Off to the Presses!

Perhaps you’ve noticed the little link off in the sidebar over on the right there or saw a few mysterious Facebook posts pop up. If you know me in real life I’ve probably accosted you with questions about winter apparel for butterflies and what sort of fonts you prefer. But, now that we have a product we are proud of, now that it looks like less of a dream and more of a reality I’m letting you know…

Guys! We made a book! 

I wrote down my first thoughts in May of 2014 and Tooks (Madhawi) and I started collaborating in June of 2016 and now we have … finally… sent the finished manuscript of our childrens’ book, What If Butterflies Loved Snow? off to the publisher!

I can’t even tell you how exciting and fun it’s been working with Tooks as she brought this story to life.

I mean I could tell you but I don’t want to. Because if I tried to explain the fun we have had, you would just laugh at our ridiculous conversations (snowflake vomit is totally a thing by the way). Then you would shake your heads about how cooperatively disorganized we are and how we did everything involving technology in the hardest way possible.  (And let me tell you, since we live with an ocean between us, there was a lot of technology to muddle through!) I think we prefer to continue to laugh at ourselves and you can just imagine the fun we are having without all the ridiculous details.

However… there are plenty of details we are willing to share.

So…

If you’d like to be in the know (Pssst these people will probably get to know fun things like how this all came about, stories about silly snowmen and release dates!) and get a fun coloring sheet……sign up in the form below.

 

Even if you don’t want us sending you occasional and delightful little e-mails, you can still find us popping up around the web.

On Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/what.if.butterflies.loved.snow/

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/What-If-Butterflies-Loved-Snow-276810322743929/

Our Website: https://whatifbutterflieslovedsnow.com/

And even Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/whatifbutterflieslovedsnow/

In the meantime we are on to the next phase!

We have a whole new set of skills to learn as we watch the publishing process happen and dive into marketing.

What if Butterflies Loved Snow?  is working it’s way toward the printing press and we are beyond excited to have made it this far together!

You know why? Because…

We made a book!

 

Island Camping

It was my brothers idea and it wasn’t even a bad one. (As his sister I’m required to say stuff like that.)

As kids we had taken many summer trips island camping in the flowages of northern Wisconsin and now that our own kids were all out of the major diaper/nap/crying stages he suggested we do it again.

The weather was rather…

…uncooperative……but it didn’t matter.

There was still fishing…

 

…and canoeing…

 

… and kayaking..

… and games…

… and sand to play in…

…and boats to learn to drive…

 

…and general silliness with cousins…

… and one very happy, very tired, rather stinky dog.

As we packed up on Sunday that brother of mine had another idea.

He said we should do it again next year.

I agreed wholeheartedly.

Because sometimes that brother of mine has really good ideas.

For accuracy’s sake I feel compelled to note that while we started with seven people more family joined us throughout the trip until we numbered 12. I however took more pictures of kids, bumblebees and my dog than anything else and they are all highly underrepresented in photos. Sorry family! 

Inceptio by Alison Morton

If you are looking for insight into what it might be like to live in an alternate reality in a civilization founded by Romans and ruled by women, this book will touch on that.

If you are wondering how it would be to step from a nobody into the top tier of society, this story flirts with that.

If what you really want is to read a book where, when circumstances get scary and difficult, a woman trains hard, becomes awesome and then kicks butt, this is your book


Would I recommend it? I was almost disappointed there wasn’t more insight into the different culture the main character finds herself in. Almost. But I couldn’t be at all disappointed because I was too busy turning pages. This story had me hooked!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I discovered this book because I’m a proud member of Rosie’s Book Review Team!

Penguin Problems by Jory John and Lane Smith

Kathy Ellen (who knows all the good books!) told me I would like this book if I liked walruses that waxed philosophical.

So…

Of course I had to read it.

Admittedly I didn’t actually know that my life was missing philosophical walruses before I read about Penguin Problems…

And no, there is no title on the front, just penguins. Which confused me because sometimes I’m, apparently, overly conventional.

 

Would I recommend it? Yes! I laughed out loud the first time I read it and the girls keep returning to it for a bedtime book. The only drawback is when they went to bed tonight they tried to tell me they had “penguin problems” and they couldn’t possibly go to sleep!

Napkins Please

I have noticed a disturbing trend in the amount of napkins passed through a fast food drive thru window.

Namely that the amount is decreasing as time goes by and occasionally, none make the passage from restaurant to car.  That’s right, no napkins what. so. ever.

This is a photo of a kid taken by another kid. According to the bag in her hand it is clear that both of them will soon be in the need of many napkins. I had no idea this picture was being taken, I was driving. (Side note: When you save a million photos you really can find a picture for everything…)

Possibly you are mentally praising these fine establishments for their environmentally friendly practices as well as their money saving techniques. Fine, sure, that’s a factor. In fact I’m sure that piles of math people put a bunch of factors together and decided that if they stopped handing out napkins to poor deserving mothers, they would save 7,00,000,000 trees per year.

But here is some math of my own for you.

3 kids+ 1 moving vehicle+ any kind of food = the need for 5,678 napkins per child

Possibly some of you are mentally scolding me for letting my children eat in the car or eating from fast food establishments to begin with.  I’d argue that point except the thought of not feeding my kids while driving made me snort diet coke out my nose with laughter.

No.

Not an option.

Question: Solve for X,  3 kids + 1 truck + 4 hours of driving + X = 30 min of quiet

Answer: French fries

Possibly you are thinking we could use our own hand towels. And I have! I have wiped up ketchup spills with dirty socks and mopped spilled drinks with shirts I found crammed under the seat and used the pants that were still in the back from the last major food catastrophe to clean up the current one. But you know what happens to those lovely reusable bits of cloth.

Nothing.

Because if I were the kind of person who took everything out of the vehicle once we got home, I wouldn’t have had any “napkins” to begin with.

Question: If one mom has two hands and three kids have six hands and there are 45,689 items in the truck that should come into the house and mom has to pee, how many things make it through the front door?

Answer:  7: a cell phone, two “don’t-touch-it’s-special-to-me” toys and four pieces of junk mail.

And one final math problem for you.

Question: If three kids change their orders 3.4 times each, what is the percentage chance that the mother will also remember to ask for napkins when picking the food up at the window?

Answer: 0%

Extra credit: How many orders will she get wrong?

Answer: 1.3 but only because the kids changed their mind again after the order was placed.

In conclusion: Give a mother some napkins!  The math says she needs them.

 

 

 

Cornfields and Clouds

Cornfields and clouds.

The overpowering green, the heat and dripping humidity, the drone of the insects, the clouds’ promise of thunderstorms. – It’s not actually my favorite time of year. I prefer the cool changing colors of fall, the sharpness of winter’s cold and even the new surprises of spring. But, the sight of cornfield and clouds, is one of those images, smells, and sounds, or, in this case, all three that speak of home. Not “home” as in where I grew up or “home” as in where I live now but both and more. Even as I sweat, swat bugs and dream of the first snowfall, a view like this never fails to loosen a part of me.

A breath released that I didn’t know I was holding.

And I feel myself settle into my own skin just a bit further knowing that I am where I belong.

Sometimes John and I talk about moving, when I dream of longer, colder winters and he dreams of surfboards and mountains… …but I’m not sure I could ever truly settle in a place without these cornfields and clouds.

Just a Quick Ten Minute Job

There are small jobs.

There are large jobs.

And, in my family, there are the infamous “ten minute” jobs.

“Ten minute” jobs always – always –  morph into something much larger, more time consuming and gigantic than anyone was expecting. A “Ten Minute” job is the one that ends up taking two trips to a hardware store, and finds problems inside of problems. In my family the words “I just need help on a quick ten minute job” have been met with dread and fear.  I’m not sure why any of us even think it’s possible to do a job in ten minutes. I certainly should have known better…

My dad came to my house with a Kaboda equipped with a winch, a rusty cable, a three-hundred pound lead weight and a plan and told me it would just take ten minutes to get the unwanted willow branch onto the ground.

So deceptively small looking. So very heavy.

…I should have known…

We enacted the plan.

And then there was the part where the 300 pound weight went up in the tree and stayed there instead of coming back down so the old rusty cable could start to cut the branch. More weight was added, different angles were tried…

Hours later the plan was working. We might not have been “sawing” the branch off, but we were certainly “sanding” our way through it.

Look at that sawdust fly!

My dad and I are long on stubborn. The branch was going to come down and with a bit of extra rope and planning…

It did.

Down it comes, nice and slow and just in the right spot!

Five and half hours after we started it was all sawed up  and hauled off.

Around here, as I should have known, that’s just your typical “ten minute” job.

You Don’t Want a Unicorn by Ame Dyckman and Liz Climo

Maybe you, like the mistaken boy in this story, think you want a unicorn  – but you don’t. 

We read all about those rotten unicorns, and trust us, you really don’t.

Would I recommend it? Well, if you are unconvinced and still want a unicorn you better read it so you can save yourself from the housebreaking woes, the shedding and the jumping…. oh the jumping…