Crazy Good

This past week was crazy good, and by that, I mean it was busy with some crazy and some good days. The crazy involved me at an eye screening appointment and the receptionist telling me my husband's insurance was canceled at the end of March. You can probably imagine my dismay! It turned out to be a company wide glitch which canceled everyone's eye insurance. The HR department failed to let anyone know of the problem or that they were working to correct the situation. The situation is now resolved, but I spent an hour at the optometrist and ended up leaving without my eye screening. I guess I will reschedule when I get back from the Southern Kentucky Book Festival taking place this next weekend.

The good days included attending Cookbook Club with Emily. The theme was salads, so she made a delicious orange fluff jello salad while I made an eight layer salad. Both recipes were a combination of parts of recipes I had found but wasn't quite happy with. The orange fluff tasted divine and might just be our new family get together go-to dessert. In case you want to try it for yourself, just grab:

1 box orange jello
1 box instant vanilla pudding
1 container non dairy whipped topping
1 can crushed pineapple (undrained)
2 small or 1 large can mandarin oranges (drained)
2 cups mini marshmellows

Simply mix all ingredients together well, chill, and serve!

The good days also included the wheather warming up enough for me to grill ribs which we ate outside. We ended that day with a mini bonfire on the patio. And, I rounded out the good days by attending a SCBWI Ohio North Critique Meet Up. Lisa Amstutz, author of science books like Robins (Backyard Birds), was a wonderful moderator, and she helped me figure out just how to polish up a few of my manuscripts for submission.

All in all the good outweighed the crazy as often it does, and that left me with time to head over to the SCBWI and vote for the Krystal Kite nominee of my choice in the Midwest division. I looked all the selections over carefully, admired many if not all of them, and finally chose to vote for Uh-Oh by Shutta Crum and illustrated by Patricia Barton. It is a delightful book with adorable illustrations and shows one family's trip to the beach. The Uh-Ohs in the book are the crazy unexpected moments the children experience at the beach much like my crazy no insurance moment I experienced. And much like me, the children quickly moved past the crazy and embraced the good. This book is perfect for parents and children from two to six.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. Also be sure to drop by and join the Literacy Musings Monday Blog Hop where you will find other great blogs, or my personal website, Fun With Aileen, where you will find more on reading, writing, and my very own early grade Fern Valley chapter book series and my Quack and Daisy picture book series. And finally, you can find me on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.