Goodbye March

Oh, March. March was more normal than February, but insane. I'm really not too sad to see it go, considering our April is supposed to be much calmer. *knock on wood*

our beautiful redbud

Life

We have an oven again! We hired a friend of ours and he did a super job reworking the cabinets to put in a range. We are really loving the new features and the bigger oven came in super handy for the gigantic ham we ended up with. It probably wouldn't have even fit in our last oven. It was that bad.

I also worked elections for my first time, which was actually really fun. Even if I was the only girl and I had to come from choir. And we actually got paid and everything. *gasp* Anyway, for those of you who haven't had your primary election yet, it's a neat way to see how everything works and gain a new appreciation for all the election staff.

I went to Kansas and got some awesome pics for my novel:

Inspiring, right? You can read all about the actual purpose of that trip and its dramatic ending here.

And I got a gun from my grandmother! I haven't taken a picture of it yet and it's off at a workshop getting sights put on it, but it's a left-handed .22 :) On that same note, I won the impromptu competition my Gun Club held! No prizes or anything, but it was fun nevertheless. I was 3/6 on time, but the most accurate :)

And then there was Easter. Which you can read about here.

Words

~Vocabulary~

soporific: adj. tending to induce drowsiness or sleep
triturate: n. ground into a fine powder
thews: n. muscular strength

I didn't read books quite so deep this month. But the one time I sat down to try and plow through Adella Cathcart Volume 2, I hit like12 new words. WHAT?! So I just picked a few :) One of the others was "somniculose." I couldn't find a definition anywhere! It was used in the sentence as a "somniculose condition." I imagine it means something like "unattentive." Let me know if you have any better luck!

~Quotes~

So I kinda forgot I wanted to do this, so take some of my favorite quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird :)

Books

~Cover to Cover: 1~

I read Where Treetops Glisten and loved it! I already ranted about it in one of my other posts, so suffice it to say here that I was very glad to find a book to blow through for my trip :)

~Middle to End: 1~

I finished To Kill A Mockingbird after playing tug-of-war with my library for it.

~Front to Middle: 2~

I didn't ever completely finish Proofreading Plain and Simple by Debra Hart May. But I had gotten all I wanted out of it, so . . . *shrug* And I started A Spool of Blue Thread and promptly returned it to the library after 1 chapter. Hehe.

I'm still planning to finish about 6 others.

Writings

This should go a lot better this month since I know what I'm doing now.

~Words: 13,957~

I am impressed with this number. This includes drafting and editing words for my WIP. On average, my number of words a day was 450. My all-time low was 0 and my high was 1,612.

~Chapters: 4~ 

I reached my goal!! I am very happy about this. Thank you 300/4/30! Although you about killed me, you fulfilled your purposes. (Okay, so I actually missed two days, but I did it for 31 days, so it all evens out.)

~Progress Update: 80%~ 

I've worked on some general outlining which I ignored and then wrote like crazy. I don't really have any idea how many chapters I have left to write, but I've working on #20, so not too shabby :)

~Biggest Problem: The Ending~

I was so excited to get going on my novel again, that I sorta forgot that I haven't decided where I'm ending this thing yet . . . Hehe. I know what's happening, until I don't. So that's probably where I'll end it. Prayers for the ending not to be super lame would be appreciated!

Blogs

Behold, the new section! I didn't include it last time because my blog was so new (and I didn't think about it.)

~Followers: 29~

I only count 28, but whatever. Either way, I hit my goal of reaching 25 this month. Thanks, everybody!

~Views: 3,100~

Rounding down, over 3,000 page views! That is utterly crazy, if you ask me. But it's kind of flattering at the same time. Thanks again, peeps! I don't have much to do with this one :)

Goals

I had 5 goals for March

1~ Write at least 4 chapters

Boom. 4 chapters with days to spare.

2~ Read at least 3 books

Well . . . I finished one, read one, and DNF two others, so . . . I pass?

3~ Finish editing Katie's book

*screams* I did it! We did it! She sent me a chapter almost every day like a saint! We were even able to wrap it up with a few days to spare, so she can follow or not follow my advice and then send it out to all her eager little betas. I'm so excited for where she's going as an author!!

4~ Reach 25 followers

I'm so happy I made this one :D I worked hard for the first week or so, finding new blogs and nudging their authors. That got me to around 20. Then, I just waited for another 5 to show up, and show up they did!

5~ Blog at least 5 posts

How about 8? Easy peasy.

Now for April's goals

1~ Edit my WIP

I kind of abandoned the editing phase for the writing phase this last month, but I'd like to get back to it.

2~ Finish at least 2 books.

Pathetic? Yes, it is. But I am sick of being in the middle of 2 gazillion books! I'd be very happy just to complete two this month.

3~ Finish editing Jesseca's lovely story :)

Now that I finished Katie's, I want to finish hers this month. I fully intend not to abandone Lydia and Ivy's stories just because I'm honing in on one. (I have been known to do this). But have no fear, ladies! This is good practice for me :P

5~ Do/host a guest post

I don't know. I don't have trouble blogging a lot, obviously, so this would be something different. Volunteers?

There you have it. I think I can do that.

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How was your March? What are your goals for April? Did you notice I skipped goal #4? Don't worry, that was intentional :P

Easter Celebrations

Ha! Just as you thought the flood of Easter posts was over, I bring you yet another! Easter is awesome. (And let's just establish right now that by Easter I mean Resurrection Sunday.) Even the pagans love it, but for different reasons. I love Easter not because it celebrates spring, heralding in a bout of terrible allergies and bright colors, but because Christ died on the cross and rose again. Life would be pointless without the resurrection.

Everyone celebrates Easter differently. And for Christians I think it can be hard to find the balance between celebrating the world's version of Easter and our version. My family tends to change it up a little each time, but here's what happened this year. :)

For us, the festivities always start on what my brothers call Easter Eve. Mom went to the store on the night of Good Friday and already our HEB Plus was out of most dessert and smallish hams. A friend gave us a lamb roast because she said there was something wrong with eating ham on Easter ;) But Mom still wanted ham, so we ended up with 20 pounds of it. 20 pounds! And we have to lug it up and down the stairs to our garage fridge every time we want some . . .

Anyway, we had plenty of meat :) Saturday afternoon we dusted off the plastic Easter eggs and opened the bags of candy. We limited ourselves to Reeses Eggs, Robin Eggs, mini KitKats (added later), and jelly beans in sour and Jolly Rancher flavors. All of this candy I can pass up without much trouble . . . until I get started. Hehe. We dumped all of the candy into a large bowl and stuffed the many, many eggs.

Next up was dying eggs. This is my favorite activity and I was quite proud of how mine turned out this year! Nothing fancy, just boiled eggs and a dye kit, but so much fun! After they were all displayed in the egg carton for a few hours, we peeled all the pretty shell off so Mom could make deviled eggs and seven layer salad (lettuce and spinach, green onion, bacon, frozen peas, Miracle Whip and sour cream, boiled egg, and Parmesan cheese!).

I'm pretty sure that's all we did for Saturday.

Sunday morning we made resurrection rolls. We started this tradition a few years ago and oh my goodness! They are so yummy. Crescent rolls with butter and cinnamon that you seal around a marshmallow. When you bake them, the marshmallow melts leaving an empty tomb when you tear it open :D

Then, of course, was the church service. I was a little bummed my allergies had stolen my voice because we sang some good Easter songs. Everyone was all dressed up; the men in full suits and the ladies in new dresses. (Yes, I still like to get a new dress for Easter). This year mine was a gauzy white maxi that I wore with a pink belt. We had lilies at the front of the church (gag!) that everyone got to take home after the service was over. I had the nice excuse not to touch them because I didn't want the pollen all over my dress ;)

After the service came the lunch, of course! Ham, lamb, and seven layer salad with deviled eggs, all of which Mom managed to prepare that morning and somehow she still made it to church (but we did take the baby for the Sunday School hour). Oh my heavens, it was good. The adults opted for the egg hunt before naps, so we "big kids" got on that.

It became the tradition a year or two ago for the three oldest kids to get to hide the eggs for the younger four. Then we dump all the candy into one big bowl instead of keeping it divided. Hiding the eggs is really fun. I like to make them difficult. I put one on top of a supposedly dead ant bed and another I dropped down into our tangle of dewberry vines. And then there's always putting them out of reach, too :) But we had to make some a little easier for the little boys. Everett (18 months) loved the hunt. It took him a while to get the hang of putting the eggs in his basket, instead of just holding them all. And every few eggs he stopped to eat candy.

That basically sums it up. We had lemon cake and candy afterwards and then naps. We didn't watch an Easter movie this year, but we have watched Jesus of Nazareth in the past. We had seen Risen several weeks before, and I highly recommend it if you're wondering about it! It encapsulated the importance of the resurrection and the effect it might have had on a centurion who crucified Jesus. And that is the true meaning of Easter. He died and rose again that He might give us life! The rest of the world will never be able to understand just how important Easter is.

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I hope everyone's Easter was as good as mine! How does your family celebrate? Have you seen Risen yet? I'll be doing my monthly wrap-up on Thursday, so stay tuned :D