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A Weekend of Fun and Remembering….
This weekend has been coming for over ten months.
Ten months of training.
Endlessly, tirelessly, and furiously training.
For what? you might ask?
A 2.4-mile swim
A 112-mile bike ride
A 26.2-mile run
ALL IN THE SAME DAY.
My sweet hubby has been training for this for nearly a year. Throughout all that training, he worked through the diagnosis of his mom’s cancer, two of her surgeries, my surgery for an ovarian cyst (no cancer, thankfully), and ultimately his mother’s death.
His mom, Lynn, was supposed to be here for this event. To cross the finish line with him as a cancer survivor/fighter, but the dang disease took her October 24th, 2011.
So, he runs this race in memory of her.
His Dad is coming in Lynn’s place so this race, although an accomplishment to complete the training in itself, holds special meaning to us all.
I hope you will join in and cheer my sweet hubby on.
CLICK HERE for the link to the Ironman Site. The race is todaySUNDAY the 20th. It starts at 7am (AZ time.) My hubby, CHARLIE, is bib number 1580. You can even track his progress on that site. Super cool!!
So, send up your thoughts and prayers that he is safe, healthy, and can finish! I’ll be down there the entire day so if you’re in the area, keep an eye out for me. I’ll be the one frantically cheering on my sweet hubby! Come by and say hi!
Have a super weekend
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Wasteland Photo Time
Hey, everyone, we had a BLAST at the book signing yesterday. Took TONS of pictures and I’ll post some later, but here are a few:
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But, you know what I want to see?
Pictures of YOU with WASTELAND! Yep. If you have a copy of Wasteland, whether it be paperback, Kindle, Nook, iPad, whatever….I wanna see you with it!
So, send me your pictures to [email protected].
Why? you might ask….
There are a few reasons.
1. It’d be FUN! I’d just love to see you with Wasteland. We’ve got to have some fun along this crazy busy journey of life.
2. It’ll earn you FIFTY entries into the Kindle Giveaway (already have a Kindle? It’s okay, you can get an Amazon gift card instead)…Details HERE.
3. I want to save them. You only have a debut novel once, and I want to enjoy every single aspect of it. You all have helped make this possible. And yes, ALL of you. When you buy Wasteland, you help. When you tell someone about it, you help. When you post a review somewhere online, you help. So, THANK YOU!
You have until September 30th to send in your pictures (5pm Pacific time) to earn the extra entries. You can send in a bunch if you like, and I encourage it, but you will only get the fifty entries. By sending me your pictures, you are approving their use on my blog, Facebook, Twitter and other means of promotion for Wasteland. But don’t worry, I won’t do anything wonky with them. It’s all in good fun.
Here’s one to get you started….
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Movie Quotes–The Week of Love
I know I usually do movie quotes on Wednesday, but I have a special post planned for that day…so here we go with a special sappy, love story, gushy version of Movie Quotes.
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1. Brains stick with brains. The bomb could go off and their mutant genes would form the same cliques.
2. You look good wearing my future.
3. Oh no, come on, you don’t know that. Hey he asked you right? Maybe you guys could, like, um you know get a house together and, like, buy some diamonds and a horse. I don’t know.
4. Wave good-bye to your buddies, Mayonnaise! Oh, I forgot. You don’t have any buddies, do you? Only customers!
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Leave your guesses in the comments. If you have any sappy love quotes you want to share—please do! Let’s see if we can guess them!
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I’m in IOWA!
Okay, no Iowa jokes….well, only if they’re funny.
Yep, I’m here in Iowa for a few weeks. I’m super excited, too, because I get to spend time with Charlie’s parents.
You might remember Lynn from my posts about her here and here and here.
Yeah, I kinda like her (and her son…LOL) Anyway, I came to Iowa to hang out with her and help around the house as she works to get stronger after her big surgery so she can face another round of Chemo.
Oh, and I’m sure we’ll be talking writing–JUST a little bit. Considering I have to get going on my Violet Midnight edits, I’m sure I’ll be doing some editing as well.
I went for a run today. It’s kind of creepy-fun running the paved trails through the corn fields. Stalks taller than me on both sides….Feels so Children of the Corn-like….. -
Trust…
This past weekend I got to hang out with my soon to be 11 year-old nephew, Luke. He flew in from Colorado all by himself.
I love having him around. Such a great kid.
But an 11-year old boy…what the heck will I do with him while he’s here?
LOL
No, he’s really easy going, but I met up with a friend and she suggested rock climbing.
I’m like, “Um–NO!”
Yeah, I’m kind of a wimp–I know my history of speed skating, road/mountain biking would suggest otherwise–but still…ROCK CLIMBING?
I stepped out of my comfort zone and at least called. Turns out he was too young to Belay for me, so I was safe from having to scale the 30-foot walls, but then it dawned on me. I’d have Luke’s life in my hands.
Literally.
Silly Luke! I’ve never had that. I don’t have kids. I have a couple of dogs, yeah, but still…this was a HUMAN life. This cute, funny, awesome kid—–>
I sucked it up and got all the waivers out to Luke’s Mom to sign and all that fun stuff.
So, 1pm on Friday of last week we made our way to Ape Index.
We got buckled up. We did our lesson and Luke had a little fun…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj_ELn9E1Nk]
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And then…we were on our own.
YIKES.
He's nearly 30-feet up on this one! It took a few tries before we both gathered up our nerve but then he took off. Look at him go!
The whole experience got me thinking about trust. Holy cow the trust he had in me to hold him steady should he fall or slip. I was both honored and scared. More honored than scared…the fear only lasted a little while. Then I thought about all the people I trust and I realized how truly blessed I am.
Sure, I’ve been betrayed before. I think we all have, right?
But just because one restaurant screwed up our meal, it’s not like I’d NEVER go out to eat again. Or, just because I went to one bad movie, it’s not like I’d NEVER go to a movie again.
You just learn with each bump, right? You’ve heard me say that a few times on this blog before, huh?
Anyway. We had a blast, and besides a few blisters on our hands, we arrived home in one piece.Who knows, maybe some of this will end up in one of my future novels….
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Inspiration
I usually do a “This Writer’s Journey” post here, but I decided to take a break from that today.
No profound reason or anything, just…because.
Instead, I wanted to share a bit of inspiration with you. We all have people in our lives who inspire us, and sometimes they do something that just makes you sit back and say, “Holy cow, I’m super lucky.”
One day I sat at my laptop and opened up the cover to start up some writing. And this is what I found:
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That’s from my sweet hubby. Sometimes we just need a little pick-me-up, don’t we?
What’s something inspiring that’s happened to you this week? You might have just the story someone else needs to see today!
