Hey all!  I hope everyone had a great Easter. My husband and I spent the morning tag team parenting.  We had one boy volunteering at church making breakfast and the other sick at home.  My husband, we'll call him Eric, went to help at church and as my daughter and I left for church service he came home to be with the boy who was sick.  As luck would have it, about noon, an Easter Miracle (as my mother called it) occurred!  When it was time to go to grandmas the sick boy was healed and able to go to Grandmas to fish, go cart, and frog spear his way through the day!  But as all good things come to an end, so do Easter Miracles...Monday morning school was a 'no go'!!!
      Fever, cough nor tummy ache will keep me from putting three kids on a bus tomorrow morning.  It is the end of April and the Vermontville Maple Syrup Festival is fast approaching.  This is the weekend that I have to laminate my schedule and keep it in my back pocket so I know where I need to be and when.  Boy Scouts, Dandy Lions, Church and 4-H all have me running.  My daughter has also been chosen to present flowers to the Maple Syrup Queen and she is also running in the princess pageant.  I somewhat envy those who high tail it out of town this weekend.
      Who am I kidding?  I haven't missed the festival in all my years...and that's a lot of years!  Even the year I had the Chicken Pox, Grandpa Marcum loaded me up into his old Ford and found a place to park where I could see the parade.  No rides, no games, no friends to run with.  I still bare the scars of that weekend...and I have a few from the Chicken Pox too.
     While I have been spending much of my time writing, I have to switch gears back to getting some drawing done.  I have committed myself to donating some art to the local FFA chapter.  I should be committed because I only have a couple of weeks to get it done!  I'll find the time.
     With that wrote, I better get at it!  See you all at the Festival!

-Christine

I'll have the Linguini!

      Hello All!!!  I am having a hard time thinking of things to blog lately.  Is it possible that I have already spilled all of my knowledge out for all to read?  Yes...It is possible!     
      I have been writing a lot lately, excluding my blog.  Over the past couple of years I have been working on my writing skills by going to A Rally for Writers held each spring in Lansing.  I have always felt more than unworthy to be among writers.  I have always maintained the thought that wearing a cowboy hat does not earn the title of  'cowboy'.  But still I go, learn and try to  improve.  While commas, word structure and adverbs are still a mystery, I will draw from my literary hero, Nancy Drew, and solve the case of "the inexperienced writer".
       I had the opportunity to have the first ten pages of a manuscript I wrote read and critiqued by an editor, Teresa Crumpton.  I'm sure if Teresa were to read my blog she would be in editors Heaven.  Meeting with Teresa gave me validation as she loved my book and said "The story voice is fabulous. This is what agents, editors, and readers love."   This validates what my husband and mother have thought all along!
     I haven't much else to say so I thought I might add a little poem I wrote after a little elderly lady read a poem at last years writers rally.  I was inspired to write the following poem:

I’ll have theLinguini

by Christine Gardner Terpening

She read a poem called “Linguini”
Although she didn’t write it
Boy could she recite it
She was little and frail
This woman of seasoned age
Her voice bubbled and cracked of Italy
She read these words with passion…
“Lightly oiled, stuck to hips
Lavished with sauce, Kisses and fettucini”
Her voiced dropped low
“Rubbed, twining and braiding, cappellini
Lovers and Little neck clams”
Her voice climbed high
“Glistening, formagio, pinched,
Romano, twirled, vermicelli, long and smooth”
It was almost too much to take
We all shimmied in our seats
We tugged at our collars
Lips were wet and hungry
Our swallows we choked
And when she was done
We all needed a smoke!