Easter Fun

This Easter the Bunny brought us all the FLU! Well we actually all started coming down with the flu a few days before, but we were all nice and sick for the big day. We still tryed to make the best of it.

No Easter is complete with out dyed eggs. As a kid I always remebered it as being so much fun, as a parent it is a nightmare! Who's big idea was it to give small children colored dye? I don't even let my kids play with playdough that often because of the mess. The picture below is the perfect reason to not give children egg dye....they eat it!!!! The first thing William did was put his spoon in the blue dye and eat it. YUCK!

Here I am trying to get him to spit it out.

After all the excitement of eating the dye we were able to get down to the fun part.

Notice the look on William's face. He is really concentrating. His nose also has a nice big blue dot on it.

Christopher did an excellent job.

Nothing says Easter like green fingers. It took two days for all the dye to dissapear.

The Easter Bunny usually comes to our house while we are at church. He is so condiderate! However this year we were not able to go to churh, for fear of spreading our Flu bug, so suprisingly the bunny came while the boys were in the shower. That bunny sure is a sneaky thing.

The Bunny brought some candy, a DVD and toy cars this year. (Note Chirstopher's hair do...I did not do this. He has reached an age when he thinks he needs to comb his own hair and this is the result!)

Here are is William with his new cars/jeeps.

The backyard egg hunt.

More of the hunt.

Showing all the eggs to Grandma. The kids were super excited to see Grandma and Grandpa on Easter. Mom had the Flu so bad that the kids had not seen her in a week.

We all had a great Easter and hope you did too.

Big Talker

When did my baby boy turn into a toddler? Wait I refuse to accept this, I still have one more month before he turns two! Here he is showing off his big boy skills........

My Day With Stephenie Meyer!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!CAUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you do not share my love of Stephenie Meyer and
the Twilight Saga DO NOT READ ANY FURTHUR!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!CAUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Fundraier Project Book Babe. The Book Babe fundraiser was in support of a book buyer named Faith Hochalter who was diagnosed with breat cancer. All I can say is that she must be the BEST book buyer ever because all the authors and artists that contributed to the event were amazing! The authors included....
Chris Gall
PJ Haarsma
Shannon Hale
J.S. Lewis
Dean Lorrey
Stephenie Meyer
Brandon Mull
James Owen
Janette Rallison
Laini Taylor

If you like to read young adult fiction I am sure you have heard of some of these names before. I have to admit that I have not read them all but Stephenie and Shannon are wonderful!

The event was great! I had a blast! It started with musical performances by two different goups. Adam Kump a local 18year old and the Adam Watts Band from Orange County. They were both wonderful, and even better they gave out free CD's.

Next up at the event was the author discussion panel. They had a professor from ASU come in and moderate. The professor was boring but at least he had a few good questions. In fact I would say the authors ran right over the top of the moderator! It made it a lot more fun. They talked about how the writing process is differnet for each one of them, what kinds of kids they were(almost all of them admited to being nerds) and how being a writer affects them. I know this must sound boring but it was more like stand up comedy. They all had a great sense of humor and made fun of one another a lot.

Next up was the raffle. Unfortunaltey I did not win anything. They gave away a ton of signed books and drawings donated by the authors.

Last on the agenda was the live auction. This is when things got really interesting! I was prepared to bid on a few things and did participate until.....well lets just say things got CRAZY in my opinion!!!! Here is a run down of what sold:

The Host Manuscript--$1100

Eclipse Manuscript---$2600

Twilight ARC---$1600

Host Skateboard---$1500

Forever Dawn Epilogue--$5100 (Never before seen or read click here for more info)

Lunch with Stephenie----$6500 x2 (Two women got into such a bidding war on this one that she decided to have lunch with both of them if they each paid the full amount!)

Eclipse Prom Dress---$5500

PJ Haarsma escorting Dean Lorey in the dress

Stephenie & Faith at the Eclipse Prom

Who do you think wore it better???????

After the fundraiser was a private signing event. Since I was crazy enough to pay as much as I did for a ticket (Thank you Ed, I love you) I was able to attend!!!!! At the signing we all recieved a Twilight bag (Yeah) full of hardback books from each of the authors. Then we got to meet with each author to have our books personally signed! It was a lot of fun and all of the authors were very nice. Here are all the pictures

Here I am with Laini Taylor. She was the first author I spoke with and got a posed picture with. As soon as everyone was on the stage the authors were instructed to not allow anyone behind the table with them and no more posed pictures were allowed! I was pretty upset about this. They even had people posted on both ends of every table so no one could cheat. So sorry to say this is the only shot of my with an author.

This is Shannon Hale. I actually had a ten minute conversation with her. She is wonderful. The ladies sitting next to me flagged her down and thanked her for saying that first and foremost she is a Mom. Then the five of us discussed what is means to be a mom and how it soooo important to never say that "I am JUST a stay-at-home Mom." We all agreed that the word JUST should never be used. I always use the term domestic goddess anyway. I have even written it on a credit card application! If you have not read any of Shannon's books you should, they are wonderful.

This is James Owen signing my book. James is also an illustrator so he drew a dragon in everyone on the books he donated, what a lot of work! Mine however did not have one so he drew one for me right there on the spot. Here are pictures of the process

I flipped this picture so the dragon would be facing the right direction.



Here is a picture of Stephenie signing my book. Its too bad the one of her smiling I cut the top of her head off! Oh well I never claimed to be a professional. Actually I am shocked they turned out at all. I had my purse on one shoulder and twenty pounds of books on the other. I looked like a tourist! The one piece of Twilight gossip I did overhear in line was that Stephenie said she actually was thinking about Midnight Sun last week and that she might be able to think about that story again. We will all have our fingers crossed. If you do not know what Midnight Sun is click here.
Since we were not allowed to stand with Stephenie and have a picture taken we were all taking turns just standing in front of her and taking a picture with her in the background. It felt wierd to me but we all had to make the best of the cirsumstances.






Here is what I left with at the end of the day. I was super excited because with the books Stephenie signed for me at the fundraiser I now have a complete signed Twilight Saga!


The best part of my day was coming home to a house that was picked up, dinner had already been made and the boys picked roses for me! I'll take my real life Edward over Edward Cullen any day!