FALLin'

Today was one of those days...You know. No matter how hard or fast I tried to clean, Jadon ensured that the house looked worse than before. The little rascal. So, I'm giving up cleaning for now. Maybe I should give it up for Lent. Too bad that's still a long way away. But Jadon just went down for his nap (*Finally!*) (I hate it when he falls asleep in the stroller when I run in the morning!)...and instead of being productive--which I should be doing--I've decided I'm going to blog. Go me. :o)
So, here are a few random reflections from the past two months.
To start, here are some pictures from this morning:

BTW, that's red velvet cake mix, not blood :o)

That last picture brings me to my next subject, CLIMBING.
Yes, that is Jadon's new favorite hobby. Every time I turn around, he's discovered a new household object to climb. It has become impossible to fully child-proof our house anymore. He has won. Some proof (I try to keep the camera handy so I can snap the funny shot BEFORE I tell him "No!")

Next, WORK.

One of the reasons I'm so behind here is I chose to become a full-time working mom for the month of September. Long story short, my school district changed the requirements for layed-off tenured teachers to get their full pay for subbing, and now we have to work 21 days in 60 to trigger that full pay. The way I sub (on Mondays only), that would never happen, and subbing is definitely not worth it for me unless I get my full pay. So, when I found out in August, I resigned myself to not subbing this year, which was not a huge disappointment, but the little bit of extra money was useful. BUT, then I got a call asking me to be part of a district team that did CELDT testing for the district for the whole month of September. (All second language learners must be tested every school year to test for progress, which is too big of a job for each school site to do on their own in our very "diverse" district.) Jim and I talked and prayed about it and figured this would be my way to get my 21 days in, which would then set me up for normal subbing the rest of the year. The only problem was finding child care for Jadon. Jim was able to work his schedule around to cover Mondays and Fridays, and then my parents graciously covered one week, and my sister and her hubby covered two more weeks, and the remaining few days we covered with a generous friend and a college student in our group who desperately needed the money. Whew. Unfortunately, due to a few pre-scheduled conflicting plans and that crazy blackout that hit all of southern California, I only hit 16 days in September, which means I had to work two days a week here in October. Bottom line, it was a good experience, and I am grateful to God for giving me the opportunity to make some extra income, BUTTTTTTTTT...I am not cut out to be a working mom!!!!! Man, I am still exhausted, the house is still in disarray, our eating habits have been atrocious and my exercising even worse. Second bottom line, I am SO GLAD I am done. I think I will take a few weeks off of subbing completely just to regroup. ;o) (BTW, to all my friends who ARE working moms out there, I don't know how you do it. Much props to you!)

Next, PINTEREST.

OK, this is my new favorite time waster. I've actually been pretty good, but I could spend hours...But really, it's quite productive. I used to copy and paste pictures of cool ideas into Word documents and save them in folders on my computer. Now, I just Pin It. Lovely. If you've never Pinned anything, imagine having a set of virtual bulletin boards that you can organize, save, and add things to with just the click of a button--and view a ton of other people's cool ideas, too. Brilliant.

Next, WRITING.

Whew, creativity is exhausting. On top of keeping Jadon from breaking his neck, working full time, and trying not to waste time on Pinterest, Jim and I have been doing a ton of writing. First, we've been working and reworking and re-re-working the dadgum script that we've been working on for like three years. I'm ready to shoot the main character. For some reason, we just can't get it right. But we keep trying. Probably the only reason why (OK, besides Jim seeing 25,000 starving kids in our back yard every day and wanting to do something to save them) is that Sony has said they really want to work with us on this project, but they just don't like the project as it is currently (or as it has been for the last half a million drafts!). If you ever think of it, please keep it/us in prayer. We really feel like God wants us to do this, but we are so ready to be done with the writing phase!

Meanwhile, we are ALSO working on the third and final novel of the To Save A Life series. The second book (Jake's Choice) didn't do so well sales-wise, but we really want to finish the story, and we get tons of emails from fans who are begging us to finish it, too, soooooo we've decided to self-publish it. Jim, somehow, is extremely capable of bouncing from story to story to story (including real life and ministry), but I have a much harder time. So sometimes I feel a little schizo. During most of Jadon's nap times, I'm writing about Jake and Amy, and then most of our nights and weekends at home we're writing about Amber, and then the rest of the time I'm living with all the other (real) teenagers in our life. Sometimes it's hard to keep it all straight.

But in light of all our craziness this fall, we do have one more thing that we are VERY EXCITED about...

In 4 short days, Jim and I will be dropping Jadon off with my parents and heading over to LA to embark on a 5 day cruise to Cabo. Yippee! We got a smoking deal on this week and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to take the trip we had originally intended to take 2 summers ago (but then we got Jadon). Funny side note, the trip originally caught our attention as only $250 per person, which is an amazing deal. But when we went to book it, we discovered that price was for a room with two bunk beds. Ha! We quickly decided that wasn't the sleeping arrangement we preferred for our first trip away alone, so we paid a little extra to get the King bed.

On the trip, we look forward to reconnecting just the two of us, relaxing and sleeping (all the way through the night!), eating ridiculously, exercising every day, soaking in some rays, and writing a bunch (we actually do enjoy writing, it's just not as fun when you're cramming it in little bits in pieces wherever you can find the time)...

I guess I should probably get back to being productive now...