Luke and Kiddos:
We started our day by going to church with some friends from Colorado. The kids liked their Sunday school class, but were most excited about the playground that was on the church property. A little north of Milwaukee there is this person’s yard that is full of statues. Cassandra said statues are scary (see Cassandra understands the psychological thrill of the weeping angels episode of Dr. Who). It was just a quick stop but the kids and I both enjoyed seeing something so unusual.
From there we picked tamales from Mercado El Rey and a few other snacks. This was a suggestion from my mom who tells me this was a tradition for our family when I was Cassandra’s age. I was pleasantly surprised as I generally am not a huge fan of tamales. I did enjoy, however, they weren’t a huge hit with the kids. The plantain chips and pinguinos on the other hand were extremely popular. We took our tamales and met up with Tio on his boat again. I wasn’t sure if the boat would have lost its luster from the day before as it was no longer a new thing, but the kids were wildly excited to be with Tio on his boat again. Everyone got to drive and we checked out a “pirate ship.” After that we hurried off to pickup Jenny. We spent the rest of the night on dinner and catching up.
Jenny: I woke up feeling the pressure of not having written much this weekend! I was in the mood to crank out some pages, so I got right to work on the novella we’re currently writing. Pretty soon Jenna came and joined me, and then a little while later Erica came and hung out with us too. We traded pages and read each other’s work, and gave each other feedback. We also gave Erica her shots; she’s donating more stem cells to Heidi this week so she has to have two shots every day in preparation for the procedure. Ouch! Jenna and I tag teamed her and it was over in a flash. It was a relaxing hour or so, and then it was time to pack up and head over to Erica’s house where her husband had made us brunch!
During brunch we talked a lot more about our novel collaboration. I think we finally have a premise, genre and main characters we are both happy with and can see ourselves writing! Now to come up with some sample pages and then we’ll work on plot. We puzzled for a while, since Jenna was determined to finish the puzzle before we left, and … we did it! Hurray! Then we headed back to collect my stuff so I could head out. We decided to take just a few minutes and type out a few samples for our story, and that was super fun! Then the girls saw me off and I headed out of town. The trip home was uneventful – I enjoyed the silence for a while and then listened to music. It was a fantastic weekend and I hope we can do it again sooner than fifteen years from now!
It was so great to be back with Lover and the kiddos. We sat on the porch and got all caught up on each other’s weekends, and the kids came and visited at intervals. Everybody missed me which is always nice. We watched an episode of The Final Plate. It’s a fun cooking show!
