Picnic with my Lovelies

 The school had a parent picnic day where you could go enjoy lunch with your kids.  Since I have 3 in elementary school, and they all have different lunch times, I got to spend the morning there.  First lunch was at 10:30 with Delaney.  Callie came out at 10:50, and Rylee's lunch was at 11:10.  The kids each had about an hour to have lunch and play on the playground, so there was a bit of overlap and all three girls were hanging out with me for a bit.

Me and Delaney!

Trying to sneak in a photo with Callie.  I know, not the best, but it is the only shot I got! 

Delaney and Rylee enjoying their lunches.  Yes, that is purple hair.  It was "wear purple day", so she did!

My little Gymnast

Delaney has been in gymnastics for a bit now.  And she LOVES it.  She was thrilled this past week that we arrived early enough for her to play around a little before class started.  I was happy it gave me the opportunity to get some photos of her having a great time in her class.

Sizzling Anniversary

 Dan and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary.  I know, I'm pretty impressed myself.  To celebrate, we went out to dinner. We are unromantic and I'm okay with that.  Dan took us out for Okonomiyaki, which is my favorite!  Unfortunately, the closest one we know of is a do-it-yourself.  We have done that before, but not with great results.

This time, we had the benefit of prior experience, and we you-tubed a video on how to do it right and it came out perfect!

We prefer Hiroshima style with the noodles.

Dan, weilding the spatula with good effect. 

I know it looks a mess.  It kind of is.  But it tastes delicious!  A couple more times here and I'll be ready to try to make it from scratch for you. 

My finished product. 

Yes, I was quite pleased with myself!  And it tasted wonderful!

Levi's Before and After pictures

 You would think that it wouldn't be too hard to get pictures of the dog.  Just set him down and click the camera, right? Ug, no.  Apparently Levi does not want to pose and does not want to cooperate.  He wants to come up in your face for petting.  He thinks it is absolutely silly to have you be 2 feet away, out of petting range.  However, I persevered, and out of 25 pictures, there were a few that were adequate.

Then he got his summer hair cut.  I am sorry that the pictures are of opposite sides. I could only get what I got!  And not for lack of trying.  Sigh.

Behold, my shaggy dog!

And now the naked dog:

A Blog-to-Book Critique

 I am bitterly disappointed that Blurb.com stopped doing blog-to-book.  Oh, sure, they say they brought it back, but they really didn't.  You essentially have to copy and past everything from your blog.  It is a pain.  And you have to use their stupid new BookWright program which is severely inferior to their old BookSmart program.  You would think that someone would jump into this sorely needed opening, but alas, no one else makes it as easy.

I looked around at a few companies, but I didn't like any of them.  Since I am now 3 years behind on my blog books, I decided I needed to commit, and I committed to the one with the least amount of work.  I went with intoRealPages.com. The selling point for me is that it takes 20 minutes to make the book.  It slurps your blog posts in (and then it takes an hour to load, but the stuff you have to do is easy peasy!) and it prints them out exactly as you posted them.  So, super easy and very little work.

I kind of knew what I was getting when I ordered it- no choices.  You cannot edit anything.  You can pick a few photos for the front, but they are tiny.  You cannot control any part of the layout or change anything.  That it.  You get what you get.  Hence the super-easy, 20 minute process.

I am not happy with this company.  Not at all.  I sent my book in, and 2 weeks later I went to check on its progress, expecting it to be shipped.  I didn't check it earlier because I was so excited about it and knew it would take a month or so and I didn't want to be dying every day waiting and thinking about it.  So, I waited 2 weeks.  It was still "Processing"!  I sent an email.  Zero response from the company.  I sent another email.  Nothing.

I went to their FB page and saw all kinds of red flags that said this is a company that is overextended and unable to really meet their demand.  I sent a message thru their Facebook page and 2 days later got a response saying that the problem was they they didn't like my address.  I admit that an FPO AP throws a lot of people off, but they actually had them as options in their website, so it really shouldn't have been an issue.  And if it was an issue, why on earth didn't THEY let me know?  I confirmed my address for them and waited.

A few days later, the book changed to "Printing".  It sat there for a while, and then was something else for long enough I was getting worried.  It finally shipped.... 6 weeks after I initially ordered it.  So, no.  I am not happy with this company at all.  Oh.  Would you like to know what they offered me as compensation?  $15 back.  They refunded me $15 on a $140 book.

I confess, it was $140 with shipping.  But it IS 392 pages!  So a little pricier than Blurb, but not obscenely so.  Okay, maybe a little..... Okay, a lot, when you take into account that I always waited for a 30% off or more coupon before ordering from Blurb.

Alright, now, lets get down to what I got.  I actually was fairly pleased with the book.  Since I was expecting small photos, I wasn't surprised, but I'm still a little disappointed in that.

This is the front cover. You can put your title and subtitle and 3 pictures.  That's all.  It is also an odd size. It is made in the Netherlands, I think, so that may be why?

On the left you have the last Blurb book I did, with it's standard 8x10 size.  On the right is the odd size of my new book. 

How the back compares. With IntoRealPages, you can't put any photos on the back, just words. 

 Here is the format.  It puts it into 2 columns.  That is a good thing, because the book would be freakishly longer otherwise.  But it does not make for an aesthetically pleasing book, nor does it support larger pictures.

Look at this page.  Some pictures are larger than others.  I didn't get to pick which ones.  The program did it.  It does have lovely titles for each new blog post though. 

And some of the pages do look really good.  But the 2 column thing is really not attractive at all.  And Josh is offended by the amount of wasted space.

It automatically breaks the months onto "chapters", and you get a table of contents telling you what page each month/chapter starts.  So that's kind of cool. 

You can't tell from this photo, but the last page is.... the back of the book?  Odd.  But it is true. The back cover is also the very last page. Same with the front as well.  The inside of the front cover is the first page of the book.  A bit weird. 

And here you can see it, 392 pages!