Dilly is covered!

Thanks to the wonderful illustrator, Lisa Oakman, my story A New Job for Dilly has a cover and is coming to life. I've already posted it a few places, but had to put it here too. I'm hearing a lot of nice comments, especially how Lisa put our names as part of the illustrations. Very creative! I'm really pleased with the cover and I can't wait to see the rest of the book. I'll probably need smelling salts when I see the final thing. The boys were thrilled when they saw the cover yesterday. They've seen sketches before, but this was the first colored one they saw. Neil goes, "Dilly's eyes are blue? Cool!" As soon as he saw it, he begged me to print up a copy of another Dilly sketch Lisa did so he could run downstairs and color his eyes blue. Too cute! I don't know if Lisa has ever read my blog, but if she does I just want to say -- Thank you, Lisa! It's perfect!

On another note, today is the first day of the boy's swimming lessons. It's a good thing the pool is inside because it's about 12 degrees outside right now. We figured we better get them in lessons, especially with how we drag them across lakes & rivers in our kayaks. They always have PFDs on, but they should improve their swimming skills just in case they ever need to rescue Rick or me. Anyway, they're both excited and nervous about it, so I hope they have a good time. I'll let you know how it goes.