there's alot of this going on

Poor baby...four teeth at once is no fun. Don't worry she's not self-medicating.

i am the biggest dork in the land

Up until this past weekend the longest amount of time I spent away from Miss K was to go to a football game up in Seattle. However, this weekend I was gone twelve hours on both Saturday and Sunday and I have to say...It was awesome. Although I missed my munchkin terribly I had an amazing time at The Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators Annual Conference. The weekend was filled with good food, great feedback, and amazing speakers. The conference also afforded me the opportunity to geek-out when meeting Holly Black (for those not hip to YA or children's lit, she wrote The Spiderwick Chronicles). Here's me looking like a tool...

I don't know why I always squint like that!! Anyway, she gave a wonderful keynote address along with Dan Santat and E. Lockhart.

I also had the opportunity to get some great feedback regarding Swept, come away with a lot of new ideas for other projects and most importantly I was able to meet, in person, several of the agents I plan to submit to early this summer.

Whew!! I was exhausted by the time it was all over but so incredibly excited.

i'm off to start revisions:)

portlandia and the fam

So as previously mentioned birthday week was capped off by a little trip down to Portland where we arrived bearing gifts...

The Mr. and I are notorious for showing up with junk food, a habit that my family both loves and hates equally. This dozen contained doughnuts (obviously) covered in everything from crushed up Butterfingers, purple Koolaid and my personal favorite Captain Crunch. They're just lucky that I didn't bring a box full of maple bars with bacon (a specialty at Voodoo Doughnut).

We had such a good time visiting the family and I was super excited to see my nieces who are getting so big, FAST! We got a chance to go to dinner with the whole posse and Miss K got loved on the whole time.

We generally don't get to go and visit as much as we'd like considering they're only a couple hours a way but it's always a blast when we do. The funny thing is we typically don't do very much when we do head down, more often than not we all end up in my parents room piled onto their California king-sized bed talking about the weird t.v. shows my dad watches and stealing gummy bears. Maybe that's why I enjoy myself so much, there's never an agenda. We sit and talk about everything from what our hopes and plans are to how M. Night Shyamalan butchered The Last Airbender and whether or not that is forgivable. My sister's and I migrate in and out of the room, now chasing after babies of our own and Mr. Awesome leans against the dresser and throws his two-cents in too. The dogs even congregate in the room. It's one of my favorite things about going to visit.

On Friday my sister, her boyfriend, Mr. Awesome and I all headed out to the movies sans babies and when we returned both our little girls were passed out, having worn themselves out, in between their NaNa and Grandpa on that bed that I love so much:) I think that's just awesome.