy. 

The real thing we did for our anniversary and Valentine's Day, combined, is get a picture for our home.  Back when we were in college we would look through all of James Christensen's paintings and just dream of having one for our home.  We've always wanted the 10 Lepers, but it's way to crazy expensive, but we also like Hold to the Rod,  College of Magical Knowledge, and a few others.  My favorites that Brian's not as into are Lawrence Pretended Not to Notice That a Bear Had Become Attached to His Coattail, and Your Plaice or Mine.  So we were looking a while back and really liked Desirable Above All Other Fruit, and then we found it for a really good price (from what we know, James Christensens hardly ever go on sale) at a local store that was going out of business.  So, long story, short:  we bought and framed it for our present to each other.  And it is beautiful.

So there's the catch up.  I need to finish writing, because it's 8:02, and we're supposed to be having breakfast, and now I can't remember what I sat down to blog about in the first place.  Oh well.

Scripture Reading Motivators

Yes, I know I have a lot to catch up on.  Camp Zarahemla, Valentine's Day, our anniversary, etc.  But before I do that (in a day or two, hopefully, maybe tomorrow, eh, who knows?) I'd like to tell everyone what is keeping us going on our scripture reading this year.  I figure if it's helping us, maybe it will help someone else.

One of the big reasons for documenting this, is that last night Brian and I went on our anniversary date, and we didn't realize that we'd be out as late as we were.  When we got home, the kids were already in bed, and we realized, "We didn't have family scripture study today!"  And that's actually a big deal now, because our stake presidency has challenged us to feast on the scriptures every single day, and we've taken that challenge very seriously.  Plus, I know that we have to read every day, because once you miss a day, it becomes so much easier to miss more.  Up until yesterday we had read every day for the entire month of January, and all of February so far, and we're really proud of ourselves.  (Yea, us!)

So I was thinking about it today, and trying to figure out a way that missing scripture study doesn't happen again, and then become more regular until we're not reading at all, and the thing that came to mind was those signs they have in factories saying how many days it's been since an accident or injury.  So I copied those.  I got out a small picture frame and a white board marker, and we're going to count the days that we've had consecutive scripture study as a family.  The plan is to make it cute with a scrapbook paper background and some vinyl saying, "days that we've read the scriptures," but the cute-ifying of things doesn't always happen, and that's okay.  Right now we just have a big "1" in the frame.  (Yea, us!)

The other things that we're doing, and I may have mentioned this before, are specific jobs for each of the kids to do to keep track of our scripture reading progress.  Alyssa marks an "I read the Book of Mormon" chart from Sugar Doodle, Ethan marks off the date on a calendar (and he was quite upset when he couldn't cross off the 18th), and Marcus puts a coin in a jar that we'll use the money from to go out for ice cream or something when we finish the Book of Mormon.  Sometimes it's a penny, sometimes it's a quarter, or anything in between.  We'll see what we have when we get to the end.  And for my personal study I'm using a chart I put together on ldsscripturetools.com, where I put in the date that I want to finish the Book of Mormon and it calculated how many chapters I need to read each day and made a chart of which chapters I need to read on each day.

I guess the most important part of this post is my testimony that I've noticed such a difference in the spirit of our house, and definitely in my attitude since we've been reading the scriptures regularly.  I love the Book of Mormon, and we've all learned so much in the last month and a half, and I'm really really excited to see what growth happens in all of us as we continue to read and study as a family.

This Kid Had A Great Birthday

Ethan turned six this last week.  He is growing up so fast!  He is my kid that is up at six in the morning, sometimes before Brian and I get up.  He's the one that gets ready for school (almost) every morning all on his own, including saying his morning prayers, although he is starting to sneak in some play time in the mornings as well.  He loves dinosaur oatmeal; says he loves fish, but doesn't actually eat fish; likes to wash the dishes; and loves to play computer games.  The thing he's been saying the most of lately is, "Mom, I want to do something fun," or "I have nothing to do that's fun," and usually that means he wants to watch TV or play computer.  Actually, a couple of weeks ago, when he wasn't allowed on the computer, he kept saying, "I just feel like I need to exercise my hands," hoping that I would count moving the computer mouse as hand exercises.  He loves to cook, and he's a great help in the kitchen.  He's even volunteered to make his favorite dessert, lemon bars, for Family Home Evening tomorrow.

Ethan started his week off by having a combined birthday party with his cousin, Asher.  He requested a dinosaur party with a dinosaur cake, but the cake turned into a volcano cake with dinosaurs on it.  He watched me decorate it, and if I was a nicer mom, I would have let him pipe more frosting than just a line of lava and a couple of trees.  He was happy with how it turned out, though.

On his birthday he took dinosaur oatmeal to school for his birthday treat.  These he did help me out with.  He cut the cards, while I stapled them to the oatmeal.  He was very excited about these!

 We had the Activity Day girls over, and they sang him happy birthday before they had cookies.

But he didn't even stick around until the end of the song.  He wanted to go play upstairs with the Salisbury boys.

We also went to red Robin for his birthday dinner.  He ordered a corn dog, which surprised us, because he's been turning into a cheeseburger person.  Before the food came he said he was starving, then once he took a bite of his corn dog, he said he was "stuffed full," but then I told him the waiters wouldn't come sing to him until his food was gone, so he went ahead and ate the whole thing.  We got him a ten-games-in-one set that includes checkers and games like that, and the Pairs in Pairs game, by the same people who did Bananagrams.  (He likes games and puzzles.)

Ethan had his friend birthday party on Thursday after school.  We just included Marcus and invited his cousins, Derek and Asher.  We wanted to keep it small, plus I wanted to do it at a time when they wouldn't have a big sister around to take over - I mean - "help."  We picked everyone up from school, had lunch, opened presents, and built our very own volcano.  I used the moon sand recipe that's been floating around Pinterest (8 cups of flour, 1 cup of baby oil) and loved it.  It didn't stay well enough to keep the volcano shape, so we probably should have used play dough, but oh well.  It worked well enough, and I found it very therapeutic to play with.    We used the elephant toothpaste recipe for the lava, but it didn't erupt right.  When I added the "make it explode" ingredient, it just grew a tiny bit.  I tried adding more hydrogen peroxide (9% - was that the problem?) but that didn't work, so then we went to plan B and threw in a bunch of baking soda and vinegar.

Then, on Friday we had a stay-cation with Brian's parents at the local La Quinta.  We were supposed to go up to the cabin this weekend, but it didn't work out, and Dan and Diane still wanted to do something fun, so they came up with this.  We played games, had the pool all to ourselves, ordered pizza, and just visited and had fun in the hotel room.  Diane told me today that they had planned on spending the night, but at 1:30 someone having a different sort of party was put into the room next to them, so they decided to spend the rest of the night in their own bed.  It was a lot of fun!

Becca looks worried in this picture, but she really did enjoy it.

She looks a little bit happier in this one.

Brian thought he had bubbles on his face, but as you can see, he didn't.

On A Sunday

Becca fell asleep soon after church today, but I didn't lay her down right, which meant that she woke up about five minutes after I left her room.  I heard her make a noise, which I thought was a cry, but when I went to go pick her up, it turned out that she had flipped herself over and was facing the other direction and was making out with one of her teddy bears.  She was growling and laughing and having a great time.  Honestly, I've never seen a little girl baby that growls as much as she does. 

 

 The teddy bear in question is named Tucker.  He's the lighter brown bear that she's almost on top of.  But it doesn't do a lot of good to point him out, because the darker brown bear behind her - see him back there? - is also named Tucker.  We got them when I took her to the emergency room after our car accident last month.  I tried to take her to urgent care, but they wouldn't look at her since she's a baby, so we had to take her in to the emergency room.  The nice gentleman that walked us to our room gave her and Marcus each a teddy bear, and the name on both tags said, "Tucker," so we went with it.  I don't know if they'll remain the Tucker Twins as she gets older, or if she'll someday rename them.

This picture is just to show that cute mole on her left wrist.  You can barely see it, but I noticed it when I uploaded the photos, and I wanted to share.  I love that mole!

Snow Day

All weekend long I kept hearing, "It's supposed to snow on Sunday," then "It's supposed to snow on Monday," then "It's supposed to snow on Tuesday," and it finally dumped a good 10 inches or so late Tuesday night.  Ethan was the first to tell me that it was supposed to snow, because his Kindergarten teacher told him about it, and he was so excited all weekend.  He even spent Sacrament meeting on Sunday having Brian feed him letters so he could write, "It will snow storm on Monday."

Ethan already had school off yesterday, because it was afternoon Kindergarten's turn to go on the short Wednesday, and Alyssa got a two hour delay.  She didn't want to go, especially after she heard our neighbors were staying home, but I told her it would probably be just one big party, and it sounds like it was.  They watched, "Rio," did some math worksheets, and played "Heads Up 7 Up."

The kids had so much fun playing in the snow.  They were ready to go out around 7:30 in the morning, so I sent them to play, then they came in for shortbread cookies and hot cocoa for breakfast.  we took Alyssa to school at 11:00, then headed over to my parent's to play their Disneyland Kinex game, then we picked Alyssa up at 1:40, she made some Pillsbury Valentine cookies that Brian's mom gave us, and we had a fun afternoon cleaning the house, playing in the snow some more, and working on projects.

Brian's office even rescheduled people so they could close at 3:00, so he was home early, too.  We've been getting office furniture on Craigslist, and we're starting to plan and decorate his den.  My instinct is to call it an office, but he refers to it as a den, so that's what I'm going with.  "Den," sounds more relaxing, I think, which is probably why he prefers it, too.  So Brian's office (work office) is right next store to a JoAnn Fabric store, so he hopped over there at lunch and sent me pictures of fabrics he likes for the curtains.  I think he's having fun having something of his own to decorate.

I also set up my Silhouette Cameo last night, and let me tell you I had so much fun.  That thing is amazing!  I've worked with both my mom's original Silhouette and my Cameo, and I can safely say, 100%, that the Cameo is a thousand times better.  When my mom and I would do projects with hers, we would get a great final outcome, but it took so much time arguing with the machine, and re-cutting things that got messed up during the cutting.  I cut a whole bunch of vinyl last night and the only problem I ran into was that I accidentally chopped off the tip of Marcus' nose when I was cutting (by hand, with scissors) his sillhouette off of the roll of vinyl.

So here's a little bit of what I did last night:

Alyssa - so beautiful!

Ethan - so serious

Marcus - I couldn't get him to hold still!

Rebecca - absolutely adorable!

Now our entry way is one step closer to being finished.  I used a tutorial to make the silhouette shape and another tutorial to cut it with the Cameo.  I made the flower for Alyssa's hair by converting Googled shapes into cuttable shapes, and the headband for Becca by just playing with shapes in the Silhouette software.  Brian and I are going to take each other's pictures later today, so we'll be added to the wall soon.

The Book

Last night I had a dream about a magical lion, who was being held prisoner by an evil queen.  He turned himself into a man to be able to escape, and he happened to escape at the same time one of the queen's priestesses was also running away.  Now, in my dream there was no romantical connection between these two characters, but if I were to write a book about them, there definitely would be, because, well, I like romantical connections, G rated, of course.  So these two are running away from the queen's guards and hiding in a tree with a little boy - I don't know how the little boy showed up, but they were protecting him, and Brian had a pretty good idea about who he should be - and then I woke up, and it was a lot cooler in my dream than I've told it, and I thought, "That would be a great book!"

(On a side note, Brian has James Bond type dreams that he wakes up to thinking, "That would be a cool movie!"  He's told me about them, and they probably would be very cool movies.)

But after thinking about this great book, and thinking, "I'll write it as soon as I'm done with the one I'm writing now," I then thought, "Oh, shoot!  I only have one page of that book written."  Yep, one page.  But, you know, that's progress.  I just need to get going on it.

I've been doing really well with my other goals, mostly because I have a set and serious plan to accomplish them: reading my scriptures aloud to Becca when I put her down for her morning nap (which makes her conk out real fast), setting a very specific task each month for food storage and emergency preparedness, etc.  I think I need to come up with a time every day and say, "This is my time to write," otherwise it might be years before this book is finished.

One thing that's helping and inspiring me is a girl I went to church with during all my growing up years.  A couple of years ago she announced on her blog that she was going to write a book, and now it's finished and will be debuting in April.  Isn't that cool?  Every time I read one of her posts on Facebook I think, "Alicia's a mom, and she found the time to write her book, so I can do it, too."  By the way, Alicia's book is called Emerald City, and it's set in Seattle.  I can't wait to read it.  And I'll probably keep a copy on my bedside table to remind me that the goal is attainable.

So to refresh my memory about what I've written and planned so far, I'll give you guys a little bit of information about my book.  The heroine is named Maura and the hero is Bowen.  Brian came up with Bowen when we were on our way to Great Wolf Lodge.  He kept naming cities we were passing when I was trying to come up with names for the different cities and kingdoms for my book, and when he said, "Bowen," I thought, "That's perfect for the prince's name!"  The villain is named Kendrick, but in every thing I've written so far, he's referred to as Bad Guy, or B.G. 

Here's a little snippet of the Prologue.  Don't be too critical of it.  When I read through it just now, I found many things just in that paragraph alone that I want to change, but that's just the nature of a rough draft.  Anyway:

He quickly descended, holding the precious book carefully with one arm.  Sitting on the stone floor, he opened the cover and silently ruffled through the pages.  He knew there was a lot of work ahead of him to learn the language that the spells were written in.  He also knew through his studies that this work couldn’t begin while he was still in the cave.  The only person that was allowed to use magic in the cave was the mage that the books had belonged to long ago.  To everyone else it was strictly forbidden.  He(name?) knew he should take the book home with him to study and learn from, but the words on the first page caught his attention, and in his excitement he read them, sounding them out slowly, even though he did not know their meanings.  He whispered the words as he read, loving the feel of them on his lips.  A slight rush of air came swirling from the page and circled twice around him before heading toward the cave entrance.  Once this small wind left his skin, he assumed that it had dissipated into the air.  He never knew how strong those whispered words were, or how far they traveled.