Fall Wrap-Up/Winter Goals

Hey y'all!!! I hope you're having a wonderful start to your Christmas season. Mine's been a bit rocky, but I think it's smoothing out now. I've gotten almost all of my shopping done, so #winningatchristmas

Seeing as I missed the past two months' wrap-ups, I decided to do a season wrap-up instead. I think I'm going to keep it that way as well. Bear with me, as it'll probably be a long one. I had many blessings during the fall season!

~Writing~

Let's see. What did I even do during the fall? 

1. I finished a horribly rough draft of Simon Says during NaNoWriMo. Like, it is so messy. But it's done and I absolutely loved the experience! It was amazing. I have a whole post on my how it went that I'll share next week. 

And that's pretty much it on the writing front. I didn't do a lot except for work on SS.  

~Reading~

I read three books over the course of the fall months, which isn't too shabby considering all of the stuff that happened. 

Both Enna Burning and River Secrets by Shannon Hale. Isi and Geric's relationship is what I dream of for myself. #somuchfangirlflail That is all. 

And The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet by Stephanie Morrill. I really enjoyed this one, though I'm not sure I liked it quite as much as Skylar Hoyt. I really loved that she brought Abby back, even if it was an extremely small portion. She was definitely one of my favorite characters from Skylar Hoyt. 

~Life~

So much life happened! So many good things to celebrate

September:

1. It started off by having Jules and Evangeline and their family over for Labor Day. That was awesome! Our families hardly ever get to see each other, so it was nice for everyone to catch up and relax. The younger people went on a hike while the parents chatted. All in all, it was a ton of fun!

2. I had my birthday a few days later. It was a lot of fun! I got seven books and a bunch of other things, including a tank top with my favorite Legally Blonde quote on it. Just hilarious!

3. My younger brother, my sister, and I went and spent a few days up in the NC mountains. We had such a relaxing time. It was lovely and peaceful. And I got exactly zero pictures of it. I really just wanted to be in the moment and fully enjoy the peace. 

4. We had the threat of a hurricane, which turned out to be nothing in our area, but very devastating near the coast. And, because he's a lineman, my younger brother went in to help restore power after it passed. It was his first time going out and he had an amazing experience. Getting to help others. Doing crazy dangerous things. Being well-fed. Definitely his kind of world. And I'm obviously very proud of him. In fact, he actually went out for two storms this year. Both Florence and Michael. He enjoyed both.

This was actually from Michael, but still... look at all those trucks!!
All photo credit to the bro-man

5. Then Jules and I met up for an impromptu lunch outing. She was on her way to a conference and had stopped at a bookstore on the way and got me a book. Seeing as she had to drive somewhat close to my place, we met up for lunch. It was a wonderful surprise and totally made my month!

October:

1. I went on a cruise mid-October, which was a blast!! I spent most of the first day sleeping, which was great. I really needed the rest. And even though we were skirting hurricane Michael and weren't able to stop at Grand Cayman, we had a beautiful trip.

Like, how can people think this happened by accident?!

Cozumel was stunning!!

2. My family then did a 5k hosted by a sister church. It was drizzling the whole time, but it was so much fun.

Post race selfie

November:

1. In early November, I went to a women's retreat with several ladies from my church. We had such a great time of fellowship and love. It totally was totally worth missing two writing days for NaNoWriMo! But then I got sick from the food.

2. Of course NaNoWriMo happened. I won it on the last day. Even though I had 4k words to write that day, I'm so thankful I didn't have to write 10k like a lot of the folks I know. I don't think I could have handled it as gracefully as they did. As it is, I'm so thankful for the encouragement and word warring from the Pen Dragon chat group and to Jules's cheering me onward. Both were so helpful and crucial to winning this year. As I stated earlier, I'm going to write a post on my experience.

3. Jules, Evangeline, and I got together and made a day trip to Biltmore. It was so amazing. It's been a number of years since I've been there and I was blown away again by how beautiful the place is!! And the weather that day was quite nice. Overcast, but not too cold. I do wish we got to see more flowers outside, but oh well. I guess we'll just have to go again to see the gardens in full bloom.

A stupid grinch tree kept getting in the way of my pictures. :(

Basically, it was an amazing day despite feeling like garbage that morning. Life tip for y'all: Get yourself some amazing friends who are willing to do stuff like this with you. They make life so much more amazing. 

~#Textchats~

I thought I might share a few of the random text chats that my family and I had over the past few months. Some might only be humorous to myself, but I'll add them anyway. 

When your brother identifies every unique part of a car from a crappy pic

Our lifting names

When your mother gets your weird sense of humor

Meme jokes!!

No one, I repeat, no one gets me better than this guy

The hashtag says it all

When your brother is full of crap but you're used to it

Anyway, that's what's going on with me. Now, it's onto a quick goals list for writing.

1. I'd like to complete draft six of The Dawn of a Hero by the end of February at the latest.

2. If that's done, then I'd like to finish the rewrite of The Fall of Chemmit. I had to put it on the back burner in August, but I think I'm almost ready to pick it back up again.

So there you have it. Nothing too extreme waiting for me in the writing realm, what with Christmas and all. I do have a lot of goals I plan to accomplish in 2019 and I'm so excited to see where it takes me!

And I know I've been rather absent from the blogging realm. I've struggled finding my place lately. I never really knew what I wanted to blog about, but after NaNo, I think I've started to grasp what I want to do around here. It'll take me a while to get back in the swing of things, but I want to start reading people's blogs again and start making meaningful comments. I love each of you so dearly and it was never my intention to drop from the face of the planet like I did.

Anyway, I hope y'all had an amazing NaNo (if you did it) or an amazing November (if you didn't). I hope to do a recap of my experience next week, so look out for that!

I want to hear from y'all. What have you been up to lately? Are you looking forward to Christmas and the New Year? What things have you accomplished these past few months?