My children surprise me every day. My son and daughter are both bright, loving and wonderful kids. I’m sure every parent would say the same thing. Yet each day they say or do something which leaves me shaking my head in wonderment at how I got so lucky. I will say right now, most it has to do with my wife. She is the best mother in the entire history of mothers. I’m not discounting the role of fathers. Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve rocked my kids to sleep and changed their diapers and kissed their boo boos and helped them with their science fair projects and all the many things good parents do. I’m no different than anyone else. But for many years my job required me to travel a great deal and the burden of primary caregiver fell to my wife. Lucky for them she was an expert at it. And I’ve got two wonderful children to show for all of her hard work.
So I’ve known how lucky I am kidswise, but then my birthday rolls around and both my kids just rock me.
First, my son and I attended San Diego Comic-Con together this summer. We had a blast. We found our people. We bought stupid t-shirts. We saw stuff you won’t see anywhere else. It was special for me because my son is an adult now, living on his own in another state. Time together is rare, and the fact we were together doing something we both love just made the weekend that much better. 
So he sends me my birthday gift and I open it up and what do I find? That he’s taken hours and hours of his time and put together a Comic Con scrapbook. All of the giveaways, the bumper-stickers and other paraphernalia put together in a memory book for me. I’m not ashamed to say I cried. It was one of the best birthday gifts he’s ever given me.
Then my sixteen year old daughter cooks up a scheme. She takes a cover image of my newest book The Youngest Templar: Keeper of the Grail. (On sale September 18, wherever books are sold, I’m just sayin’) and has about 15 t-shirts made up. She gives them out to all of her friends and they will all be wearing them to school on Thursday, the official on sale day. What a kid. They all show up at my house wearing the t-shirts to pose for pictures. Only my daughter could pull this off. That’s all I could really say over and over. When I wasn’t busy crying buckets. What a kid. 
Only she could pull this off.
(in the photo above on the right you can see the gang, back row left to right, Lesia, Bristol, Ana, Gabe, Kayla, my daughter, and Jackie. I believe the children are our future).
Whenever I mention to my wife how our kids are always surprising me with something like this, she just smiles and says: “apple meet tree”. Wise woman.
More Templar news…
The countdown continues. Don’t forget that I’ll be guest blogging at www.bookclubgirl.com tomorrow. New York Times Best-selling Author Elizabeth Boyle will post an interview with me at her site on Thursday September 18th www.elizabethboyle.com
Also my local paper, The Flint Journal will run an interview in the Wednesday September 17, 2008 edition but it’s already posted on their website so you can read it here.
Now back to trying to breathe normally.
Your authorness.
sitting next to the fabulous MaryElizabeth Hart of