Sunday night Bart and I both packed to get ready to leave for a couple of days, but we were going in different directions. That doesn't happen often. And Salinda had a friend coming to visit, meaning that she took off four days in a row. That doesn't happen often either.
Bart was heading to Richmond for a clergy training, and I was Lynchburg, Brookneal, Lynchburg, Brookneal, Lynchburg and Danville bound over three days. What this meant was that we were both gone for Halloween. This meant for the first time in 20 years I was blissfully alone on Halloween, except for the 8 kids having a bonfire outside my window. But they were having fun and I could turn up my music and put on my headphones if I needed to.
Here is one of the pictures that got sent to me that night. I found it interesting that I was perfectly content to sit in my small one room apartment alone and receive pictures instead of being part of the chaos. Halloween has never been my favorite. I've been saying Boo Humbug for years.
The rest of the week is a blur because NaNoWriMo started. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and so I began writing my sequel. I got up and five that day and was kind of an overachiever, making me quite tired the rest of the week.
I've also been doing a bit of fundraising. If you are my Facebook friend and haven't stopped following me or unfriended me yet, you know that I'm super motivated to raise money for Patrick Henry Family Services, the agency where I work. I have somehow managed to make it to 25% of my goal in less than two weeks but it hasn't been without trying hard. If you haven't seen the page yet, you should check it out.
Part of all this has involved training with a trainer. I have been three times in the past week and even though I am sore I am seeing a slight difference. Committing to this has been tricky but having people sponsor me for the fundraiser both for writing my novel and for my training has been super motivating.
In addition, we managed to babysit three extra kids Thursday night. They were really good up until the last half hour when they started doing loud laps around the parsonage and Bart and I realized that our tolerance level might have shifted over the last twenty years.
Dominyk started a job as a pizza hut delivery driver, which lasted about a week until his truck broke down today. Hopefully pizza hut has other things he can do besides deliver, or he'll be out of a job again already.
Today Bart and I took a trip to Greensboro, NC for haircuts and grocery shopping. Now I'm getting ready to do my newsletter and write a bit more on the novel. All three kids are working tonight.... so it's just Bart and I and the grandkids. So far it feels pretty quiet.
Thanks for caring about what goes on in our world enough to read it all!
