October Already?

The days that had dragged by so slowly when we first arrived here in Guam are now flying by again. As always there are too many things I have to do and want to do and not nearly enough time to do them. I'm still working on unpacking and haven't explored the island too much yet since those first couple weeks we were here. Instead I've been spending my time unpacking, dealing with kids and school, and taking care of sick kids. Arthur and Traithew have been sick off and on for over two weeks now.

In addition to that, I'm gearing up for November's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I've been going over my projects that I've been doing this year, trying to decide if I want to start a new one or continue working on one of the smaller ones. The project I really want to work on is already over 130k words and more in the revision process than actual writing. On a side note, I have written almost 600k words since I started writing again in January. Today I finally settled on my project, RaiTai, which only has about 13k words so far. I'll print it out (going to hound Dane endlessly until he finds the printer cable for me), and use what I have as a guide, but for the most part it's going to be starting over from scratch.

So now that I know what I am doing, I get to start planning out my plot and chars so that when it comes time to start writing on Nov 1st, I'm good to go. I am also trying to figure out whether I want to go for a 100k or 150k word count. My July NaNo was almost 60k, August NaNo was almost 90k. I've also started gathering pictures, lately these have been more architecture and landscape pictures of settings and elements I want to incorporate into my story. I think this is one of the best parts about my writing, looking at a picture, changing it in my head and using it to make my stories more colorful. I guess it's that imagination thing coming in to play again that I've had so much fun with over the past thirty years. :)

Now for those wanting an update on the family... Dane is busy with work. He's been taking a class the past two weeks. He leaves soon for his class in the states if the funding comes through for it. He's also very excited about some of the upcoming plans the squadron has for the early part of the new year. Suffice it to say, he'll probably be gone for a few weeks visiting places that I would love to see. :)

The kids are doing well. John is doing pretty well in school other than forgetting materials he needs for his homework at school. I know I was absent-minded, but I think he has me beat. Eli needs a haircut, badly. I've been trying to get Dane to take him and John in to get their hair cut. I haven't found our clippers yet and I'm not very good at cutting hair with scissors. He's doing well in school, though and except for the occasional meltdown, Eli's doing really well. Brennan is still struggling in school, but he is going to be testing for some different learning disabilities so we can see if there is anything more we can do for him. He's actually doing very well other than his inability to focus on his work. He's making leaps and bounds with his reading and his writing is turning out great when he tries. Traithew is loving school. Today is the third day he's had to miss in the past two weeks due to being sick. Trai's so quiet and easy-going that I rarely know what he's up to unless he's rough-housing with his brothers. Arthur's been sick as well. All he wants to do is watch Blue's Clues, though. I'm having a hard time getting him and Amethyst to go play. With the four older boys gone in school all day, they have no idea what to do with themselves. The only time I can get them to play with their toys is when they are supposed to be taking a nap. Amethyst is still being her usual self. Whenever someone does something she doesn't like, she'll stand there and tell them off. You can't understand the actual words half the time, but you sure can get her point. :)

I think that's about it for today. I still have a bunch of things to do while the kids are taking their naps (surprisingly, they actually are today).