We have had a counting and letters EXPLOSION over here this last month.

Someone can now count unassisted to 40 (pretty good, considering two months ago he couldn’t make it to 15 without getting distracted!), he can spell his name and my name and he wants to name every letter he ever sees EVER (shopping takes me approximately 487 times longer than normal because we spell or count everything).

He came running in with this while I was making my bed. Love my big boy.

And speaking of big boys, this kid… Guys. I waited and waited and waited for Nathan to develop some chunk as a baby and he never did. I adore Parker’s rolls. ADORE. I squeeze those thighs and kiss those cheeks a hundred million times a day. It’s kind of amazing he still has cheeks for how much they get kissed. (And yes!! He is now sitting unassisted for at least a couple of minutes by himself. KILLING ME how quickly he is growing up.)

First time riding together in the cart at Costco. I believe this is some sort of Rite of Sibling Passage here in the USA.

Nathan had his very first soccer game on Saturday.

Oh my. This kid inherited way too much of his mama’s genes. At one point, he had most of his team and a lot of the other team all trying to help him catch a grasshopper. It paused the game for several minutes. At another point, he and a kid on his team just sat down on the grass and started talking and at yet another point, he was curled up in a cannonball position telling the ref that he could just be the ball.

It was entertaining, to say the least. 😉 Ha! Hoping for some focus to develop over the season. He’s the youngest on his team (though definitely not the smallest) so I know he’ll mature over the year.

Love this shot of Jon taking advantage of Nathan’s turn to sit out a quarter to teach him more about the game. 😉 At the end of the day, he had SO much fun and he has been asking all week when we get to go back for his next game. And that’s what is important. 😉

Chewing some gum from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Parker’s new trick. We were dying. And yes – these boys giggle together ALL THE TIME. It might be my most favorite thing ever. 🙂

Finally, we were at the grocery store yesterday and I looked back and saw this while I was unloading the cart and had a MAJOR flashback to this moment approximately three and a half years ago:

Oh these boys. Sweet, smiley, goofy, and super curious. They are definitely brothers.

These past few weeks have been full of writing, playing, park time, soaking up the last of summer and very much getting excited about fall!

These two just love each other. So blessed by this! I pray that they love each other their entire lives every night when we tuck them in. 🙂

Nathan went on a run with me for the first time and did pretty good. He got a piggy back ride home though. I was wishing it was me getting the ride home. 😉

First day of Cubbies!! Yay for our fun fall activities starting!

We had a torrential downpour here while we were out getting groceries and Nathan was being so good to avoid all the puddles. I watched him trying to get into the car and just decided, this is ridiculous. So, I told him to run as fast as he could and go make the biggest splash in the biggest puddle. He LOVED it. He didn’t stop talking about that the entire week. Everyone else in the parking lot just gave me weird looks but it was totally worth their condemnation. 😉

We had our first soccer practice!! This is Nathan’s first organized sport so I’m curious how it’s going to go. 😉

He had a HUGE smile for most of the practice time. 🙂

I cannot get enough of this face. Parker slept and ate and then played on a blanket – he did so well!

Tired boy! And someone was VERY excited to see his big brother after his two-hour practice was over!!

Sweaty mess. 😉 We had to immediately drive to Sonic for slushes so he didn’t melt into a little blue puddle. 😉

We’ve spent a good chunk of time lately moving my parents into their new house. This was the first time off the fun new pool slide. Yay!

Nothing better than ice cream dates at the smelly zoo with our favorite girls. 🙂

 

This guy is big enough to semi-sit in the cart by himself. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??

My sister came by and brought this with her – first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season! Lots of happy dancing in my house on this day. 😉

We took our last nap in the swaddle…

And our first one in his new Zippy. 🙂

It was Superhero night at CFA last Saturday, so Jon and I missed our first opening home game for the Lobos in YEARS and took the boys there instead.

Needless to say, it was very fun. 😉 And our Lobos didn’t do so hot, so it was for the best.

Yesterday, we went to Gammy and Pops’ house to celebrate Pops’ birthday and Labor Day with some swimming, hamburgers and chocolate pie.

It was a good day. 🙂

I hope you all have enjoyed this week! It’s so fun to get to introduce you to what may be some new faces and new reading for y’all. I love my friends. A HUGE thank you to everyone who helped make this week possible!!

SO. 😀

I have some extra, extra, EXTRA fun news for you all today!! As many of you know, my very first book that I ever published was Miss Match (seven years ago this last spring!!). Well, Miss Match, Rematch and Match Point all have some new looks going on now… (and if you are a follower on Facebook, then you’ve already seen a sneak preview of this!!)

What do you think??!! I absolutely LOVE them – I think it totally captures the spirit of the books. Miss Match is re-releasing on Kindle and Nook this weekend, Rematch will be re-releasing on Kindle and Nook on August 29th and Match Point will be re-releasing on Kindle and Nook on September 5th!

In more GREAT news – ALL of my novellas, which have previously been exclusively on Kindle will be available on Nook starting this week as well!! 

And in the BEST news….

You guys have been asking and asking and asking for years about whether or not this will ever happen and I have been responding, “probably not”, “probably not”, “probably not” over and over again… but today I am SO SO SO excited to announce that the Lauren Holbrook series is growing by one book this December!!

Yay!! Match Made, book four, is releasing this coming December!! I’m SO excited for you guys to meet a few new characters and to see what happens to the ones you already know. 😉

So so so excited!! I will keep you posted with updates and pre-order info and all the fun details!

Want to win a Kindle copy of the newly redecorated Miss Match?? 🙂 Enter to win on our Rafflecopter below! (And this contest IS open to everyone – USA or not!)

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YAY!!!

Okay, guys. I am SO super excited about this book today!

This is my friend Betsy St. Amant. And she’s awesome. I mean, really awesome. She’s super fun, super real and has a super cute daughter and basically, she’s just super all around. 😉

She just came out with her latest book which I am dying to read because it totally looks right up my alley. I mean, it’s got a cupcake on the cover. You can’t have a better cover than that!

Her official bio: Betsy St. Amant has a heart for three things – chocolate, new shoes and sharing the amazing news of God’s grace through her novels. She lives in Louisiana with her adorable story-telling young daughter, a collection of Austen novels, and an impressive stash of Pickle Pringles. A freelance journalist and fiction author, Betsy is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and is multi-published in Contemporary Romance. Her ninth Love Inspired novel released in January 2014, while her first romance with Zondervan Publishers comes out September 2014. When she’s not reading, writing, or singing along to the Tangled soundtrack with her daughter, Betsy enjoys inspirational speaking and teaching on the craft of writing, and can usually be found somewhere in the vicinity of a white-chocolate mocha.

And Betsy, take it away!!

I hope you guys are enjoying this as much as I am!!

Side note: I will draw all of the winners on Monday for the entire week. 🙂

Today’s guest is my friend Alicia Willis – she’s super sweet and been a faithful reader of Scribble Chicks, the blog I help write on for writers, for many years! We got to meet a little while ago and it was just so fun! We were all so excited when she got her first book published and now she’s just released book number five!

Her official bio: Alicia A. Willis is a homeschool graduate and avid historian. From an early age, she has had the desire to write family-friendly, accurate books about the past. When not writing or doing endless historical research, she enjoys singing, being a church pianist, and teaching music. She and her family live in New Mexico.

And I’ll let her take over from here!!

 

If money was no object, where would you go for a vacation?
Who would you bring? 

ruins.

Today I’ve got a friend who I’m excited for you all to meet – CJ Darlington! She’s a fantastic writer, a horse lover and won the Christian Writer’s Guild contest a few years back for a new author. She’s that good.

Her official bio: C. J. got her big break in publishing when her first novel Thicker than Blood won the Christian Writers Guild 2008 Operation First Novel contest. She hasn’t slowed down since and wrote and published her second and third contemporary novels Bound by Guilt and Ties that Bind. Her newest novel Jupiter Winds is a YA/dystopian/space adventure. In 2013 C. J. went indie and started her own publishing company, Mountainview Books, LLC, with her mom and sister. The goal of the press is to publish fresh fiction to inspire your faith. A homeschool graduate, C.J makes her home in Pennsylvania with her family and their menagerie of dogs and a paint horse named Sky.

And onto the interview!! 

Erynn: Tell us a little about how you got started writing. 

CJ: I’ve loved reading and writing ever since I was a little kid. I would sit at my dad’s old word processor and type out stories about my pets and animals. When I was twelve I started thinking about what it would be like to publish something I wrote. Had no idea how to do it, but the dream was sparked! When I was fifteen I began the story which fifteen years later would become my first published novel, Thicker than Blood. It was the love of story that first got me going, and it’s what always draws me back too.

You just had a new book release! What is it about?

Jupiter Winds is the story of Grey Alexander, a teenage girl, who in 2160 becomes the bait to catch her missing revolutionary parents she thinks are dead. But it’s much more than that too. This is a story about family. I’ve read a bunch of science fiction/dystopian style novels lately that often feature a strong heroine, but usually she’s completely alone and there’s always a romance subplot. I wanted to write something a little different. Grey is definitely strong and starts out alone, but she doesn’t stay that way. And she ends up on the planet Jupiter. LOL – yes, I know that scientifically there’s not suppose to be life there, but what if everything we knew about the planet was wrong?

What is your favorite type of character to write about? 

Flawed people. I love taking a character who’s had a tough past or faced terrible obstacles and showing their journey to redemption. In Jupiter Winds the spiritual journey is subtle, but it’s there. And there’s hope. That’s something else I love writing about—showing that no matter how far we go or travel (even to another planet!) God is still there waiting for us.

Favorite writing space? Favorite writing snack? 

I actually don’t really have a favorite writing space. I wrote much of Jupiter Winds at my dining room table or in my bedroom. Someday I would love to have an office of sorts (or a library!) where I could be surrounded by my books, but until that day I write wherever I can.

I love snacking on Chili and Lime chips, but it has been so long since I’ve had them since they stopped making them in the brand I liked. A good, strong cup of tea is a must. Or a cappuccino! My sister is in love with her Keurig coffee maker, and I will pop one of those little cups in there sometimes too. I just had a caramel vanilla cup of coffee with some half and half.

If money were no object, where would you go for a vacation? Who would you bring? 

I’d love to see Alaska! I’m a sucker for beautiful mountains. Or I’d go back to my favorite state—Colorado. I’d bring my family, of course. If I could bring all of my dogs with me too, that would be awesome.

Thank you SO much CJ!!

CJ is giving away a copy of Jupiter Winds!! And – FUN news for my out of country friends – she is giving away an ebook (if you are in the USA, you can pick ebook or paperback). 🙂 To enter this giveaway, follow the directions in our spiffy Rafflecopter below. 😉 

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 Love this week!!

Hi friends!!

This is going to be SUCH a fun week!! I have four amazing authors that I know you’ll love who all were so kind to come on here and talk about their books! And stayed tuned all week – I’ve got a very fun announcement on Friday!!

First up, it’s my friend Bekah Hamrick Martin. She’s hilarious and one of my absolute favorite people. She has about the cutest little girl in the world and a gigantic heart for girls. Her book, The Bare Naked Truth About Waiting, is a definite must read for high school girls.

Her official bio: Bekah Hamrick Martin was born in Savannah, Georgia, in an
event which her brother keeps reminding her was completely unnecessary.
She spent the better part of her high school years vacationing on the
north end of her mattress due to an illness, where she developed a deep
taste for chocolate and sarcasm. Today Bekah shares with teens about
tough times, healing, and surviving their high school years—no matter
where they spend them.

SO… I’ll let her fill you in on the rest!

Erynn: How did you get started writing?

Bekah: I was 17 when I started writing death poetry. A few years later I turned it around to writing newspaper humor columns (talk about emotional whiplash).

Ha! Tell me what your heart or inspiration was behind The Bare Naked Truth:
As a writer, I get to tour and hang out with a lot of awesome teen girls. What I love about this is how these new friends open up to me and share what’s going on inside their hearts. I was getting a lot of dating questions, and “When’s the right time?” questions. Not being an expert on the topic, I decided to talk with over twenty different authors (Susie Shellenberger, Annie Downs, and even the infamous Erynn Mangum!) who each had their own experiences and advice. What developed was a humorous book with some serious takeaway from these ladies.

I love how creative the book is! Okay. Favorite writing space? Favorite snack?

Well hello. Beachfront. But the reality is I usually have to imagine that part. I pretty much sit in our boring beige apartment and pray the baby doesn’t wake before I hit my word count.

Snacks… CHOCOLATE (peanut M & M’s preferred). And lots of caffeine. This writer drinks a minimum of two cups a day.

This is why we are friends. Amen to everything you just said. So, if money were no object, where would you go for vacation? Who would you bring?

Seems simple, but definitely Cancun. I would bring my hot Swedish man, and no babies. Because when it comes to enjoying a vacation or working the whole time… I’M the baby in that equation.

Thanks, Erynn, for inviting me over!

Thank you so much for coming, Bekah!!

Bekah has super kindly offered to give away a copy of her book, The Bare Naked Truth! I KNOW you guys will love it (and super fun tidbit – part of mine and Jon’s story is in her book!!). To enter, all you have to do is follow the directions on the lovely Rafflecopter below.

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Yay for a fun week!!

I just can’t. It’s not even possible.

And yet. Here’s my boy. In all his five month glory.

We had a little mini photo session yesterday to commemorate this month. Big brother helped get the smiles, though, honestly, it’s not hard at all to get smiles out of this kid.

Parker is SO. MUCH. FUN. He is silly, loud, obnoxious and goofy. He loves attention, loves to laugh, loves to wiggle and hates to feel like he’s not right in the middle of what is going on.

Everything that he can get his hands on goes straight to his mouth. Everything. And this month, he started wiggling around the floor. He hasn’t quite mastered rolling back to front yet, but he can sit for a few seconds on his own and roll from his tummy to his back easily. His preferred way to go through life is being held and heaven forbid you leave him on the floor in a room by himself for more than .037 seconds unless he’s asleep in his crib. 😉

He loves to dance. LOVES it. He loves being outside, loves chewing on stuff, loves his blanket and loves his family. He laughs and kicks and grins and yells at the top of his lungs all. day. long. And spits up. The boy is a master spitter-upper. Which means we are fond of him taking a bath every day. 😉

He’s still exclusively nursing, he’s still being swaddled at night and naps (despite a day or two of trying to go swaddle-less) and he’s back to waking up at least once at night to eat – mostly I think because he has become so distracted during the day that the nighttime is the only time he actually focuses on eating (probably because big brother isn’t there to make all kinds of noise).

He’s just the funniest, sweetest, loudest, cutest little five month old and we are just absolutely in love with him!

Yesterday was the first day we were home all day in I don’t even remember when, so we lived it up. We stayed in our jammies the entire day (I can’t remember the last time I did that either. I took a shower at 8 last night and just put a clean pair of jammies on), we played board games, we made up stories about penguins who hated the cold weather and we baked chocolate chip zucchini bread.

Paradise.

And I sent a good chunk of the day working on something EXTRA special that I cannot wait to tell you guys about very soon!! Mark your calendars for this next week, friends, because I’ve got a lineup of some fabulous books written by some fantastic ladies that you won’t want to miss this fall and a special announcement next Friday!! 🙂

In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been up to:

We went to California to visit Jon’s family and had SO SO SO much fun. We miss our family so much!! About 80% of these pictures were taken from my beautiful sister-in-law, Vicky. 🙂 Thanks Vick!!

Parker went on his first plane ride! Other than his baby pterodactyl yelling for about twenty minutes – not mad, just loud – he did great. 😉

We are here and we are excited!!

Parker met his other great-grandparents for the first time!! I SO wish I’d gotten a picture of the four great grandchildren and the four great grandparents but I was so busy I didn’t even think about it. Next time. 🙂

In-N-Out with the cousins. LOVE.

We were spoiled completely rotten there and were treated to IKEA, Cheesecake Factory, this amazing ice cream shop, In-N-Out, an amazing barbecue my father-in-law made… holy cow. So sweet of them!!

Snuggles with Nonnie. 🙂 

We adore Allen and Vicky!!

 Grins with Uncle Tommy. 🙂

Us at Cheesecake.

Vicky is a professional photographer and captured these AMAZING shots… LOVE. These are getting framed in my house!!

We were boarding the flight to come home and Nathan walked up the stewardess and asked if he could look at the pilots and next thing I know, this happened. 😉 Ha! They were letting him click buttons and push levers and alarms were sounding and it was just nice and terrifying. He sat down in his seat and declared he was going to be a pilot when he grew up.

Tired boys on the way home. We played our hearts out in Cali!

I walked in and found him like this after a nap – he’s getting so big I can’t even stand it.

We came home and Jon went right back to work at his school and we went right back to craziness. We are doing a little preschool at home this year with Nathan and he is LOVING it.

So fun!! I love seeing how excited he gets over this. 🙂 We’ve been reading a lot and working on letters and numbers and drawing pictures. He told me he might be an artist instead because he loved coloring so much. Or a storyteller because he loved telling stories.

“Actually, I’m going to be an animal doctor, Mom.”

Someone is on the move lately. I found him like this in his crib after a nap and then we had a progression across the living room where no one touched him and he just kept scooting around. SO not ready for this! Ha! I have no idea how to babyproof with a four-year-old in the house!!

We took the boys to their first real movie in the theaters this last weekend. Nathan had gone with me to see Rio in the dollar theater a long time ago, but this was his first time at the big theater. We saw Planes 2 and he LOVED it. Then he decided he was maybe going to be a firefighter instead. 😉 And Parker did great – he watched about half the movie and then slept and ate through the other half.

I heart these boys.

Just a typical afternoon when Dad gets off work. 😉 Thanks Gammy and Pops for the super realistic Spider-Man outfit. 😉

Park time with the beautiful Beechem girls! The O’Brien boys are fans.

Yesterday’s fun. Anytime I sit down it’s a free for all on my lap. Ha! Love Parker’s concentration as they “cooked” the zucchini bread. “Actually, Mom, I might be a chef.”

We were waiting in the car for Dad and I let them come up front with me which is a HUGE deal, apparently. 😉 While we were there, we saw some people in scrubs and Nathan decided that he might actually be a “people doctor” instead.

Love these days.

Last week, Parker had his four month appointment and while we were there, the doctor mentioned that she could just go ahead and do Nathan’s four-year well-child check up too.

It made for a very, very long visit there but it was nice not having to go back this week! 😉

These boys are gigantic. I mean it. GIGANTIC. But they are gigantic, healthy monsters and that’s the most important thing. 😉 We got a total of five shots between the two boys so there was some fussiness and lack of sleep that night, but it was definitely better to get it all over with at once.

Parker weighs 15 pounds, 9 ounces (42%) and is 27 inches long (97%). He grinned and laughed and spit up buckets and screamed during the shots and then slept so I felt like the doctor got to see all facets of my boy. Ha!

Nathan weighs 41 pounds (80%) and is 44 inches tall (98%). He laid perfectly still for his shots, grinned at me and then thanked the nurse. As we left, he told the doctor around a mouthful of sucker that she was “gorgeous.”

And that is my biggest boy in a nutshell.