Summer Plans

I have a few plans/happenings this summer and I thought I'd share them and see what others are doing. So this summer I basically want to get a lot of writing done. I want to work on my short stories and novels and see if I can get at least one book finished. I also plan to do a lot of reading, especially in the teen fiction genre because that is the one I write for.

I don't think I wrote about it, but my grandfather passed away in February. He had cancer and his chemo seemed to be going well, but then he had a stroke, caused by the chemo and he lost consciousness and never regained it. My grandma didn't want to have a funeral because it would make her too sad, but her friends convinced her to have a celebration of life type of thing. Her friends organized it all and got a caterer and my husband and mom made a slide show DVD of pictures and it was a big hit. I made a collage poster type of thing with pictures and I worked really hard making it look nice, with red and blue borders and little stickers of flags and stuff since he was in the Marine Corps and the Navy for a little while too. They decided before he died that he wanted his ashes to be put in this nice military cemetery so we made a date for that. All of my family members wanted to go to that rather than the little party but that makes it like a funeral. At least they will all be here. They are coming from NV, TX, AZ, San Fransisco etc. The date is in June so a bunch of my family are coming soon to go to that.
I wrote a poem in my British Lit class. The professor knew I wrote poetry and I was doing a research paper on Wordsworth and Coleridge and Romantic Period pastoral poetry so he asked me to include a poem. It ended up being about my grandpa and I showed my mom and now she wants me to read it at the funeral. She already talked to the pastor and he said that if I can't read it, (too sad) then he will read it for me. So I have to work on the poem a little more and figure out if I'll be able to read it myself or not. I'm really glad that my family is coming and I'm excited to see them but I wish they were coming for a happier reason.

Anyway, on to happier notes. There are two, maybe three concerts I want to go to this summer. Warped Tour of course, I'm going with Kenneth, Zach and Holly and it's in August. I'll probably write another post about it soon. I also want to go to Breathe Carolina and possibly the All Stars Tour simply because Alesana are on it.

I also want to take a vacation or go camping, not sure where yet, I'm thinking and discussing it with my husband and friends.

So I want to continue on my blogging and my beauty blog of course, but I want to do something else too. I talked about it a little already, but I always feel like I want to help people out or make a difference by doing something for others. I've volunteered at an animal shelter before and maybe I'll help out at a homeless shelter or something but I also feel like I was meant to help teens. I want to start out by doing an advice column type of blog. It doesn't have to be as intense as it sounds, it could just be any type of question. I feel like I'm putting a lot of personal things out there by doing this blog, but I think it will help people feel more comfortable with asking me for help if they can know a little (or a lot) about me. I've been thinking about this for awhile and going back and forth about doing it, but I've pretty much made up my mind to give it a try.

That's it for now. I'm curious as to what other people's plans for the summer are. Let me know if you want!