While I’m working on that really hard heart-felt post I thought I’d let Bug entertain you with her usual silliness. Do you know anybody who does this? Is your life an ap?

We’re scheduling an autographing party next Saturday (not this Saturday but December 10th). It will be me and Bug and a pizza maybe at my publisher’s house having a great ol’ time. I promise not to get any pizza grease on your book if you buy one.

If anyone wants to buy a book and have me autograph it, just email me and we’ll order a book special for you. We’ll work out the paypal details etc…depending on demand via email for now. The catch is you have to order today or tomorrow if you want to get it in my mail in time for Christmas. We will be mailing the books out Monday the 12th of December.

So let’s say you already bought my books, because you are so awesome and supportive like that, and you still would like them autographed. I have a solution for you! Two solutions actually. You could mail them to me (email me for the address) with a self-addressed envelope OR you could buy a bookplate from my etsy shop! If you leave me a little note on your order, I will personalize your bookplate with an autograph or a message and maybe even a tiny illo.

Bug might even autograph some! I’m not making any promises though. She is only five and has about a five minute attention span for writing. But she has grand plans! She was going on and on about how she would illustrate skeletons for boys and pink kitties for girls so I decided to turn on photo booth and let her tell you herself.

She didn’t really talk about her illustration plans but it’s still quite informative. You’ll have to watch it, it’s pretty funny—especially the end.

Anyway, if you haven’t bought my books, BUY THEM! Or order them from me via email and we’ll autograph them with something witty-ish! Just email me today or tomorrow if you want them by Christmas. And if you have bought them, leave me a review on amazon! I need all the good reviews I can get.

I wanted to share this on Thanksgiving or the day before Thanksgiving but then I remembered all next week and the week after that and the week after that… is going to be taken up with book tour posts and some of you (who are not like me) like to plan crafts AHEAD of time instead on the actual day. What a strange concept. Anyway, this is a song Bug has been singing all the live-long day because they are practicing it at school for a Thanksgiving concert (it’s so adorable). So I made some turkeys for her to puppet dance with.

Here they are for you if you’d like to play along. And yes, you have to cut those little circles out. That’s what exacto knives were invented for.

I know there is a big debate over phonics vs. sight words and I don’t really want to get into that but at Bug’s school they teach a combination of some sort that seems to be working! It’s so delightful to watch her figure things out. She’s sounding out words off signs as we drive down the street and I totally remember doing that myself at her age. It’s such an exciting time.

Anyway, she wanted to show you guys how she can read these days. It’s only a matter of time before she’s demanding her own vlog posts.

So here’s a quick flick through my camera stream lately. First a photo taken by Rapunzel of her own hand. She’s not afraid to grab the camera and get in there with the interesting shots. I love that.

Another one of my old saguaro. She can’t believe that I never took this shot myself. Nope, I didn’t. Too prickly!

We had a little tiff at dinner so I’m feeling a bit sentimental as I post these photos. Teenagers are so complicated!

I spray-painted an old wooden chair my mom had laying around. I wanted to give the chair its own post but it’s not like I’m really a DIY home-decorator blog or anything so I’m just going to smash it in here instead.

Spray, spray, spray. Don’t you love it when you forget to change the ISO setting on your camera and the last thing you shot was a product shot inside at 3200 and then you go outside and over-expose everything so bad that your backyard looks like heaven from the 70′s?

Maybe that’s just my version of heaven from the 70′s.

Anyway, the chair looks fantastic! It went from country bumpkin to eclectic mess which is sort of good except I hate eclectic mess. I love the chair though. I just need to de-clutter my house a little so it can shine on its own.

It’s already a favorite for family meetings.

And vain self-portraits.

Speaking of, I need some better self-portraits because I’m A PUBLISHED AUTHOR NOW!!!! And I had to put some dumb hand-held frumpy mom shot in the back of my book. I know I could pay someone to take a real portrait but I like to keep it real (or cheap). I am self-published after all, it’s not like I have a big book-contract deal. But I do have an awesome agent/publisher friend who is hooking it all up. I’m so excited. This is really a dream come true for me.

It dropped on Amazon yesterday for my birthday! This is just a soft launch. I have two more books to illustrate and then we’re going to launch a blog tour with giveaways and prints and a book party (squee!) and I’ll probably talk about it so much you will all get sick of me. But until then check it out! $2.99 yo! It’s only on the Kindle right now I think but you can get a free kindle ap for your mac or ipad. I’ll share more when I get the hang of it. I’m new at this still. (Also available in the UK and Germany)

In the meantime I have two books still to illustrate! (And many more after that I hope) I’m so behind. If you see me goofing off, feel free to kick me in the butt. I’ve got work to do!!! It’s always feast or famine around here.

Yes, my birthday was fantabulous. Thank you for asking. We kept it low-key with a night out with my best beach gal pal DMA and a new friend on Friday and then a family dinner with the niece-com-poops and my Aunt Keren and Grandma on the day itself. My grandma made me my favorite birthday dinner (peanut encrusted Thai chicken—soooooooooo yummy you could die) and Rapunzel made my cake. How can I be mad at her when she’s so sweet like that. Teenagers! She kills me.

Anyway, it was super sweet and fun and the kids had a blastola swimming in Grandma’s community pool.

I love summer.

Why yes, I did make a peach pie. I know! All this fun going on when I have work to do!!! This is what I’m talking about. I should be shackled to my laptop but no, I’m in the kitchen pretending to be Martha Stewart or something. It’s just that it’s summer and the fruit is going bananas (or more correctly, peaches) and it’s such a wonderful new thing to me that I just can’t bear to let it rot! It’s me and the fruit flies and I’m not about to let them win.

Peaches, zucchinis, apricots, plums, sugar snap peas and soon tomatoes. I can’t even keep up with my camera. Life does not stop for the weary!

I’m posting this old movie because I don’t have anything recent ready to go and I’m hoping we get to try this experiment with Mentos and Coke all over again. ‘Cause now that we live out in the sticks where the grass is dry and a spark could burn down my metal house in two seconds, I’m thinking some non-flammable explosives are in order.

This Saturday was Bug’s first dance recital. It was so awesome. Her performance itself was not awesome at all but we weren’t expecting much. She got up there on stage and smiled and looked cute in her adorable costume and that’s all we could ask for. That’s her teacher above. I love her so much. I’m really sad that she’s going to be Sleeping Beauty for Disney Tokyo in Japan and won’t be teaching ballet anymore. But it was really cool while it lasted. Bug is going to miss her.

Anyway, you want to see her performance right? It should load below if the internet is cooperating with me.

Yeah, stupid me. I didn’t make sure my camera was in focus before I started filming and then half the time I wasn’t even paying attention to the camera and let it list off to the side. I’m sorry about that. But you’ll have to forgive me. I was going bananas because my little itty bitty girl was up on stage!!! Oh, it was so cute. I may have cried a little bit.

I wasn’t even supposed to be filming. This is contraband footage you’re looking at. Although, between you and me, every single parent there was filming with their iphones and spy cameras. The theatre didn’t want us to film because they sell a super expensive dvd of the whole production at the end but Toby and I weren’t about to shell out money to the man.

That is until we sat through the entire production and had our socks blown off by how good it was. The little girls were so cute and the big girls were so amazing. I fell in love with dance all over again. And I’ve never even danced (outside of that one class I took in college where I kicked everyone accidentally.)

As soon as the curtain fell, Toby beelined it for the dvd sales desk. He was sold. Which is really cool because before this recital he was talking about having Bug drop out of ballet. He just never really thought it was that important. And since he is the one who pays for her to have gymnastics and ballet lessons (it’s part of our co-parenting deal), that’s kind of a bad thing for Bug and I who happen to LOVE ballet. Toby won’t admit it but I think he has ideas that Bug is going to be in the Olympics or something (not gonna happen thanks to my genes unfortunately) and he’s pretty competitive when it comes to how Bug does in sports. He’s a little hard on her. Before you worry though, don’t. I’m really easy on her so it evens out. She needs a little chiding here and there.

So anyway, ballet lessons have not been chopped from the budget! Whoooeeeeeee!!! All thanks to the most wonderful ballet recital production ever. I wish I had filmed the whole thing but it would have been too big of a file to put up here anyway and then I’d really get busted by the theatre company.

My nieces are here! They’re here for the whole summer! I’m so happy to have them. Of course it means we are running out of food every other day and there are clothes left on the bathroom floor regularly but they are a such a lovely sight for sore eyes. We’ve really missed them.

(photo taken by Rapunzel)

I was planning on keeping Bug in preschool all summer so I could keep to my work schedule but now that they are all playing so happily every day outside all the live long day, I decided to keep her out for the summer. It’s saving me quite a bit of money which is nice.

It’s going to be a summer to remember.

So far we’ve taken them into Orange County for Bug’s gymnastics/ballet class, dinner with Toby and a trip to the beach even though the sun was already down.

They had missed the beach. Sometimes I forget how lucky we are that we see it regularly. Super Chic wanted to go swimming right away of course. I think that girl is immune to cold.

They ran around crazy until it was dark.

Just like old times.

On Memorial Day my mom thought it would be nice to visit my grandma’s grave and put Grandpa’s flowers from the memorial service on her grave. He’s going to be buried there too as soon as the morgues do whatever it is that they do. I’d never been there so it was nice to see the gravestone and look at all the flags for the soldiers.

I wish Bug could have known my grandma. They were kindred spirits in their love of pink.

We attempted a family portrait but the sun was bright and harsh.

Then the park on the way home. Even my dad got in on the swinging.

It’s going to be one long fun memorable summer I know already. So I’m prepared with chore charts to keep things under control so I don’t go crazy. I’m thinking we might go somewhere special if they can fill these up with a lot of stars. I’m pretty sure they can. :)

everybody from secretagentjo on Vimeo.

I love my niece-com-poops.

Untitled from secretagentjo on Vimeo.

Somebody knows how to use photobooth when Mommy is not looking.