The Friday Wrap: Life, and the Terrifying 25

A round of thunderstorms prevented me from posting anything beyond a few sentences last night, hence the tardiness of this post.

Up: A Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure continues to sell well and has had overwhelmingly positive reviews.  It's been especially nice to read the emails from women and parents around the world who have enjoyed the book and reached out to us with their own stories.  Thank you for contacting me, folks.  :)

I've been asked by several people if I plan on publishing other books.  The short answer is yes -- my agent has two of my manuscripts in her hands and we are in the discussion/editing phase.  The long answer is also yes, but I have a very busy life as a homeschooling mom, and homeschooling the kids has been and will continue to be my fulltime job.  Even if I made a million dollar advance with the next book deal, homeschooling would remain my primary fulltime occupation...so while I intend on publishing other books, and I'm lucky to have a fantastic agent, everything has to be balanced so that our homeschooling lives and schedules remain almost unaffected.  I've managed to do this with UP thus far.  We've had lots of interviews and a ton of publicity, but our basic rhythms have remained unchanged.  This is how it should be -- the girls have a solid grasp of what's important in life (family, friends, and being a good and honest person).  Press attention is fun and we're grateful for the success of UP, but all of that is icing.

On the hiking front, I've had about two dozen people tell me they're pursuing our Terrifying 25 list.  This is great -- we made up the T25 list primarily for ourselves, but we're thrilled others are finding it fun and worthwhile.  I've given away three patches thus far.  The first one went to Roy Schweiker (American), the second went to someone who prefers not to be listed, and the third is about to go to Mario Demers (French Canadian).  I anticipate on awarding at least ten more patches by the end of this summer.

Mike Carrafiello created a spreadsheet for those who would like an easy way to keep track of their T25 progress.  I'll add it to the T25 page at some point during the next couple of days.

I'm off to bed now; the girls and I plan to get above treeline tomorrow.  We've a long, grueling, and fantastic hike ahead of us.  I'll write about it in the next Tuesday Trip Report.