*Note: This was supposed to be posted yesterday, but I didn’t quite get to it. I’ll put up pics from our 1st anniversary soon! 🙂 *

Dear Jon,

One year ago today, you and I vowed in front of God, our family and our friends, to love, honor and cherish each other until death parted us. I remember the excitement of getting ready, the nervous butterflies as Mom helped me into my dress, the ninety-six bobby pins holding my veil in place. 🙂

I can’t imagine being happier than I am right now. You are the brightest part of my day, the sweetest, most genuine man I know and the person I have the most fun with. With you, I’m never afraid of being just me, I’m never scared about what will happen next, I’m never worried that a day will come when what we have will end. Since our marriage is based on God, we have all of eternity together. I can’t wait!

I love how the last thing you do when you leave for work is tell me you love me and the first thing you do when you get home is kiss me. I love your protective streak, your goofy sense of humor, and the way you still romance me. I love how you spend those few extra minutes cuddling with me with the morning, how you’re always up for hunkering down under a blanket while watching a movie, how you reach for my hand whenever we’re walking together.

Nothing I can ever do or say will ever come close to expressing how much I love you, Jonathan O’Brien. And you know the awesome part? As amazing as this year has been, I have a feeling that the best is yet to come!

So all this to say: I kinda like you, Jon. :).

I love you,

Your wife

www.eastbrookstudios.com

I get a lot of email asking me for advice for writers. Which absolutely humbles me because I’m ALWAYS looking up advice for writers! I’m the most distracted, random author there is, I think, so I’m probably the last person you want to take advice from.

I always refer people to The Christian Writers Guild’s site here. If you can afford the correspondence course, you will definitely see a huge improvement! Plus, you can get advice from people much more experienced in this field than me!

Also, one of my online writing buddies, C.J. Darlington (who just got a contract for her first novel – YAY!!), has done nearly 100 interviews of well-known authors asking them for their advice for novelists. You can find her blog here. Be sure to check out the synopsis for her novel – looks like it will be amazing!

My best advice? Stick with it. If God’s given you the desire to write, then by all means, write! Remember that He who began this work in you is faithful to complete it. Which means you’ve got all you need! Read about writing, read people’s advice about writing, and if you’re brave enough, ask your favorite authors about writing. And if you’re REALLY brave you can ask me – I promise I’ll write you back as soon as I can, but you’ve got to promise not to laugh at my scattered ideas!

Our first anniversary is in FIVE days!! I can’t believe it’s been an entire year! 🙂

So, as you’ve noticed, I’ve been doing a total overhaul of my blog and attempting to update my website. I know there are still quite a few bugs to work out. Sorry about that! I do not get this HTML stuff. “Easy to Learn” is what everyone always says. To use a ’90’s phrase, “NOT!!” HTML is it’s own language, as the nice support guy told me on the phone yesterday. I’ve never been very good with learning languages – I have a hard enough time with English.

I’ll stop complaining. You may have noticed a slight change on the new website though:

The cover of Cool Beans changed just slightly – as in, new girl! Once we had already seen and approved the previous cover, we found out another publishing house had just published a book with the same girl on the front. 🙂 Oops! So, we have a new girl.

Jon and I have a new TV show obsession – has anyone seen “Chopped” on the Food Network yet? It’s a fairly new show and it’s sooo fun! First off, you must understand, I love the Food Network. I love using terms like “plating”. That and HGTV are the current favorites. One makes me want to be a gourmet chef (wouldn’t that be awesome? All the fun of cooking and no clean up!) and the other makes me want to remodel our house (Jon’s not too fond of HGTV for that reason). 🙂

“Chopped” was on last night and we were out of milk, so we were hurrying to the grocery store before it started. We’re walking up to the store and you can see these cute little Girl Scouts and their moms all gathered around a table. We had just bought cookies three days ago and still had some left, so Jon immediately picked up the pace.

“Just keep walking,” he told me. “Don’t look at them, don’t make eye contact.”

So, we walked in, I didn’t look at them, didn’t make eye contact. A cute little brown-haired girl asks Jon, “Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

And Jon says, “Uh…maybe.”

We left with milk and a carton of Caramel de-Lites to join the rest of the Girl Scout family in the kitchen.

This is not a good a sign. I already knew I couldn’t resist little kids (or cookies for that matter), so Jon was going to have to be the strong one. Heh. He went down like a stack of blocks in front of a two-year-old. Solidifying our role in the neighborhood – The Sucker House.

Kody does not help matters. He’s getting big enough that he’s starting to look a little more intimidating to little kids, but kids love Kody and Kody loves kids – especially little girls. He flirts like no other dog I’ve ever seen. We’ll take him on walks to the park and there’s always little kids there and he immediately runs to kiss the girls.

So, I’m off to get breakfast. Probably Thin Mints and a hot cup of coffee. They can’t be that much worse than a sugary cereal. Right?