Belated Eight

Bad Mommy!  I missed doing Tyler's birthday post!  In my defense, it has been BANANAS lately. Work is busy, we've got the house listed and we're house shopping, etc etc, etc. Anyway, I missed it. My baby boy turned 8 on January 28th and I have to mark the occasion.

Toothless cutie!

This year, Tyler's birthday was on a Saturday, so we ate lunch with him at school on Friday. I also brought M&M cookies for his class. Saturday, we had a nice lunch with my dad. Angie and her b/f Jon also came. We had O'Charley's, Tyler's favorite. We went home and I planned to make cupcakes.  I turned on the oven to pre heat it while I mixed the batter.  When I went to put them in, the oven was still stone-cold. 

Of course.

Long story short, something in the oven had stopped working. We were able to fix it after a couple of days, so no big deal in the end, but we had to make due with store bought cupcakes.

Gifts and his Gaga's favorite potato soup finished the day!  Almost.  After he went to bed, he actually started throwing up! :( Poor guy. He actually had a stomach bug (or something) twice in two weeks!

So who is Tyler at 8 years old?

He's a smart cookie. He is a solid A student at school, maybe one B in handwriting (he got that curse from me).  He was slipping on his reading tests a little, so we started working harder on reading comprehension and now he's right back to his high scores.

He still loves all things electronics. We used to limit "screentime" with him, but we've slowly let that go. It's just what he likes. He's no couch potato and he does play games and read some too, but he's just not into toys too much.

He does love a collection. Yo Kai Medals, Pokemon cards, and stuff animals are just a few of the things he's collecting right now.  We just got him a new bed to help fit all his animals! He insists on toting a bunch downstairs every day, so we got him a little grocery bag (TMNT of course) to carry them in.

Still a picky eater! That really hasn't changed much. I'm still hoping that he'll expand his food likes someday.

He weighs 52 lbs and is 4 ft tall. He's smaller than average, but right on track for him.

He tells a great story, he's so darn cute! Especially right now, because he's missing a couple teeth (see evidence of this cuteness in the pics).

I love him to bits, that sweet, sensitive, smart little man!

Checking out his bday loot

Heartbreaker!

I'm going to be an author...for real, this time.

We got a contract on the book!  On Tuesday (Valentine's Day), I got an email from Black Rose Writes, a publisher based in Texas.  They were offering us a contract to publish our novel!  I saw the email on my phone--I was at work at the time.  As a matter of fact, I spent the work week training a new hire, which meant long days and juggling the training while still trying to keep up with some of my work.  I couldn't do much until I got home in the evening, so I spent Tuesday night doing research on the publisher (I had done some research when we sent the query to them, but this time I was digging for anything that might make us wary of signing with them). They are a fairly young publisher and they're small--but really, that's fine with us. I read through the contract and asked a few other people to do the same. Kelly and I emailed back and forth and after much consideration, we signed the contract on Thursday.

So it's really happening. We will officially be authors. Our "book" will become a REAL book, with pages and a cover and our names on it.

Holy crap.

Once we signed on the dotted line, our publisher (eeek) sent us a bunch of documents going over the steps in the process. This will all lead to a publishing date of sometime in July-August.

So it's really happening.  I remember sitting in my creative writing classes in college, reading a rejection for the school's literary magazine, and vowing that someday I'd be a published author.  For me, it's not about royalties or best sellers lists.  It was a goal, and one I wasn't sure would be reached.  This is a big deal.

I'm sure I'll be documenting this process here, but I'm also including our social media information below.  A good author markets herself every chance she gets!

If you're reading this and have any experience in the professional literary field, we'd love to get a review or quote from you to go on our book cover!  You can contact me via our Facebook page listed below!

www.facebook.com/positivevoice02

Book Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lwll2zu64A

Twitter: @positivevoice02