Rock Creek Canyon

Zach kept talking about the flamingos!

Its so great to be together!

The lights were so fun!

And of course, they had a motorcycle Santa. Zach was excited about this one too!!

About half an hour outside Burley is Rock Creek Canyon, where some family, (idk the whole story behind it), decorates their house to the MAX and lets people drive through or walk through. They've even put up a Christmas village in their garage. Every square inch of roof, of yard, trees, etc is covered in different kinds of lights from shorts and flip flop lights, to farm ones, beer pint ones, they have poker card lights and pink cell phone lights, you name it, they had it! As well as large things like Santas and Snoopys. They had a live camel there too. Zach loved it. (And I did too!!)

Blue-eyed Boys

See any resemblance? :) It's fun!

Love the hat!

Woops! Came out sideways but still cute.

Not much to say, other than life is going on! I'm not too good at blogging, but I like to update pictures every once in a while. I should do better, the way some people post every day or for every big event and even the little ones, but sorry, I don't. :)

Anywho, Kellan had the cutest outfit on on Sunday with a little hat, so we took some pictures, and I've got a few of him smiling too. He's such a smiley little sweetie. Oh, another piece of good news, Zach is potty trained! YAY! And Kellan's been sleeping eight hours at night, so that's awesome too. Anywho, here they are.

I'm Alive!

I made the boys matching taggie blankets.

Little Kellan, on his way home from the hospital.

Brothers!

Zach's first time holding Kellan. He kept saying, "I love my baby brother!" and "So cute!"

Hey everyone! I'm not even sure if anyone will see this since I'm such a slacker and haven't posted in about six months, but I decided to update it since we have another set of big news.

Drum roll....

Kellan Mark Pearson was born last Friday, March 12. He was 7 lbs. 14 oz., and has been such a little blessing! He's got the cutest little squeaky cry and his big brother is so good with him, he's really an easy baby, and I just feel so blessed to have two such adorable boys! I got induced so that we could plan it for Duane to be there, and it was so nice to have him for the entire time, instead of the frantic phone call and the rush here from Burley. Mom has been staying with me for the week since Duane had to go back to work in Burley (gotta go where the money is, right?), and she's been such a big help.

Sorry about the lack of book updates. My manuscript got rejected, but that's been a blessing as well. It's really pushed me to work hard and get the book even better. I took an online class on character development and it has reshaped my whole story, so I'm basically rewriting it, but it's so much better than it was before! I'm going to a writers conference in Portland this August, and I'll get to pitch to four agents one-on-one while I'm there, so hopefully someone will show some interest! But I'll also send out more queries and just keep trying until someone picks it up!

Anywho, here's our boys!

EXCITING NEWS!!

Many of you know I've written a book and have been trying to get it published, which is not an easy process. I sent out query letters in June and received 100% rejections. But that was probably a good thing because it got me to do some more research (which I should've done in the first place! Hey, live and learn, right?) and I completely revamped my query letter so that it was kick-butt awesome compared to the last one I did and last Tuesday I submitted it to about seven more agencies.

I was having internet problems and finally Friday morning I asked Mom to check that email account for me and she sent me this.....

"Thank you for submitting your query to $%^&@. We read it with great interest and would like to see the full novel as well as a 3-5 page synopsis describing the book."

An agency in New York wanted my full manuscript!!! I nearly fell over! I did a lot of screaming and a weird kind of surreal, happy crying and I called Duane to read what she'd sent (she sent me their actual words) and I was so muddled he could hardly understand me, but it was an exciting day!

Usually agencies only ask for a few sample chapters, so I was a little blown away that they wanted the full thing up front, and they said they read my query with "great interest." WAH!! Anywho, I finally got everything exactly as I wanted it and sent the manuscript and a synopsis Sunday night. So now it's just a waiting game. They said it'll take up to 12 weeks to review my work, and that I was welcome to check with them after 8 weeks. What am I going to do for 8 weeks? JK

Needless to say, I've been very excited. I know it doesn't mean I'll get my book published. It is possible that they won't like what they read and I'll get the rejection later, but it's a step in the right direction in any case!

Watch out world, here I come!

Busy Busy Busy!

Okay, so Zach attack has been having tons of fun lately. It was his second birthday on the tenth and we had a little party for him. He couldn't quite figure out what to do with the lit candles on his cupcake, so he picked it up and tried to shake the flames off! It was hilarious.

He also carved his first pumpkin and that was fun. He has to go out onto the front porch to say, "Hi pumpkin," and take its "hat" off (the lid).

And last night we had a Halloween party at my mom's house and Zach got to wear his costume. He made such a cute little caveman. I suggested we all play the caveman game where you grunt instead of talk (I just made it up, can you tell?) Anna's kids loved it, but it got a little out of hand. Still, Zach was a cute caveman. We looked everywhere to find a little bone or something for him, but didn't have much luck, so I squished a piece of aluminum foil and spray painted it white. It didn't last long, Zach kept wanting to play with it.

Okay, sorry, caveman pictures to come later. As I've said before, I'm not a pro at blogging!

Leaves

Long time no blog! We moved down the street to our real estate house and not only is the space great, but we have an awesome backyard. Zach has a book where the skeleton rakes leaves and then I saw a little rake at the dollar store, so he was ready for the leaves to begin to fall. And we went out into the backyard and made little piles, he with his tiny rake and me with the regular one. And he loved to run and flop himself down onto the little piles. It was so cute.

The Zoo

Mom and I took Zach to the zoo about three weeks ago and his favorites were the tigers, the bebas (zebras) and especially the kangawoo.

We went at a really bad time of day though--right at lunch--so practically all of the animals were asleep. The monkeys, the tigers, a lot of the animals. Bummer.