Home, Farewells and Fiction

We arrived home from New York in the early afternoon yesterday,

and Morgan, Chase and Michelle came over to swim. And a little later Ethan came!

It was the perfect welcome home to hang out by the pool with my sister and her kids!

Morgan and Chase babysat Kershaw while we were gone and they were very nice about it, 

even though he pooped on their floor (same spot as last time).

Louie (their dog) learned to swim when they came over!

We ate pizza and talked about shows that we love and enjoyed the end of summer heat 

with a pool to cool off.

After they left, Dan and I sat outside for a while longer enjoying our personal wide-open space

(so much different than New York),

until Nick called us to say he made dinner and did we want some? He was trying a new recipe.

Paprika Chicken and rice--it was delicious.

Today we went to Miles' farewell. He did such a great job! 

His talk was so personal, and spiritual, and inspiring.

We had a wonderful brunch afterwards sitting outside in the shade and catching up with all our family.

All afternoon I worked on my flash fiction story I had to submit by 10:00 p.m.

I'd started it on the plane the day before, but didn't love it.

My randomly assigned genre was Romance!

I was able to get a story together I liked, only it was 1200 words and needed to be cut to 500.

Dan made his own birthday steaks and corn on the cob while I worked until dinner was ready.

Chris and Nick were home and it was so great to eat outside, 

then take our dessert back outside and be together. 

By 8:00, I felt like I needed to finish my story.

At 9:40 I still had 12 words to cut, but thought I'd review the submission rules, and glad I did because they changed it this time, asking for a title page and one line synopsis!

Threw that together real quick than madly added and cut and checked my word count until 9:56.

(With the 100 word micros, we copy and pasted directly in the submittable form, but this needed a separate file named with the title, etc. and made for a very exciting two minute crunch.

Michael also took the challenge -- his genre was Horror!

I love these little contests with assigned genres, actions and word. 

They really light up my creativity and each time I'm reminded if you just start writing,

you'll come up with something.

I'm considering taking a flash fiction class in the fall so I feel more confident with the structure.