Five for Friday and Awards

All righty, everyone, I got me some more awards! Woohoo! A big thanks to Ninja Girl for giving me these unwarranted and prestigious awards. Seriously, though, she's very sweet. And you all should stop by her blog and congratulate her on getting an agent!!! The blog awards I recieved are the following:

and:

According to the rules I'm supposed to share some random facts about myself, and then pass these AWESOMESAUCE awards along to others. Christmas is all about sharing, so this goes well with the Holiday season. Also, since I do my Five for Friday today, I thought I would just share those facts about myself in place of the usual post. Here goes nothing:

1. My sister and I are married to brothers. That's right, we keep it all in the family. It's actually pretty cool since our kids are double cousins. We have three kiddos that are only a few months apart in age and are best friends.

2. I've been writing since I was little. It started with random mysteries, moving right along to Princesses. But my true passion as a child was writing love songs. That's right, Peeps, I wrote about the longing for love and the heartbreak of loss at the ripe old age of nine. Even more embarrassing? My mom kept all of my incredibly insightful lyrics. They went something like this: "Oooh baby, baby, don't break my heart. Oooh baby, baby, I love you." I know, I am a poetic genius.

3. I love to lay on the trampoline and watch the clouds go by with my kids at my side. They have some seriously hilarious interpretations of what a certain cloud resembles. As a mother, these small moments are the ones that stay with you for a lifetime. I don't believe in stifiling a child's imagination, and if my kid swears that one of those clouds looks just like a Jelly Fish riding a motorcycle, than darn it, it does!

4. Since English was not my first language, I have a tendency to say certain words incorrectly. I often mix up my Vs and Ws. My husband thinks this is hilarious and often imitates me, making it sound like I have some incredibly thick Russian accent. I also misprounounce comfortable. I say it like this: comftable. Notice how certain letters are missing in my pronounciation.

5. I love dark chocolate. This is a grevious sin to my mother-in-law (okay, slight exaggeration. I used to hate the stuff as a kid, but now I can't get enough. To me it means I'm an adult (yeah right!), that my tastes have matured to a much richer state.

Okay, so I'm going to pass these along now.
First off, let's start with Peggy Eddleman. She just got an agent AND her books is going be published by Random House in 2013! This week she is sharing some tips with everyone that will help you get that much closer to finding yourself in that position, too! And she says she will write for cookies, that's my kind of gal.

Why don't you stop by Susan Kaye Quinn's blog. Her book OPEN MINDS just came out and I'm hearing wonderful things about it.

Meredith Moore is also an up and coming writer. I love her five random thoughts on Friday posts, and she also shares her journey in writing and life with her own uniqe style of storytelling.

Becky Wallace asks, What's Your Thought on That? She always ends her posts by asking you a question relating to her posts. And she's a mama that has found herself an agent and is trying to get published.

The 1000th Monkey is a great blogger that shares little excerpts from her current works. I very much enjoy reading more of her story. She also shares her experiences in finding Beta Readers, Critique partners, and pretty much anything that we face along this publishing journey.

That's is for now! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. See you next week!