Must. Write. On. Blog.

Hiho. Groovy here.

At least now I'm here. I was there. And there and there and there. We also would have gone there, but we ran out of time.

We got back from the big trip last...um (Groovy gets up to look at the calender) Tuesday night. Yeah, that's it.

I wanted to write about the trip as soon as we got back, but we took a bazillion photos and I can't download (upload?) them onto my computer because my hard drive? She is overloaded with more than 6,000 photos. The photo program is starting to shake her head and screech at me if I even try to look at what's already on there. Kinda makes me scared to try to add more.

And when I try to upload (download?) photos from my 'puter to an online photo developing store, my browser freaks out and shuts down. Not a good sign.

So we ordered an external hard drive to keep out pics and music on. It should be here very, very soon. I will move all our photos over to the new drive and organize them so I can remember what the heck they are pictures of. But until then I shall have to go on without showing you all photographs of our fun and exciting trip.

Instead, I shall give you this highly condensed recap of our trip:

4,500 - the approximate number of miles we traveled ( 7242 kilometers!)

9 - the number of different hotels/motels we stayed in. (We stayed in the one near D.C. for 2 nights.)

1 - the number of motor homes we saw hauling helicopters behind them on trailers. ;-)

Entertainment of Choice? Hours and hours (and hours) of Adventures in Odyssey. We never get tired of them! For variety we also played the alphabet game and did a scavenger hunt that I had printed up prior to the trip. Silly-head also tried to get photos of every state "welcome sign" we passed. Sadly, there wasn't one in Texas...

Items I forgot to pack: Our family devotion book (That was OK, Girly-Girl led us in a Bible study every day in the car instead.), my make-up (Had to buy more before the weddding!), bandaids (Good thing they have them at most hotels), paper plates (we brought alot of our own food), bread that does not crumble (Vacuum time!), laundry soap (Those little one shot dispensers are expensive!), a fanny pack for touristy walk-abouts (This would have effectively prevented the BHE's Washington Monument fiasco...)

Sights and Experiences: Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Scout's and LittleMiss's (now LittleMRS!) Wedding, href="http://www.thealamo.org/visitors/overview.php">the Alamo, the River Walk in San Antonio, the amazing Aquarium in Dallas, the Hermitage, and, of course, Washington DC where we rode the Metro in to see Ford's Theater, the International Spy Museum, the Washington Monument (yes, we went up...), and the Air & Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian)

Food Fun: (None of these restaurants are located in Maine, so they were a treat for us!)

- Eating gator at Razzoo's

- Incredible BBQ at Rudy's

- Cracker Barrel!!!!

- Sonic burgers

- Milk shakes at Steak and Shake

- Krispy Kreme donuts! We got them at gas stations both times, but they were fresh and oh-so-heavenly!

Surprises:

- There are no yield signs in Kentucky or Maryland - at least, not on the interstate on-ramps,

- an orange teddy bear riding on the side of a dump truck,

- Charades is (are?) very difficult to play in the car - especially at night,

- Girly-Girl threw up on the night after our DC visit.

- I slept incredibly well every where we stayed (except or the night Girly-Girl was sick)

- We had no car trouble whatsoever on the trip, but the tire went flat the day after got back. =O

- All of us had good attitudes for the entire trip!

And that's about it for now. More on the wedding once I have my photos available! I'll catch you all later!

Mediocrity Strikes Again...

Well, at this point in time, I should have written 43,000+ words on my novel. I have not. Currently I am at 16,178 or 16,104, depending on which word counter you choose to believe. Either way, I would have to write about 8,500 words per day to get caught up.

Ain't gonna happen.

I'm a very busy and distracted person. I am SO not a focused, drive-'til-it's-done personality. I'm the same with almost everything from dieting to writing to guitar playing to remembering to drill my girls on spelling.

I'm pretty good at flossing and brushing though. And I work very hard to keep myself reading the Bible and spending concentrated time in prayer. Unfortunately, everything else is pretty much a crap shoot...

I'm a little disappointed, but not overly discouraged. I will write some more today and I AM making real progress on my story. Not only that, but I just received a challenge to write 250-500 words per day. 250 words is nothing. It takes 10 minutes on a tough day. I can DO that! And on a good day I can keep on writing. One thing I have learned from NaNoWriMo is that I can write for extended periods of time when the conditions are right. So I am not quitting. I'm going to keep plugging away at Molasses Swamp until it is FINISHED. Then I'm going to edit it and submit it for publication - even if it takes me two years.

So there.

In other news, we postponed our family Thanksgiving celebration until tomorrow because the BestHubbyEver had to work yesterday and today. If you see a fireman, policeman, medical worker, EMT, paramedic, or convenience store employee, be sure to thank them for working through the holidays!

Because of these plan changes, the girls ended up spending all day and last night with GrammaJ. They're making memories by decorating her tree, making gingerbread houses, watching Christmas movies and probably eating way more sweets than I want to know about. ;-)

I'm supposed to pick them up this morning, but the weather is quite slickery. I may have to wait until this afternoon to go get them.

Since the BHE worked all day and the girls were gone, I had the whooooooooole day yesterday to myself. My original plan was to use that time to write. I cleaned instead. My house is all sparkly now! That way, it'll be all ready when the girls and I put up the Christmas decorations on Sunday/Monday.

I have also learned that I talk to myself when I am alone. I talk to myself ALOT!

In still other news, Scout is engaged and plans to be married on January 6. In Texas. And we're supposed to go.

No, we don't have a plan yet.

The original wedding date was going to be the end of January. The BHE got the dates off work and I was researching ticket prices when Little Miss (soon to be Little Mrs!) messaged me to say Scout's deployment date for Iraq had been bumped up, sothe wedding date was accordingly being changed. Right now the new date falls during an already scheduled busy work week for the BHE. He's trying to get the time off, but the hospital where he works is going through a BigUgly with nurses striking and Admin hunkering down and everyone snarling and baring teeth - Not a good time to ask for favors!

At any rate, I have to hold off getting plane tickets, etc. until we see if he can actually get off work or not. Either way Scout and Little Miss will be coming here before Christmas to see Scout's kids and visit the rest of the family. Hopefully, Funsocksgirl and the J-Man can come too, if finances allow. They're also wanting to attend the wedding in January...

So, December and January are looking quite fun and adventurous right now!

Alrighty, enough rambling from this mediocre blogger. I need to fix my pretty blog decor *cough* and actually do some writing on my novel. Hopefully I'm not going to have to shovel snow...

By the way, Many Thanks to Tara for my pretty blog header!