I totally want one of these:

Wouldn't they be fun for birthday breakfasts?  First/last day of school?  Snowmen, mickey heads, teddgy bears?  We eat a lot of pancakes around here, so I wonder if I could justify buying one of these and finding shelf space for it.

Something that made my week

I got the following email this week:

Hi Emily,

I just wanted to let you know that we're having an "Editor's Favorite Picks to Re-Read" feature during July and August at YARN to bring attention to past stories our newest readers may have missed.

This week, I've chosen to feature your "In the Spotlight" as my favorite re-read. It will be on the front page for a few weeks as a result and then will return to our archives in the fall.

As a high school English teacher, I often direct my students to YARN and your story is definitely one of their favorites!

Happy August!
Shannon
co-editor, YARN

Did you see that?  Teens have actually read my story!!!  For years and years I've only had adults, mostly critique partners and editors that have rejected me, read my stuff and finally there's feedback that says someone from my target audience actually read something I wrote.  I am on cloud nine this week.

Swimming Lessons

This summer I now have three kids in swimming lessons, and since I have one just starting and one finishing the swim school, it was impossible to get the same time slot for all three.  So I decided to dig deep, sign all three up for the daily option over two weeks (instead of the once a week for two months), and sit there in the hot, sweaty, humid room for an hour and twenty minutes while trying to keep Jarom out of trouble.  It turned out to be way more pleasant than I anticipated.  We get there the first day and one of my best friends in the ward had two of her kids signed up for the first half hour--and Paul's best friend from school was there, too.  So every day I got to sit and chat with two adults.  This was only possible thanks to the new toy Matt bought to use at work:  his ipad, which he generously donated to the cause of keeping Jarom from jumping off the bleachers into the water.  They boys watched cartoons on it while Elyse swam first.  After a ten minute break, then Paul and Luke had class for another half hour.  Elyse spent most of that time showering and dressing (stop growing up!) so Jarom would sit on my lap and watch another cartoon.  We were both sweaty enough for a second shower of the day by the time Paul and Luke finished swimming.

Luke can now swim across the width of the pool.  He totally looks like he's drowning, but man he sure sticks to it and somehow makes his way across.  He was, by far, the youngest, the shortest, the scrawniest kid in his class.  What's funny is he made best friends with the tallest and oldest (by four years at least) and only female in the class.  I absolutely love how little children love each other.  This girl had deformed shoulders and one eye higher on her face than the other, but I don't think Luke even noticed.  She always place herself next to Luke and anytime either of them did any swimming or diving, they'd give each other high fives after their turns were done.  And when they went to the deep end to jump in, they always made sure they'd stand together.  It was sort of adorable.  And like the rest of my kids, when asked, he could not even tell you her name. 

Paul finally passed level seven!  I appreciate that the swim teachers don't just pass every kid.  In fact, most kids take a few trys to finish a level.  Paul's taken level seven four times and I'm proud to say, the teacher advanced him to eight.

Elyse learned how to do the butterfly this round.  They worked a bit on it during level 9, but this time they really pushed this stroke and also how to do relay races.  Although they passed her, I think we'll take level ten a couple more times until she gets the butterfly down--and so she keeps reviewing things till middle school starts.  She's thinking she might want to try for the swim team in seventh grade.

Other than swimming it's been spring cleaning for us the past two weeks.  Coming up, we get a week off cleaning (which still isn't done because I'm slow, easily distracted by blueberry picking season, and...well the kids get sort of useless after a while) for the Deibel family reunion.  It's here in Saginaw, which is nice because we don't have to go anywhere and I get to retreat to my own house and sleep in my own bed at night.