Birthday Stories and Flowers

Birthdays can be like flowers, lovely and bright, different even as they come on the same day year after year. The birthday stories some of you have been sending me are the same. Some of you have birthdays where not much fuss is made, maybe cake and ice cream. Others of you have had parties and special vacations and surprises. All fun as you celebrate the gift of another year here on Planet Earth. Some of the stories are touching. Some funny. Some loving. Some sad. A few have been a combination of all those emotions. 

That's the way the story is tonight. Chris shares about her mother who is in a nursing home suffering symptoms of dementia. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have a birthday to celebrate or reason to smile. If you can find those smiles on that hard Alzheimer's road, then life gets easier if only for a little while. Here's some of the story Chris shared with us.

"First, thank you for sharing your journey with your mom with us. My mom's 90th is this month and ...I am getting her a small tiara to wear for that day! (& balloons for the wheelchair...maybe a wrist corsage?) Last year, my sister and I took her out to lunch but the nurse forgot to let the cafeteria know that she wasn't coming...so Mom found out and felt bad since they had gone to the trouble of fixing her fried shrimp. (I think she forgot we were coming.) Anyway, we pick her up and she insists that I take her lunch from the Center with us because she wants to eat it too! ... So off we went to our little favorite restaurant...,a 1950's cafe with the best food in the world... So Mom insists on bringing the food from the Center in...I am like Mom!...please...it is rude to bring food into a restaurant and not eat their food...this is the best food ever. My sister...trying to please Mom pushes for the Center food to come in with us. Of course, the owner & the chef notice we brought our own take out food in. :/. She is so gracious, wishing Mom a happy birthday...and she asks about the food. Mom explains she couldn't hurt the Center's staff's feelings by not taking the food with us. Then she refuses to eat food at the restaurant...only soup and just a bit because she doesn't want to get full. And she eats the Center food! Crazy time!"

With someone with memory problems you might as well just go with the flow, Chris. Hope this birthday was less crazy for you but fun for your mother. But here's a preview from Chris on how things might go this year in another story she shared about her mom. 

"My mom has Alzheimer's/dementia, and the other day I got a call from her. She spoke to my husband first...asking him how it was going (like she was perfectly in control). Then I got on the line...she said she was working all day at the college and needed to go home but apparently she was home...her roommate got to go home with her husband! I said, "You're confused, aren't you, Mom?" She said she was very confused and we talked about the college she worked at, what she did...then I said she had a birthday coming up and did she know how old she was? She didn't, but then when I asked 50? No. 60? No. 70? YES! I said, "Well, there you have it! When you were 70, you did work for the college, and if you are confused and think you are 70, of course you'd be going home on the weekend! I said she was going to be 90 and she denied it over and over! Ha! What a hoot. So I said, "Well, we could pretend to lose 20 years, but then we won't have my youngest daughter (who's 19) yet!" I asked if we could pretend we don't have 20 extra pounds instead and we laughed and agreed."

Thanks for sharing, Chris. That last story made me think about my mother who drifted in time to different ages. Sometimes she was only 16 and sometimes in her thirties. She looked at me like I was  nuts if I told her she was in her nineties. She knew that wasn't right. But it definitely might be good to forget those 20 extra pounds, Chris, especially after birthday cake and pie.

Since I last talked to you here, I got another year older, but I'm still celebrating all month and you can celebrate with me by entering my birthday giveaway contest. Check out details here. Deadline to enter is September 30.

Also, today and maybe for a couple more days, The Blessed, one of my Shaker books has a special e-book price of 99 cents or less. Check it out at Amazon; Barnes & Noble (Nook); or Christianbook.com. Maybe other internet e-book sites too. Be sure to check the price to see if it's still on special before you download.

Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing your birthday stories with me.

Stories to Celebrate and Prizes to Win

"Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon." ~A.A. Milne

Have you ever had balloons on your birthday? Balloons just seem to say let's celebrate. Just ask Winnie the Pooh. That old bear can float around with a balloon and enjoy every day, birthday or not. 

So today here are some balloons to get us in the birthday mood and to remind you that this month I'm celebrating getting older by giving away some prizes. Three winners will get gift cards and their choice of one of my books. Check out complete prize details on my website. Entry is easy. Just send me a message from my website or leave a comment here on a new blog post in September. Please remember to leave a way to contact you in case your name rises to the top of my drawing hat. For fun, you can share a birthday story and get a bonus entry in the giveaway. 

I love hearing your stories and I will eventually get around to reading them all. My surgery has slowed me down a little, but I'm getting back up to speed. Of course, with adding on another year, speed is a relative term. Perhaps I should say I hope to keep plugging along. 

Age wasn't a problem for Karen in this birthday story she shares. She was turning that magical "I can drive" age. But the license issuing offices just would not stay open for her. Here's Karen's story.

I'll be ?? on November 11th. Now my birthday is a federal holiday so all state & federal government offices are closed on 11/11 and where do you go to get your driver's license? Right, a government office. Well, when I turned 16 I was very anxious to get my first driver's license. I was so upset that the DMV office was closed on my birthday that I called about a week before to see if I could get my DL on the 10th since it wasn't MY fault they weren't open on the 11th. LOL Well, of course, the answer was NO. That year my birthday was the longest day ever waiting for the 12th to arrive and I could get my driver's license. Don't we sometimes wish we had those youthful days back again?

Indeed, Karen. Oh, to be 16 again, but then I don't think I want to take that driver's test again. I was soooo nervous when I had to take a ride with the state policeman giving the test. But maybe not as nervous as he was. LOL. 

When Karen told me I could share her story forward she added how the story makes her smile now when she thinks about her impatience. To add to her anticipation, her brothers were both in the service and had left their old Chevy at home and given Karen permission to drive it. So there was that car in the driveway just begging her to get under the wheel and start it up, except her parents hid the keys. Our parents just know us too well sometimes. For sure that day had to be Karen's "longest day ever!"

But about those balloons again. They aren't much fun until we put a little effort into filling them either with our own breath or some helium to make them float. Did you ever wonder if you could float up in the sky if only you could hold onto enough balloons? 

As Karen says, oh to be young again with a zillion dreams clasped in our hands as life beckoned us down dozens of exciting roads. Each birthday is a milestone and one we're celebrating with balloons today.

Love Comes Home - Friends, Family and Fun

            

"I'm late, I'm late for a very important date!" 

That's what I am with this blog post - late like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. But this weekend was a time when I was rushing around like that white rabbit trying to do everything and then some. That's when I should listen to this following good advice.  

"I've learned the Lord didn't do it all in one day...so what makes me think I can?"

But wow, what a weekend! My daughter and son-in-law came home and so we decided to have a big gathering to celebrate my husband's birthday month. When you get our age, you have to make the birthday celebrations last. So we invited the family and laid in the food. Kroger did some of the cooking and two people brought homemade ice cream - peach and banana - and my daughter made enough brownies for an army - or for about eight grandkids. LOL. 

Of course, it rained. Every Saturday in June until last Saturday has been beautiful. The weather forecast called for numerous showers. The weather forecast was right. But it didn't storm and we were able to run out and enjoy the day in between showers and sometimes we kept on playing even with the sprinkles coming down. 

After everybody ate and most everybody went home, I looked in the fridge and found my HUGE bowl of coleslaw. We are going to be eating coleslaw for a while. Do you ever do that? Forget to set out what you've fixed for a dinner or maybe that only happens after you've celebrated a lot of birthdays. :) But in case you have done something like that when you're entertaining extended family, share it with us so I won't feel like the only crazy one. 

Then I already have my Hometown Book Launch for Love Comes Home scheduled for Sunday. Not the best plan after a wild Saturday that pretty much had me running out of energy. I needed some "ten hour" energy drink. But I got recharged at church and was ready to go Sunday afternoon. Or maybe all those beautiful reading friends showing up to hear me talk about my books gave me the "energy" shot I needed. Thank you so much if you were able to come to my book party. I love talking books and I love seeing reading friends too. Wish all of you could have been there. You could have joined in with this great group who laughed at the right times and didn't go to sleep. 

As you can see in the photo, most of the people there were ladies, but there were two guys besides my grandson and son-in-law. I gave away six door prizes. Both men won one. What are the chances of that happening? One of the men told me afterwards it was because they were both preachers. I guess he thought that make their names rise to the top of the drawing basket.

Since we're talking about drawings, remember that today is your last chance to get your name in both of my giveaways. The blog only drawing will have five winners of one of my books (winner's choice). Enter by leaving a comment with a way to contact you - either with an e-mail address or by saying you can be contacted from my Facebook page. My website giveaway has some neat prizes along with those books. You can check out those prizes in last week's blog and read the ways to enter on my Website Events & News Page. But deadline is tonight, June 30, 2014 at midnight EST, so hurry. Don't be like that white rabbit and me and end up saying, "I'm late, I'm late."  

Love hearing from you, so tell me about your busy weekends or something that went haywire when you were having a family get together. 

Christmas at Harmony Hill Celebration Giveaway

I sent out a newsletter Sunday. If you're on my newsletter list you already know about my new celebration giveaway, but if you're not, you can find out about it here. 

I'm celebrating my birthday and the September release of Christmas at Harmony Hill by giving away some prizes. The book is in stores and available online. I do hope you will enjoy the story when you get a chance to read it. Back to the giveaway. For the prizes, I picked Shaker Christmas decorations - what else? 1st prize is the "Hands to Work; Heart to God" ornament and one of my books (winner's choice). 2nd prize is the mini-quilt hanging with embroidered Christmas trees (13.5" by 16") & a copy of one of my books. (Again winner's choice.) 

Then my "never win" prize for those of you who say you never win is a lovely book about tea, a Melody Carlson Christmas book and a copy of one of my books. To enter you can e-mail me from my website or leave a comment here with a way to contact you if you happen to be one of the lucky winners. Remember to tell me if you're one of those "never win" people. I know the feeling. Deadline for entering is midnight EST September 30, 2013. Contest open to residents of the United States and Canada and those 18 or over.

For fun, you can share a favorite birthday memory and in the weeks ahead, I'll share a few of them forward if you give permission. I've got some good birthday memories to share too. While I may not enjoy counting up my birthdays, I still love having them. The last few years I've had to celebrate my birthday at the National Quartet Convention. At least my husband has plenty of booths to look for a last minute present for me. One birthday, a few years ago, he bought me presents at a truck stop on the way home from one of the Patriots' concerts. Actually, I really liked the t-shirt with Labrador dogs on it. And the truck stop sack made good wrapping paper too. LOL. 

I've already gotten a lot of neat birthday memories from those of you who get my newsletter. Some of the stories have made me smile. Some have made tears pop up in my eyes. Here's one of the smiling memories from Sandi. 

My best birthday memory is when I was soon to be 17.  My birthday is in July and I was working as a waitress the summer before my senior year.  I'd had a horrendous day at work and wanted to go home and go to bed--or hide under the bed or just die (teenagers are sooo dramatic). My two best friends showed up just as I got home and they insisted that I go "out" with them. I refused to clean up or put on new make-up--I had cried on the walk home and I looked rather dreadful, but after much coaxing (and threatening from my mom who had joined the discussion for some reason), I decided to join them. My friend Ruth said she had to stop at her boyfriend's house to pick up something and I assured her I'd be the one in the car..."Jim" came to the door and insisted I come inside. I was pretty worn down by then so I went in...surprise--all of my best friends and some I didn't even like were inside and they all screamed "happy birthday" in unison. Fortunately, my mom had packed a bag with make-up and fresh clothes in it and had secretly given it to one of the girls. 

And now we hear from Donna about how we can't know what tomorrow holds, but we can cherish the good times we have with family. 

My best birthday had to be two years ago. My family (daughter, son-in-law and 2 grandkids) were away on a camping trip on my birthday. My sister ... invited me and my boyfriend over to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday. Unknown to me, it was not only my brother-in-law's party but one for me too. Out came a separate cake for me with candles, and they all sang Happy Birthday, and even had presents. My sister had invited her kids and grandkids to this party and it was a wonderful, birthday surprise for me. Little did we know that a year later my sister would be fighting for her life battling cancer. She's had surgery, radiation and is doing better.  So, thank you Big Sister, for everything.  I love you. 

Donna's sister's name is Diane, so if you have a minute, whisper a prayer her way. I do so appreciate all the prayers you've whispered my way and my mother's way as her dementia steadily worsens. Prayers are powerful. 

Thanks for reading and I hope you'll join in with my giveaway fun and come back for more stories in the weeks ahead. And if you don't get my newsletter and would like to, just let me know.

The Best Gifts and a Photo to Prove It

Birthdays come but once a year but if you do some finagling, you can make it last a little longer - a week or two at least. Maybe even a month. While you might not get those gifts stuck in amongst bright-colored tissue paper in gift bags or wrapped up with ribbons every day, you might get plenty of gifts if you look around for them. The sunshine. The birds. A good dog. A loving family. A letter in the mail from a friend. A Scripture verse to touch your heart. An e-mail from a reader. An encouraging comment. Good news about a book. A good read. To name only a few.

I got a gift today. My nearby grandkids came out with their parents to help me do some of that extra birthday celebrating. Then they even took a picture with me - all smiles - so I could count my gifts. While my granddaughter's little dog escaped the camera in this picture, my dog, Oscar, stuck his head in there with us. Some of my very best gifts. The other grandkids don't live close enough to come visiting very often, but it would have been fun to have had the whole crew around me under the apple tree. Enough for a baseball team.

When I think back on my birthdays, I don't remember the presents. I remember the people who helped me celebrate. When I was a child, my aunt always brought me a birthday cake. She never married and she doted on us girls. She loved making our birthdays special, and my mother gave her that gift - allowing her to be the one to bake and decorate the cakes and sew us dresses for our birthdays. 

My aunt died the year I got married, and so birthdays changed. Now the family celebrated birthdays by getting together for dinner. Mom treated us by making our requested favorite dessert. As the years passed, the kids came along and I did my best to make their birthdays special so they'd have good memories of their birthdays the way I did. We did have one disastrous party where we invited 10 or 12 boys. And they all came!!  Quieter parties but just as much fun were when we invited their cousins over. We had candles and cakes that I decorated much the same as my aunt had decorated mine. Nothing fancy. Just shaky writing in pink or blue or yellow icing of "happy birthday" with whichever child's name. Then the kids had so many birthdays that they grew up and got married and had kids of their own to have birthday parties. Now they get to make their children's birthdays special and I go and enjoy. 


I enjoy my birthdays too. Everybody at church sang happy birthday to me this a.m. We have a tradition of giving money to the Children's Homes on our birthday. Then we sing and pray blessings down on the birthday person. What more could anyone want for their birthday? Blessings and joy. And when I got back to the house here, a few hugs and smiles from the grandkids and a little slice of Key lime pie. 

What do you like best about your birthdays? And do you have one birthday you remember better than the others? 

Me, I remember turning 13. Not because of anything that happened or that I got as a gift. I just remember thinking that now I was a teenager. It seemed like a magical age that was going to change everything for me. And you know what? I guess it did. Now here I am all these years later but I still like celebrating birthdays. 

Remember that one way I'm celebrating is by giving away some books and things in my birthday giveaway. If you haven't signed up for the drawing, you can do that by sending me a message from my website, www.annhgabhart.com or leaving a comment here (with contact info if I don't have your e-mail already) before the end of the month. That's when I'm picking the winners - four of them.

Thanks for reading. Tell us about a birthday you remember or a gift that was special for you. I enjoy hearing from you.

Celebrating at Shaker Village

-- One of the nice things about getting older - and there are some nice things - is that if you want to celebrate a week after your actual birthday that's just as much fun as celebrating on the actual day. My sister and I have birthdays a week apart. A few years apart originally, but now we often celebrate both our birthdays on the same day. We used to do them separately, but then we got older and busier. My sister was just saying the other day that she thought she was going to have to re-retire. There just wasn't time to do all she wanted to do and keep the part time jobs she's held down since her first retirement. Me, I don't want to retire. I just want to work faster and better. That means I want the words to flow out of my brain onto my computer screen like water out of a water hose turned on full blast. But I have to admit that sometimes it seems like my creative hose has a few kinks that shut off the creative juices. So I'll just keep muddling along, digging stories out of my head one word and one sentence at a time. That's how even the most famous writers do it. One letter at a time. It's just how those letters and words are put together that make the difference.
--Anyway, I went to Shaker Village for lunch with my sisters and my mom Tuesday to celebrate two of us getting to start out a new year of life. I hadn't been to Shaker Village to eat at the restaurant for years and now I've been there twice in the last couple of months. Last time I was there I gave the workers a copy of my new book, The Believer. It was fun to hear from one of the workers Tuesday that a couple of them had already read the book and found it hard to put down. Those words are always music to a writer's ears. And it was good to hear that a couple of the people who worked there and so are immersed in Shaker history each day thought the story hit the mark.
--I did get the good news that The Believer was on a couple of bestseller lists, both the CBA (Christian Book Association) and ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publisher Association). Number 20 on the CBA list and number 15 on the ECPA fiction list and number 49 on the top 50 book list. What a blessing and a great birthday present besides!
--I've been trying to settle back into a working routine after the NQC and then my houseful of company for the renunion Sunday. And trying to get over a sinus infection. I finally gave up and went to the doctor yesterday. In between coughing and sneezing, I've been enjoying reworking one of my old novels set in Louisville during the 1850's, but meanwhile, my new Shaker character is beginning to talk to me. So I'm anxious to get going and figure out her story. I'm sure Lacey is going to give me an ear full.
--The picture above is the Shaker meeting house at Pleasant Hill, the Shaker community I used as a model for my Harmony Hill Shaker Village. Note the two front doors. The one on the west is for the women and the east for the men. I think. I knew I should have written that down. Maybe I did. I just have to remember where. Anyway this is where the Shakers labored their songs and went forth to exercise their dances to bring down glory. The Ministry, the Shaker men and women who made the rules for the village, lived upstairs and spent their time in prayer and studying Shaker writings. And making sure the brothers and sisters in the village were living the Shaker way. The building had peepholes built in for the purpose of watching. It was a strange way to live.
--Thanks for dropping by. Talk to you next Sunday. No birthdays to celebrate then, but there's always something to celebrate. Maybe sunshine after all the rain.

Happy Birthday to Me!

To celebrate my birthday yesterday I thought I'd show you a girl who really enjoys her birthdays. This is Jillian at her birthday party in June. Somehow us older folks don't know how to celebrate with such abandon the way a three-year-old can. But I'm still thankful for every birthday and glad to celebrate. I've just stopped counting them up. That's how my kids have gotten older than me, I guess. You know it's not your own age so much as how your kids - who are supposed to stay young - are getting older. If they're that age, then it almost forces me as their mom to admit that the years are piling up. But so are the blessings. You can't have grandbabies without adding a few years on and grandbabies are worth those extra years.

--I did my book drawing where I'm giving a lucky reader a couple of books to celebrate me getting to start a new year with the chance to write a new book. And the winner is --- (drum roll, please) Alla of Kentucky. I'll be in touch, Alla, about which books you want. For the rest of you, I'll be doing another giveaway soon. Check here or on my website for details in a few weeks.

The worst thing I got for my birthday is a cold. Yuck! I've got the fashionable Rudolf red nose look right now. I took a pill but it must have lost its oomphf. I don't know how to spell that but you get the idea. We've been going to the Quartet Convention in Louisville all week. I love meeting and greeting people, but I doubt they'll want to meet and greet me today. I'll take my hand sanitizer along and keep my distance, so maybe I won't give everybody anything. It's not the flu. Just an aggravating head and sinus thing.

--But the NQC is always fun. I meet a lot of readers and lovers of gospel music from all over the country and Canada too. Some of them come back every year to the Patriots' booth to see if I have a new book. And the last few years I have been blessed to have a new book out. A lot of people are meeting a writer for the first time. One person told me last night that she'd never met a "real live author." I told her sometimes I wasn't so lively. I can't remember if she bought a book or not after that. :-)

--The Patriots sang their new release "American Christian" in a Showcase on Monday afternoon and everybody in the place (maybe 2000 or so) stood up to cheer. It's a great patriotic song about standing for what you believe. And then people keep coming by the booth to get the CD with "that song" on it. So that's been a spirit booster for the guys. I posted a picture of their booth on my Facebook page so you can go out and check that out to see how much they're waving the flag. That's one of the lines in the song "I'm a flag-waving American Christian." When they took the Patriot name they decided they would stand for God and country. So this song is perfect for them.

--I also did my talk at the Forks of the Elkhorn Baptist Church yesterday. It was the PrimeTimers group. A great bunch of folks and I appreciate them asking me to come talk about my writing. I'll try to post a picture later on.

--Out of time today. I've got to go walk Dub before we head back to Louisville. Poor old dog is still having to wear that torture collar. Yesterday morning I had him chained on the back porch to an old gas grill we had on the porch when he decided he was going for a walk. He pulled that big old grill off the porch and freed himself. I had to chase him down. So now he'll have to go in the basement while we're gone.

--Hope you have a beautiful week and play you some toe-tapping good gospel music. Bound to cheer you up.

Birthdays - A Reason to Celebrate

Have you ever noticed how birthdays sometimes seem to bunch up in the same month in families? March is one of those months for my family. Not my birthday, but my daughter's and niece's and my mom's. On Darrell's side of the family there are five dates that are multiple family members' birthdates. One day in August was the birthday of three of the grandkids born a few years apart. Of course as you may have guessed, he had a big family - three brothers and one sister. So that increases the odds of a birthday being duplicated with a new family member's birth. I think we're up around sixty on his side of the family counting all the kids and grandkids and even a few great-great grandkids now. That makes me a great-great aunt. Maybe I'd rather not think about that!!

But tomorrow is my daughter's birthday. That's hard enough to think about. Because, you see, somehow she's gotten older than I tend to think about being myself. Do any of the rest of you forget your actual age - unless you make yourself remember? Have you settled on this other more acceptable age that maybe you reached several years past and just decided to stay? At least subconsciously. I'm not being Jack Benny and telling people I'm 39. I own up to my age when asked, but it's just not where I am in my head. That mental age is hovering down there somewhere around my daughter's age or even a little younger. I suppose my head's in a bit of denial.

Still I love birthdays. Mine and everybody else's. It's such a great time to celebrate and make someone feel special. You don't have to count them, but if you're like me, you want to keep having them. So why not have fun? I won't get to bake a cake for my daughter. She lives too far away to come home to let her mom cook her a birthday dinner and I miss that. Her birthday was always a great opportunity to make some sinfully delicious chocolate dessert. Remember Mississippi Mud. That was her birthday cake choice a lot when she was home. My sons always liked banana split cake. My favorite is homemade Angel Food cake with that great white icing. The cake takes twelve egg whites and the icing took a couple more and had to be cooked in a double-boiler while you stirred it for seven straight minutes. Then half the time I messed it up when I used to try to make it. That was back when I was more of a farm girl and had my own laying hens and would get so many eggs I had to try to use them up somehow.

Anyway I know you all will join in with me singing happy birthday to my beautiful daughter, Tarasa. And then next Monday is my mom's 89th birthday. She's probably thinking she's younger than me although age is beginning to slow her down. She's the last of her four sisters still living and she's hanging in there. But let me tell you, Henry Louis Mencken hit the nail on the head when he said, "Old age ain't no place for sissies." Things get harder. But Mom always said from the time she was a little girl that she wanted to live to be 100 and she may make it.

Just in case you're having a birthday this month, here are a few quotes to make you feel better about getting older.

• To remain young while growing old is the highest blessing. - German Proverb
• Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. - C.S. Lewis, 1893-1963
• If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old. -James A. Garfield, America President, 1831-1881

May your spirit never grow old.

Launching Summer of Joy and Beginning a New Book

We've been having some real Kentucky weather. Last week up to almost 70 degrees and then tornadoes and storms. This week windchills down to zero. It's chilly out there. When I walked yesterday, I had to pull out my big coat. The one that's so fluffy and thick that my arms stand out from my sides. I don't pull out that heavy armor very often. I'm more the President Kennedy style. You remember how he never wore a coat? Of course a Secret Service man might have been holding his coat out of sight of the cameras.

My book launch is this Friday night. Might not be too good of scheduling since Thursday is Valentine's Day, but maybe everybody will want a fun love story/family drama to give to his or her special someone. Summer of Joy is a fun story. I wanted it to vibrate with the joy of living. I guess you as readers will have to let me know if I was successful on that one.

I'm beginning on a new book. At last. I kept trying to get myself to do other stuff. Publicity type stuff. Store visits. Who knows what? But I have to be writing. I can surely clean out the closets another day. Surely. Of course I've been saying that for a few months now. One of these days I'm going to open the door to the closet and be buried under that pile of stuff I should have already carried off to Goodwill or the landfill. But I've got to write. I don't have the same impulse about cleaning.

Next week I'll be off to South Carolina to a book festival down there. I'm going to be on a couple of panels talking about Faith in Fiction and The Importance of Place across Genres. Both of those promise to be interesting and there will be some great writers on the panels with me. I'll no doubt learn a lot. If you live in the area, check out all the fun on the South Carolina Book Festival website and come out and enjoy. They've got some big name writers coming to share their expertise and sign books. My daughter will be attending with me. She loves to read so she should have fun at the festival.

My youngest son, Daniel, had a birthday last Friday. There is no way my baby can be that old. I usually feel as if I'm about that age. I just don't see how he caught up with me so quickly. ;) But he's a great person, a wonderful dad and husband and son, and I'm very proud of him. He wanted Snickerdoodles. Sort of an unusual birthday cake (cookies), but he and the kids enjoyed them, and we managed to stick on a few candles.

Hope all you guys have a loving Valentine's Day. Remember God loves you and so do a lot of your Christian brothers and sisters. And writers like me always love readers like you. Ann