October 1st! We made it to level 10.

This little boy is a fox! :)

Good morning, everyone! 

We finally made it to October. This year has been pure insanity, and it doesn't look to be calming down just yet. Yet, we can hope for the best!

I've been kicking it around here lately with home improvements, cooking, cleaning, book writing, promotions, and even managed to order my 2021 planner (woohoo!). 

This coming weekend I'll even be cleaning out my chicken coop as the girls may be feeling a bit neglected lately since my 15yr old has been in charge of them while she was home from school for 6 months. Now that she's gone back to school I'm back out there tending to them and realized the teenager might have slacked a bit on cleanliness. 

On the Homefront, I've been spending a lot of time with my little grandson, Grady. He is a light in this crazy world. He's all smiles when he sees his Gammie and PopPop, and we adore him! He looks soooo much like his mommy (who looks soooo much like me!). 

On the book front, I'm still working on the 8th book in the Liz Baker series. I also wrote a little short Liz thing for a multi-author anthology coming up in the future. I've been reformatting a few of the eBooks to include extras like free short stories and even a full length book. I've joined a few multi-author promotions to boost newsletter subscribers and introduce my readers to other authors who are doing the same with their own lists. I've also been approached by a website looking to add the Alex & Fiona series to their novel-reading site (I haven't decided on that one yet). Lots of things in the works right now! 

In the meantime, I hope all of you are surviving the year. Hopefully October will be a good month and lead us all into the holiday season with a bit more calm.

What's Going On These Days?

My daughter & adorable grandson. 

Happy Wednesday, readers! I hope you're all still surviving the insanity of the world we live in now. It has been a weird year, but we're almost to the end of it. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for 2020 to be DONE. I certainly hope next year is calmer. 

In the meantime, I'm doing what I can to keep things (a.k.a. my sh*t) together and move forward, even if it's at a snail's pace. In the last three months I've had a new grandson, returned to the day job, two kids married, and went on family vacation.

It has been CRAZY!

With all that going on, the book writing has fallen by the wayside. That's not saying zero writing has happened, just that it isn't up to par with my usual production rates. I mean, this baby boy won't stay a baby forever, so I might as well enjoy him. :D

The youngest will be returning to school next month, which (hopefully) will get us back to something closely resembling normalcy. She's been home since the beginning of March and she misses her friends and the school routine. Plus, she'll be turning 16 in January and (hopefully) gets her driver's license. After that, I won't have to do the school driving any longer!

All in all, there are tons of things going on around here, even with a pandemic going on in the world. It just hasn't been book writing at a speed I would prefer. Now I'm going to get my behind out of this desk chair, change clothes, and head to the gym for a workout before heading to the day job for a few hours.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Welcome to the world!

Please welcome my beautiful grandson, Grady Lee! 

After two days of induction, he finally entered the world Saturday, the 23rd, at 12:15am. It was his actual due date, as well. I was on video chat with my daughter for those two days and was lucky enough to be able to see my grandson born. I wish I could have been there in person, but at least we had that much.

What a stubborn little boy we have here. However, is quite the cutie pie! :)

I think he looks so much like his mommy when she was a baby. A lot of friends and family are saying the same thing, so I guess he will be just as adorable.

In the meantime, you may not hear too much from me over the next week or two. I'm spending a lot of time helping my daughter with her little man and making sure she's eating and drinking without too much effort on her part. I've been cleaning, sweeping, doing laundry, showing her little tricks to newborn life, and anything else she asks for.

Grady Lee is named after his father's grandfather (Grady) and my hubby and his father (Lee). It's a nice tribute to both sides of Grady's family.

Once I held that little boy in my arms all the quarantine, mask wearing, hand sanitizing was more than worth it to make sure I could hold him the day he came home. He has my heart and always will!

I'm on vacation this week!

© Christie Silvers 2015
I'm finishing up P.M. Terrell's Exit 22.

It has been six years since my last family summer vacation. We had several years where we were caring for Tim's elderly parents, and then their passings. It took a while to get all that stuff in order. Kids stuff, work stuff, job changes, and even my own work events. Finally, FINALLY, we had a good year, Tim has vacation days again, and I'm determined to take my oldest on one more vacation before she leaves for college next month.

So here we are, toes in the sand and hoping the sunscreen holds out. Yet knowing, unfortunately, it won't. LOL. My 10 yr old is building sand castles and pushing my patience on the allowed distance she can go out to sea. My 15yr old is jumping in the waves and then tanning on a beach towel.

My 18yr old is sitting in the condo, probably watching some sort of anime on her laptop. *Face Palm*

I'm reading, people watching, and just enjoying the peace, waves, and sunshine. Meanwhile, the hubby is swimming in the ocean, causing panic when I look out and don't see his head bobbing. All in all everyone seems to be having a good time (even the condo-bound 18yr old), and that's all that matters to me.

I'll be heading home Friday, so until then be prepared to see lots of beach pictures floating around my social media pages. :)

Camping w/ casualties

Happy Monday! Time to start a brand new week. We spent most of last week in a camper up in Pigeon Forge, TN. The days went by fast, but everyone came home exhausted and suntanned (or burned). So I'd have to say it was a successful mini-vacation. There are a few pictures of the trip in the photo gallery.

We went up Wednesday morning and got there around lunch time. Tim had enough time to set the camper up and I fed the children their lunch before the rain started. It didn't end until well after dark. Day 1, no good. Grumpy kids couped up in a 29 foot camper isn't a pleasant way to spend your time. Trust me on that one.

As for the casualty, well, the storm brought high winds, hail, booming thunder that shook everything, and lots of lightning. There were eight campers in the campground that lost their awnings that night, and we just so happened to be one of them. Tim was extremely upset, but I assured him that everything is repairable. Once he found out we weren't the only ones his mood improved. LOL. Men!

After that first night everything went better. The sun came out; we did a lot of swimming; the kids enjoyed trips to the arcade, coming home with lots of little goodies; and we even tried two restaurants we'd never eaten at. Oh, and of course there was shopping to be done--most of it window shopping, but shopping nonetheless.

All in all, it was a fun trip. We're hoping to take another one toward the end of August, but that's just a consideration right now. We'll see how July goes first. LOL!

I hope you all had a nice weekend and a belated Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

Good news when you least expect it.

Morning, morning!  Time for another new week.  Can you believe it'll be April in a few days?  Spring really is here to stay.

The weekend was a busy one and definitely went by far too quickly because of it.  But now it's time for a new week, new work, new plans, new exhaustions.  However, the kids only have four days of school this week and then they're out for Spring Break.  Ten day of not having to hear the alarm clock, not waking up before the sun rises, and spending time with the kiddos without having to rush around to and from school.

I'm thinking we'll take them to the aquarium (since we have a family membership) and if the weather permits we'll go for a mountain drive and picnic.  And I'll use that time to take our spring pictures.  Here's our family shot from last year:

It was a nice day in the mountains last year.  Hopefully this year will be just as nice.

Oh yeah, the good news part!  I received some great news yesterday about my second Liz Baker book (Kill Me Next Week).  You never know when something happy and exciting will come your way when you least expect it.  Kill Me Next Week is aiming for an end of the year release, so it looks like I better get on the ball with finishing it up.

Of course, in the meantime we gotta get Time For Death released and out to the masses.  Only a few more weeks before Liz is introduced.  I hope my Alex & Fiona fans will enjoy Liz and her sassy attitude.  She's quite spunky when she wants to be.

Another event coming up in April would have to be the celebration of my marriage to the man who rocks my world, and who makes a great research partner for certain book scenes. ;-)  Our 16th anniversary will be rolling around on April 9th.  I haven't decided how we'll celebrate yet, but my mother will have the kids that night...  Hmmmm...

Okay, I'm off to get some work done. Have a wonderful Monday and week ahead!

Good Thursday morning to ya!

Morning all. It's one of my favorite days of the week. I've always enjoyed a good Thursday. It's almost the end of the week, and these days it's the first day of the weekend for Tim. I love having him home, and it appears that I'll have him home even more when August rolls around. He was informed yesterday that his plant is closing down on August 5th.

Luckily, he'll be working until the very last day when many of the guys will be laid off in June and July. It sucks, but what can you do in this economy? He seems pretty upbeat about it all, and at this moment I'm okay. There's still a lot of time between now and August, so we have time to plan, get things in order, and make sure things will work out to our advantage... or at least acceptable.

Anyway, that's what we discussed a lot yesterday. These days are when I'm sooooo glad we don't have a lot of bills. We don't have car payments, we don't have loans, we don't have credit cards. All we have other than utilities and insurance is our mortgage and the oldest daughter's braces to pay for. Thank goodness! We'll survive, we always do. :-)

Okay, so I promised pictures for today. These are random, but are some I've been meaning to share.

The one at the top is of a necklace I bought the other week when we went out of town for our anniversary. It's a stone called Snowflakes of something or other. LOL! I asked the shop lady, and she told me, but I've completely forgotten it. LOL. I do know that it starts with Snowflakes though. I found it quite lovely and since it's black and white I can wear it with almost anything. :-)

Next up is a picture of my little sister and her guy. They are currently planning their wedding for next year. I think they make a very cute couple (even if he wasn't happy about having his picture taken). This was taken when we all went up to the mountains for family shots.

Now, on that same day Tim and I took the girls to the local park when we came down off the mountain. It was such a lovely day that we couldn't stand the thought of just going home. So here's the fountain at our local park. The blue sky streaked with white clouds seemed to blend perfectly when the water.

Lastly, I want to share pics of the new candle holder set that we got so cheap when we were out of town. And to show how well it goes with our bedroom, there's a pic of our bedset and the artwork we have hanging at the head of the bed. You can see the wall color behind the candle set as well.

Well, there you go! I promised pictures and now you have pictures. :-) Now I'm off to enjoy the day with my one and only.

Oh, before it slips my mind, thank you to my friends and family who are helping me reach the 1 million pageview mark on AC. I had another article published on Tuesday, if you haven't seen it, called SAHM: Naptime - To Clean or Not To Clean. It's the first in a series of SAHM articles I'm working on. Check it out!

Have a great day!

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Welcome to another Sunday.

Good morning all. It's Sunday already. Gosh, the weekend went by fast. Tomorrow the girls start their week off for Spring Break. Yay, I get to sleep late for a whole week!! Woohoo!

As you know, we went to the mountains yesterday to do a family photo shoot. We ended up taking nearly 100 photos, had a picnic, and just goofed off (too bad you won't be seeing the stupid goofy, outtake photos we took, lol). It was a beautiful day. The birds were chirping, the sky was blue, the sun was shining brightly, and the waterfall was flowing nicely. It was great.

Sooooo, here is a small sampling of the many, many pictures we took. These are some of my favorites.

This is my new favorite picture of Tim & I.






Okay, that's it for this morning. I need to go get ready for our weekly visit with the in-laws. We won't see them next week since we'll be out of town.

Have a great day!

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Welcome to a bright, sunshiny Saturday!

Woohoo!! I woke up to chirping birds, blue skies, and SUNSHINE! Yay! All the gloomy, cloudy, rainy days have sucked completely. I knew it was suppose to be pretty today, but you never know until the day arrives.

So yesterday was a good day. We got all of my Friday errands done so early that Tim & I were able to spend most of the day here at home together. Then my mom took the girls for last night Tim and I cooked dinner together, watched a movie (Max Payne sucked), and then he actually helped me sew a skirt for our middle daughter. He has NEVER done that. It was all very nice.

Today we're going to go do a family photo shoot in the mountains. Once the girls get home from mom's, I'll get them all dressed and prettied up and we'll head out. If the mountains are too muddy (from all the stupid rain), then we'll just hit the local park and do them there. Either way we'll come home with a variety of new family shots for me to go through.

I try to do Spring pics of the girls every year, but it's been a while since we've done family shots too. So this time I'll get Tim in front of the camera too. He hates it, but he does anything for me. *Love* Besides, with our anniversary next week, we need a few new pics of the two of us.

Anyway, once I wade through the tons we'll have, I'll share some of my favorites with all of you.

Now I'm off to enjoy this beautiful Saturday! You have a great one too. :-)

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