Southern Living Yankee

Thanksgiving Day found us driving to Michigan for dinner at my sisters and it was worth every mile! We had a great visit. The following day we drove right back home :( but stopped and visited with lots of Bowmans for a couple hours :) It was a "family-full" (as in "wonderful") Thanksgiving! But my heart was pulled in many directions--I missed visiting my parents on their 55th anniversary, missed my kids in Seattle and Ashtabula, missed Hardy's in NY--and maybe that's why I so appreciated the family I did get to see. Life is good. Here's a picture of Brad with Grandpa and Grandma Bowman. We left him in Kalamazoo and he hitched a ride back to Cleveland with his cousin Mindy. He's spending this week up there looking for a job and making college arrangements. WRITING UPDATE: I edited chapter 19 in the car on my way to Michigan and entered it all in the computer tonight. This week my writing day is Tuesday and it will be tight with errands. I'll hav...

At 12:35 pm Saturday the plane landed at Cleveland-Hopkins, my neice Brook hopped off, and that was the start of our Beautiful Girlhood weekend. We went to the Coventry neighborhood of Cleveland to enjoy lunch at The Winking Lizard where my neice Mindy works, then on to Beachwood Place for shopping, and then we met Mindy and my daughter Brooke, for the movie "Blind Side." (loved it!) We topped the night off with pie at Baker's Square and then went to Brooke's new house to be the first ones to sleep there! Chris had a nice fire in the fireplace waiting for us and we recharged for the next day. On Sunday we went to Eagleville Bible Church which Brook really enjoyed. We had a delicious lunch and then hit the highway to get Brook to the Columbus airport (3+ hour drive) for her flight home! But did Brook and I just drive and drive in endless monotony on Sunday afternoon? No! We had our own little writers conference! She pulled out the book she's working on and read it ...

Ten more days to Thanksgiving, let's think of ten things we're thankful for each day. I'll start it off. Here are ten things I'm thankful for about writing this book, and some of them happened within this last week! 1. I met an amazing widow who's interested in going over the book with me. 2. I met a new writer who works at Cedarville U and I can tell our relationship is going to benefit both of us. 3. I found a shepherd who is really good at poking me about writing. 4. My husband is always supportive and patient with my writing. (He still doesn't understand I'm not writing a best-seller that will make him a millionaire, though!) 5. I worked on chapter 10 last week--it's a tough one. I'd been putting it off since August, but God gave me a wonderful insight that will tie it all together. 6. I gave a little presentation at the Dayton writers group on Thursday night and they really liked it. I should say I meant for it to be little, but they wanted me t...

(I hope you didn't hear the maniacal laughter after that title.) Yes, free stuff today! But first, here's a picture Brad took at the Air Force Museum here in Dayton. Nice, huh? We went there on Saturday for a few hours. It was a gorgeous day--everyone in Ohio was incredulous--this is November! Nice isn't normal! November is monotonously nasty: drizzle, clammy cold, and dreary. But here we had a weekend full of sunshine and today the temps will hit 70! Which leads me to the freebies. When we got home from the museum I could have gone on to enjoy the great outdoors, the weather, the fresh air . . . But do you know what I had to do? It was DAY 10 of the Amish Friendship Bread starter: baking day. My life has been revolving around this stupid plastic bag full of goo. Every morning, every night I had to squish and squeeze it, then I'd burp it. I even had to feed it. This goes on and on. After a while I started to grow fond of the little bugger, what with the feeding and burp...

I've had some busy weekends. Yesterday I went to a writer's conference in Richmond, Indiana. But the Saturday before that I went to my brother Joel's in Illinois. His mother-in-law had passed away and they had a memorial for her by opening her house to everyone for the afternoon. It was just what she would have wanted--a house full of loving people. Photos and collages of her family were set up throughout, and my nieces and her other grandchildren had letters to her and other memorabilia. I really wanted to show you the drawing pictured here. My niece Emily drew this. It's a collection of things her grandma was known for: a hat; one of her favorite sayings: Live Love, Laugh; her coffee cup, glasses, and necklaces; and her crossword puzzles--but this puzzle is very special . . . more about it later. Here are two of my fives nieces in my brother's family: Brooklyn and Emily. They've grown into beautiful young ladies! Brook wrote a lovely letter to her grandma Char...