Regrouping and Shifting Gears

Ah, it's good to be back home. Last week was wonderful on so many levels, but the sleeping situation not so much. Just think mice, bugs, damp sleeping bags, and nervous jitters about pulling off another day.

Anyway, I wanted to take a minute or two today to share last week with you and to list what I'm planning to post over the next month or so. This is the easiest way for me to reset my brain from church serving mom to writer once more. Yeah, I know I'll still do both, but the heavy summer activities are over now.

Here are some stats:
7 days of fast paced, hard work

1 Mystery Dinner 50's Style (that I wrote and they enjoyed!) for 40 people (the leaders that came a day earlier than the other girls)
14 meals served
140 girls and leaders
1 Writing Class taught
4 Cooking Classes taught
60 dozen eggs
80 lbs pulled pork
13 lbs elbow noodles turned into mac n cheese
20 gallons of milk
12 gallons of apple juice
6 gallons of orange juice
10 large containers of lemonade mix
More fruit and veggies than I can count
14 hours of dish washing
1 new burn scar on my arm
3 days of thunderstorms--which I loved because it kept the temperatures down
a zillion flies because of the rain--ick!
multiple bug bites
7 trips to town for forgotten items--this is an improvement over last year
2 small bottles of Ibuprofen opened and used up
Smiles and hugs from appreciative girls and staff that made it all worth while
529 posts in my Google Reader--I just deleted because I knew I'd never get through them all
118 emails in Gmail
99 emails in Yahoo

I also learned that communication is key to running a kitchen. We asked my daughter and her friend to cut the bananas for breakfast. At first they were slicing them, with the peel on! Then we corrected them and asked them to cut them in half. Can you see how they interpreted that?! We laughed so hard.

Now, what's in store for me the next few weeks? Tomorrow I'm driving 7 hours to my Mom's for a well deserved vacation with my kids. While there I have three goals.

1. Finish revisions for my editor.
2. Exercise every day.
3. Get totally prepared to pull off an amazing School's In Query Contest over at Unicorn Bell August 13th--31st.

In order for me to do that, I won't be posting here during the 3 weeks of the contest. All my blogging time will be spent at Unicorn Bell. I hope you'll join us over there. The first week is a mini conference of sorts with 3-4 posts every day on how to make your query sparkle. Week two is an intensive critique session for your queries. During week three the queries for completed and revised manuscripts will be posted for our guest judges to comment on and maybe request pages.

After the contest ends, I have a 5 part Story Problems series lined up based on Angela Ackerman's guest post 5 Top Issues I Find When Critiquing.

Q4U: Would you like me to post my notes from the Writing Class I taught?