Weekend Update

I have had a lovely Mother's Day. I have a bit of a cold, which is annoying, so I took some Tylenol Cold PM after my pre-Mother's Day treat last night and passed out. I completely missed the morning rush (that stuff is effective) and didn't wake up until Paul and the girls brought me breakfast in bed. After snuggle time, Paul got the girls ready for church.

Today was our last Sunday School class before summer break, and our friends surprised us with a nice thank you gift for leading the group this year. After church we had sandwiches at home (my special request was NO MOTHER'S DAY BRUNCH - too crowded, too stressful). Then naptimes, a video for the girls, family dinner, and Paul took the girls to the park while I talked to my sister and did a few things around the house. We had storytime together as a family, put the girls down to sleep, and the rest of the evening will be free time once Ellie deigns to stay abed.

In fact, the whole weekend has been lovely. Paul and I had a date night on Friday (we enjoyed the X-Men movie and a seafood dinner), I had lunch with a friend on Saturday, and we went out to dinner and Ted Drewes with other friends Saturday night. Terribly indulgent, totally fun weekend.

Over the past several days, I have also been reading my draft of Seek Ye First whenever I have a few minutes to spare. Paul printed it out in book format for me, which is rather fun. Now that I'm done with the first read-through, I'm pleased with the second half but think the first chapters need more tension. I need to go through the ms once to make the changes I noted when I was reading, run the Auto-Crit software to get rid of remaining annoyances, then expand the story inserts and drop them in.

The first 2 chapters should be ready to go out to my critique group for next month's meeting! I also need to put together a list of questions and prepare to send the ms off to early readers. It's fun to be in a new stage. Now that the solid draft is completed, things are moving much more quickly and I crave feedback. Maybe it sucks. Maybe it's good. Who knows? Either way, it's a completed novel and I learned from it. The next one will be even better.