​Number Six: When you land in ancient civilizations, you never know when you might run into the gods who inspired mythological story-telling.

     Pre-Order your copy today—it will be  delivered to your device Monday morning!

​Number Seven: Baby goats. They’re adorable.

​Number Eight: Because with time travel, people can loop back and meet other versions of themselves, and they can find out what would have happened if they’d done things differently.

​Number Nine: Because you’ll see what the first Christmas was really like, and what the Star of Bethlehem was actually made of.

​Number Ten: Because a boy-ghost named Billy wants to help, but his imperfect supernatural abilities only make things worse for Kaitlyn. 

Photos are not only my treasure, but also my bane. At least the ones in the boxes upon boxes in my closet. And with this blog, I'm constantly in need of photos, but most of the time, they're in those boxes and I have to remember in which envelope. It costs too much to have someone else convert them for me. So my goal after this book launch is to convert them all myself to digital so I can organize them in an iPad like an electronic photo album. And yesterday—cue exciting, epic, rapturous music—Spencer found a new quick easy app for me to use I just have to share. This sounds like a commercial but it's not. (Well, okay maybe it is a little bit in some sense, but no one is paying me.) It's this cool Google thing that takes pictures of pictures without it looking like a picture of a picture. Takes out the glares, and you can easily fix the edges and corners. I'm so excited! I just wanted to share it with everyone because it's soooo cool. I've been using my flatbed scanner but this is way better. 

As many of you know, yesterday I had to take a stop-out of my life, my plan, my book launch prep, to go serve on jury duty. Just like everyone else in the world—well, everyone except that young, enthusiastic personal trainer who was excited to be in the juror box yesterday—when the summons appeared in my mailbox, I was not​ happy. I dropped back my head, aimed my nose to the sky and cried, “Un. Believable!” It’s our civic duty, yes, to serve our democracy in such a manner, but really? Right when I’m days away from launch? I bet astronauts wouldn’t have to go sit on a jury minutes before heading for Mars. That stupid pink envelope adds a blow of stress and upheaval all of us (except that young, enthusiastic personal trainer) could live without.

This is really bad timing. I got jury duty for today. I have thirteen days till launch and the authorities decided that right now would be a good time for me to take a day away from my work and come on downtown and see if they could install me for another few days (or weeks) to decide someone’s fate.

This morning I’m driving Molly to the eye doctor to get fitted with new contacts. Because she wears rigid lenses, she needs to keep her old contacts out of her eyes for several hours before the exam to make it more accurate. And her glasses aren’t working for her (and she can't find them anyway). Therefore, she cannot drive. 

​My kids’ hair has been a topic of conversation over the years. Having learned how to trim hair on my friends in college, I’ve been giving our boys their haircuts since their very first cuts. I always had to start with the most squirrely boy because by the time I got to the third cut, I was out of patience and I needed cooperation. So Charlie was always last, because he could sit still and let me get the thing done. I think each has had one cut from someone else, away from my home barber shop. But it’s never what they’re used to. They keep coming back. They call up or text to see if it’s possible that Mom’s shop will just happen to be open on their next visit home. Somehow, it always is.