Around 8:00 AM, I started some breakfast in the kitchen. The kitchen at Casa Amor was perhaps my favourite place in the whole house. It was open to both the dining room and the living room. The Italian tiles of the backsplash and eighteen-by-eighteen tiles on the floor. Double-ovens in the wall, a pizza oven for making brick/wood-fired pizza, and then the Italian marble tops. Not only was it stylish, but was kept immaculate.

Brad insisted on a lite breakfast of eggs and bacon, which was easy for me to muster up. I made only enough for he and I as I figured that the kids would sleep a bit. Now adults; of course, but they would always be my "little" children. I was correct, as Ryan and Isabella creeped down the stairs around 9:30 AM and Liam 10. By the time they made it to the breakfast table, I had baked my favourite breakfast dish:  blueberry souffle. The recipe had been handed down for years, and I was the third in the generational lineage to have a copy. I had yet to share my guarded secret with Isabella, as she had yet to pry it out of me. Now that she and Ryan were forming a special bond, I decided to go ahead and give her a handwritten copy that morning.

After Brad had eaten, he retreated back to the office to write. Despite the fact that this was a vacation, he was in the middle of a book and had recently hit a stride he did not want to waiver from. He explained he was in the character development phase, and needed to be constantly writing until these characters came to life.

As I thought about my own book, there was not much to my character. She was a lonely woman for most of her adult life. Perhaps there were too many immediately identifiable references to myself; but in a way, I wanted my story told. Brad took a break around 11:00 and insisted that I bring him up to date on my work. He retreated to a leather chair in the Florida room and read my entire novel to this point.

His suggestion was that I turn it into a memoir. He, too, had noticed the personal references and promised to help me reshape my novel if I would allow him to. With hesitation, I nodded in agreement.