Strawberry Days 2008

So my mom decided a few years ago that she needed to start up some new family traditions. One of those she wanted to start was an annual "Strawberry Days" celebration. She planted loads of strawberry plants intending the whole family to get together and pick them sometime in August every year. Well, there have never been many strawberries to pick, either because they don't grow fast enough because it's too cold, or the deer eat most of the plants. This year, she decided she had to have SOMETHING there that had to do with strawberries, so this was what she came up with...


Ella REALLY loved the chocolate strawberries. She kept picking up new ones just to lick the chocolate off.



Mostly Strawberry Days means getting together and hanging out doing a whole lot of nothing. I wish we had gotten a picture of everyone on their respective laptops, it was pretty funny. I think we figured out there were no less than eight laptops in the house while we were all there.



The latest Spaulding family photo. Take a close look at Ella's face--she looks like she's mad at the camera. Leo has the right idea, he decided to hide in the shadows to protect his eyes.



Matt and Deneal had a big announcement. They had Ashton unzip his hoodie with a big reveal... Deneal is due in March :D



A bunch of us went over into Blackhawk to do some shooting on Labor Day. Tom and I finally got to shoot a muzzle loader. Isn't that smoke cool?










We took Devin's projector outside and watched a movie on the side of the house. The movie wasn't one any of us will probably ever see again, but it was a lot of fun being out there. The next morning, the kids took all the pillows and blankets we had taken outside and piled them up to jump in. Ella especially loved playing with Ashton; they got along really well.



Here are Ashton and Ella feeding one of Mom's baby goats. You can't see it so much in this picture, but Ashton is a bit nervous of the goat, almost as much as he is with dogs. He keeps backing away like it's going to bite off a finger or something.

FINALLY FINISHED!!!

I feel like throwing a party tonight. I just finished the basic first draft of my book. I hit 52,948 words, which got me a bit farther than I expected to be. Now I have the rest of the week to take this at a slower pace and go back and add to the scenes I flew through in my rush to finish the draft.

There's still a long way to go before this will even be remotely readable, but mostly I'm just pleased I survived without having any complete breakdowns.

Thanks to those of you who have been offering me encouragement through this. Don't be offended if you try to get ahold of me and I don't get right back. I think I'm going to be catching up on my sleep in celebration! I'm hoping to have another draft of this story finished by the end of September so I can start passing it out and getting feedback from friends and family.

Attempting the Utterly Ridiculous!

So Tom and I have been trying to find the best ways for each of us to get some serious writing done. We've been looking into books on writing and editing, and what it seems the universe has been trying to tell us is that the book in a month style is just right for us. I'll try to keep this ticker updated as to my progress, but my goal this month is to finish the first draft of a 50,000 word novel. It will be far from a completed work, but it's a start. Next month Tom will get to try this and I'll pick up the household chores and meals. We're not exactly the normal couple, I realize. I'd appreciate any encouragement getting through this!

As of right now, I have 9,042 words out of the 50,000.

I'm a rotten blogger!

Holy cow--I sure didn't realize it had been so very long since we posted on our blog. Pretty sad, really. Our life has been going crazy (as per usual, I suppose). Tom and I are both trying to work more on our writing. Tom is getting to write full time from home--mostly copywriting for companies trying to get their websites up--which has been fantastic. We're enjoying seeing more of each other and spending less on gas. Good time for it, lol. We're both working on some freelance short stories and also novels. It's been really fun to make writing a higher priority in our lives, although I admit I still have a hard time just seriously writing when we're in the same room together. I'm too much of a talker I guess, *blush*. We'll try to keep you updated as these projects progress.

Ash has been pretty sick. We had to change her dogfood from what she was on for awhile. She's lost a lot of weight and is shedding like never before. This is saying something, since she has always been a crazy shedder.





It's like she has a litter of puppies every couple of days. Pretty gross, huh? Hopefully this will slow down to normal shedding soon :P

Well, I'll really try to be better at this. Have a great day!

Ella's Birthday party

Okay, for now I'm just going to put up a bunch of photos we took at Ella's birthday party last weekend. I'll come by and talk about them all later, but I figure if I put them on here I'm more likely to get it done. Enjoy!!

Amy's Birthday Party

Okay, we're getting the super cheesy pictures over with first. Here are Tom and myself posing as we were getting ready for our company to come over. I took most of the pictures, so this is the only one I'm actually in, lol. Tom was a really good sport and decorated and really got the house cleaned up. It was nice, because I had a Relief Society lesson I needed to work on.






Now this was the coolest cake I have ever had. My friend Kelsey made it for me, and if you have ever played games with us, you probably recognize the theme she's got going here. It was great! There's no better theme for me than board games, and as Settlers of Catan is one of my favorites, it was perfect for me. You can't see it well in this picture, but there are even little number tokens and settlements and roads all around the cake. Way to go, Kelsey! I was totally impressed. All of the hexes are hand-painted with food coloring on fondant (rolled out icing).



Here are Jeff and Crystal with their kids. Jeff looks like a demon with his red eye. I tried to fix it but because they're so very red it just kept blacking out half of the photo. What a cute family, though!



More Leo and Ella huggy pictures. They were so cute all night, going from lap to lap getting their loves and hugging everyone. Here they are with Uncle Devin.



Here is Rosa. Didn't get much of a smile there :S. Not sure what Leo is trying to get into here, but he was constantly intrigued by everything around him that he wasn't supposed to have. He kept stealing Doritos off of people's plates because he likes them so much, but he can't have some of the ingredients in them so we kept having to take them away. At least we had some special ice cream there he could have, and that distracted him most of the time.



How could anyone resist this face? I don't think I could say no if she asked me anything!



We played Harry Potter Scene It and Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. Devin was kind enough to lend us his movie projector, so we had a huge-sized screen to watch it all on. We all enjoyed ourselves, and the teams were neck and neck the whole time.



There's Summer's cute head in the foreground here and Tom in the back having a drink.



Ella wrapping Grandpa around her little finger. There are Kelsey and Sam eating in the background.



These are the nice flowers Tom picked out for me. I think he did a good job :D



--Amy

Amy's Birthday

I really had a nice birthday this year (though I guess the partying isn't over yet). Tom took the day off today, and I only worked a few hours. We got to sleep in, and then after I got off of work and he finished some errands (which included picking up a really nice vase of flowers and balloons from a local flower shop--way to go, Tom!), we went out to lunch at Marie Calendars. After that, Tom let me drag him around town to do some shopping I wanted to do. Thank goodness he had his MP3 player with him, he was able to listen to his favorite talk radio podcasts while I looked through scrapbook supplies at a craft store. Not his favorite place to be--I think he likes me ;D

After all of the shopping, Tom took me to a movie called Penelope. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. Very cute--it's definitely acceptable for families, and it had a good theme. It was very much a make you feel good sort of movie. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store for some snack foods (had to be well stocked for my party tomorrow).

Okay, I don't really know why I just gave you an intensive travel log. I think I must be tired.
I just thought I'd put up a quickie post to thank you all for being in our lives. We love your friendships and look forward to many more years of the same. Thanks for all of your calls and messages, it's always nice to hear from you. I'll put up some photos of the party we're having tomorrow night (I guess it's tonight now since it's past midnight already).

--Amy