And there goes May...

Wow. May just flew by in a flurry of activity. Or activities, if I'm being precise. And I do love to be precise. I subbed eight out of twenty days this month. I had several PTA/School Carnival meetings. My husband and I went to Santa Barbara overnight to take a tour of the Reagan Ranch. (Not the Library, the RANCH.) Yes, where President Reagan actually lived. It. Was. Awesome. I'll post some pics at the end of the post. Mother's Day brunch with my mom and my little sister. My cousin had a baby shower. My mom graduated from university with her B.S.N. (Nursing degree. Yay Mom!) Open House at older son's school. Mom's graduation party. Cub Scout camping trip. Helping my little sister sew her prom dress. (Yes, really. She's amazing.)

Plus all the other regular-home-stuff. Like making sure my kids are washed, fed. and wearing clean clothes. So...yeah. That's why I haven't blogged lately. But! Carnival is on Friday so my duties as Carnival Chairperson will be over shortly. I've loved helping with this and I think it will be fantastic. Games, food, and fun. Yay!

On the publishing side of things - I've "met" my publicist, Caroline Elsea, from The Little Things Publishing Co. She's going to help me navigate the big, scary world of publicity and press kits and campaign launches and book signings. I'm very thankful that she knows about it because I don't. I told my friend Deanna on the phone about my publicist and she said, "Ooooohhhhh. You have People." Yes, yes I do. ;)  (And that's why TLT Publishing rocks!!!)

My galley is scheduled to be in my inbox today for me and my editor, Farrah Penn, to review. I'm looking forward to seeing it all set up professionally and in order. Awesomeness. I'll be searching super carefully to make sure everything is spelled correctly and the punctuation is correct. I dislike it when I read a book and the quotation marks are off or there are random spaces or repeated lines of text. That's just me being persnickety. (So far in this post I've called myself precise and persnickety. What is coming next?!)

I've lived vicariously (via Twitter) through all the bloggers and authors who went to BEA (Book Expo America) in New York last week. I'm saving my $$ to be able to go next year. It sounds like SO much fun. And rather crazy. (One girl was bitten while in line for a book. Bitten! This isn't preschool!) Poor Lindsi. (Check out her blog.) Farrah and Britney have a great vlog and pics from BEA. (Check out their blog.)

In the midst of all this craziness, I've been editing my next manuscript. It's due on August 1. I haven't read it for almost a year so it's been a fun thing to read through it again. I'm changing a few little things and taking out some of my excessive adjectives and tightening up descriptions of things. (Thanks to Farrah who pointed those things out to me!)

Leaving you with a few pictures from this month of busy-ness.

Reagan Ranch

Pier at Lake Lucky

Foggy Fence

I found a friendly horse!

Reagan Ranch House

Mom's Graduation Ceremony