Lisa Holcomb

health, I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness

Day Three: Food, Fitness, & Faith

Day Three I had the same kid-in-my-bed situation, so I put off exercising until that small window of time between taking big kids to school & Greg to MDO. Greg burst in on me at some point with a "What are you doing that for?!" The look on his face was priceless.

I got in some extra exercise today as well, in the form of walking up and down all the bleachers three times fast and walking to the car and back (at the very end of the parking lot from the stadium) a few times. I also had to dig some holes for the azaleas we got from church (I dug the 3 easy ones; Nick did the harder ones later).

Food-wise: Breakfast was a different oatmeal, a different fruit, and a different kind of turkey bacon (did you know they make one that tastes just like regular Canadian bacon?! I was so happy to find that out.) Lunch was very difficult, as I was stuck at Track & Field Day over at the Rose Stadium…without cash. I don’t know where it went, I just know I didn’t have it. A very nice family brought me a meal, unexpectedly, so I ate it: hamburger, fries, and a coke. So yummy. Fortunately I’d skipped morning snack (no time for that lately) and then skipped afternoon snack as well to make up for all those calories. Dinner was sausage, polenta, & green beans, all of which I ate reasonable sized portions of (double the green beans in proportion to the polenta).

Books, Crafts

Kindle cover

I don’t think I posted about this, but I got a 2nd generation Kindle for my birthday, slightly used, but in great condition (and very inexpensive, as well). I’m so excited about it! I had books downloaded and was reading (and fending off children who wanted to borrow it) within an hour of getting it.

The only problem with it? No cover. Just the Kindle and the cord came in the mail. With three kids and my propensity to just shove things in my bag and move on, the poor Kindle doesn’t stand much of a chance in it’s nakedness.

The answer? Well, I made a cover. I started with a little bag a friend had made me years ago that just happened to be nearly the right size for the Kindle. I also had a couple flat pieces of styrofoam from one of David’s gifts, a piece of super-soft cashmere fleece leftover from baby blanket making(it was $20/yard, long story there), a bit of velcro leftover from another project, a lost button, and some ribbon off a gift. Total cost: $0 My favorite kind of project.

So after a bit of time with my handy-dandy scissors and some liquid stitch, here it is:

The inside:

The outside:

All laced up and ready to go:

I do have a “real” case on order from ebay…the kind that makes the Kindle feel like a book with a booklight attached. I’m sure it’ll be nice, but it won’t arrive for a week or more and this case is just sooo soft.

health, I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness

Day Two: Food, Fitness, & Faith

Day Two was all about your partnership with God. It reminded us not only to avoid unhealthy foods, but to remember that you can ask God to help you with that part of the journey. That God is always protecting you and to try to remember that when you’re faced with unhealthy choices of all kinds.

So today I got up and had a stumbling block right away: a kid in my bed. I exercise behind the closed door of my bedroom because I find exercising to be super-embarrassing. So this was hard: do I wake up the little one to exercise or put it off hoping I’d find willpower later? Well, I ended up letting him sleep a while longer and then trying to transfer him to his bed, but he woke up anyway. I left him out on the couch with his brothers and went off to do my exercising.

In terms of exercise, I’m currently doing Nancy Marmorat’s video series on low-impact exercises. There’s one dealing with different groups of muscles each day of the week for four days, using simple items like towels and one pound weights. Yesterday worked on the stomach area and today worked the chest and shoulders (plus a warm up and several minutes of cardio). Then I’m doing balance ball exercises from physical therapy the last official exercise day of the week. I’m hoping to also walk the other two days, but I’m not going hinge all my plans on those two little walks.

Eating wise, I did okay most of the day. Breakfast looked like this:

(oatmeal, an orange, a slice of turkey bacon, and some green tea)

We skipped midmorning snack entirely. Lunch was some baked potato with very carefully measured sour cream and butter and a whole lot of chives (yum!) for only 400 calories of goodness.

Afternoon snack was chocolate pudding made with 2% milk (only 140 calories a serving for a 1/2 cup of yum).

Dinner was pasta & sauce with broccoli. I tried to eat more broccoli than p&s. And then I had a small piece of birthday cake (which I found to be totally reasonable given the skipped snack earlier).

Around the House, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting, What I Love

Last part of kid update post

Friday morning was the Royal Wedding, so we all got up extra early. Well, that’s why I got up extra early.

I don’t know why everyone else did. But I commandeered the TV and switched it over to wedding programming, which I’d been recording for hours earlier. We fast-forwarded through the commercials and less interesting bits. I made muffins (I’d wanted to make scones, but was outvoted by the children who’d be NOT eating them) and several kinds of tea. We put up decorations and wore fancy/silly hats. The kids were mesmerized by the hats and fancy dresses.

We managed to just finish watching the ceremony in time to leave for school. We dropped off the big kids, then hit the grocery store for Field Trip supplies (water bottles & lunchables). We met up behind the buses by the school to caravan over to Camp Tyler. G and I got out and were once again given bad information from the office. Fortunately we talked to the bus driver (who we recognized from last years field trips) and found out that we would have been following the wrong bus (which some other people did later), as he was taking the kindergarteners to the zoo. Eventually we followed the right bus and even though that driver went the wrong direction we managed to get there thanks to my map. The kids had a blast at Camp Tyler.

My kids like going because they feel super-extra-smart there, as we follow things at home like the Nutrition Pyramid and Recycling and Composting and Gardening. Nick’s parents and sister’s family have farm animals, too, so the kids do know a lot about everything that happens at “The Farm”. The other kids? Not so much. They’re mostly low-income kids whose parents grew up in the city/town and haven’t ever been out in the country. It’s fun for me seeing them get to explore this other world and it’s beyond comprehension to them that one of their classmates actually lives this way every day. After lunch I gathered up our classes recyclables, which astonished the teacher because she didn’t know our city had a recycling program. G and I spent a little while after we got home just resting, as the day was warm and we were tired. Nick got the big kids and took B out hiking for scouts. I took my two out to Taco Bell for dinner, then gathered up the party supplies, and met Nick and B (who’d dined at Wendy’s) at Fire Mountain Amusements for D’s birthday party.

We’d not invited a whole lot of kids to D’s party because at $20 a kid, it was way too expensive to invite the whole class. Four of the 10 invited showed up (the kids from church all had too far to travel to come – I tried to tell D that before he invited them, but he was insistent on it), 2 brought siblings, plus our three kids brought the number up to 9. We used the 10th wristband to get everyone extra tokens for the arcade at the end before parents showed up. So it was actually good that not everyone showed up. 🙂 We spent the first part of the party in the arcade. The kids loved running around in that dark room, playing whatever they wanted. After that we split up a bit, with the younger kids going to the smaller kart track and the big kids going to the bigger one. I ran around trying to get photos of everyone. Nick took G on the big track, as G was too small for the smaller track. After that I took G on the bumper boats with the rest of the kids. That was soo much fun! I was drenched by the time I got out. When that was done, each kid picked their favorite thing and went on it. Some kids did karts, some did more bumper boats, some did more arcade or checked out the other rides there. Finally it was time for cake and presents. We weren’t given any time in the party room to decorate beforehand, as the party before us went over, but I think the kids weren’t really paying attention to that anyway. All in all, it was a great party! 🙂

Saturday was a regular Saturday for the most part. Got up, ate breakfast, got ready for church, went to church. I was feeling weird all day, lots of dizziness, tingling, and crazy brain fog, so I spent quite a bit of church out in the foyer trying not to fall over. The kids prepared for the Pentecost Presentation coming up. Nick did his media stuff. Eventually the kids and I went home, ordered a pizza, and watched a crazy French Canadian puppet movie about a dragon that ate all the stars while Nick went to prom with his mom. Yes, I did say “prom” and “with his mom.” His brother was the DJ and Nick went to dance with his mom since his dad doesn’t dance AT ALL and she was one of the sponsors for the prom. Anyway, he came home not too late, telling me that he got to dance with our little nieces at the house, who were hanging out with their Pa, and that most of the kids at prom didn’t dance at all. Also that his brother played the Doctor Who theme song for him. 🙂

Sunday was…well, what’s becoming a regular thing, where Nick gets up early, grocery shops, and then goes to work. I got up a bit later, fed the kids toaster pastries, and started on the cleaning. We cleaned until Nick got back around lunch time and then I headed out with my Girls Night Out ladies for an afternoon performance of The Diviner at our local junior college. It was so good. 🙂 Came home later to my husband making a special dinner (steak, baked potatoes, caramelized onions, zucchini, all so yummy). Sent the kids to bed and watched the latest Doctor Who. Oh, that show! So mind-twisty! Love it, though. 🙂

And now it’s Monday. It’s cold & rainy & we are keeping the house warm by doing laundry. So much laundry.

health, My Own Personal Weirdness

Long awaited kids post, part two

Wednesday the 20th was David’s birthday, the big 10! He was very excited to be a double digits kid, finally! His brothers gave him lots of extra love. We baked pound cake cupcakes (I recommend a double batch for the future) with chocolate buttercream frosting for his class. Now for a quick story about my son’s fabulousness: I called the school that morning to double-check the number of kids in David’s class. The vice-principal looked it up and told me 18 kids including David. I wrote it down. I said “So with the teacher, that makes 19.” “YES.” So we had two cupcakes that came out extra crispy, and Gregory and I each tried one, so that had us down to 20. We left one behind for Nick to taste. We got to the school, ate lunch with the kids, and as we were eating I was counting kids. I kept coming up with 20. Twenty kids. I asked David if I was right. He said yes, there were 20 kids in his class, counting the deaf ed kid and the new kid. 20. I had 19 cupcakes. The teacher wasn’t with us in the cafeteria so I gave her cupcake away, but that still left us one cupcake short. David and I looked at his special cupcake, the one with the shiny holder and sprinkles. He picked it up, carried it to his newest friend, and said “I’ll get more cake tonight. You have it.” *beam* I was so proud. That afternoon we had a double playdate with David’s best friend and Ben’s best friend. Greg’s friend had to drop out at the last minute. After dinner we had another pound cake, sans frosting as per David’s request. The rest of us had ours with sliced strawberries. 🙂

Thursday the 21st was my birthday, the big 35. I was a little less than enthusiastic to start the day, but the kids had left me a trail of homemade birthday cards to follow out to the kitchen. Nick brought me flowers, my favorite kind of red-and-yellow tulips. One of my friends met me at MDO and her and her kids serenaded me with “Happy Birthday!” I got to order a really cheap Kindle someone I knew was selling for my gift (my other gift plan had been something more extravagant that wouldn’t have been available until after Mother’s Day, so this was cheaper and better). Some friends met me for lunch at my favorite little French cafe/bakery and we spent a long time laughing and talking. I sped over to the kids school and helped out with Ben’s class’s spring party. Nick picked up Greg for me, as he’d gotten part of the afternoon off for Good Friday (I don’t know why they got part of Thursday off, I really don’t). We had a pack meeting for scouts that night, so I got to get happy birthday’d by some of them while they learned to put tents up the right way. Then we came home and had special ravioli, wine, and yummy parmesan zucchini and more pound cake for dessert (I didn’t have time to make another cake just for me, which was just as well since we had extra cake in the house).

Friday the 22nd was Good Friday. Nick’s church doesn’t celebrate it in any way, but we always have a family bbq at our house that day. This year we were having it much later in the day due to bad weather make-up days. We worked on cleaning up the house in the morning, then went over to a friends house for Greg’s playdate in the afternoon while Nick stayed home and cooked. Greg and his friend K and S got to play in the sprinklers and in the sandbox while we moms did our toenails in preparation for Easter open-toed shoes. Haha. More on that later. It was a bit awkward because the house next door was having an Easter Egg Hunt in their yard with kids that our kids knew, so there was a lot of standing-at-the-fence-staring-into-the-other-yard for both sets of kids, with one set wishing they were wet and the other wishing they were egg hunting and us moms just cringing a bit because of some weird war-of-silence the two neighbors have going on. I hate those kinds of things and try not to get involved at all, but it’s hard when it affects the kids. Anyways, they had fun, nonetheless, and much wetness was had. 🙂 I changed Greg’s clothes and took him home and started decorating for the bbq. People started arriving and the kids started playing and everything went really well. The food was good and there was lots of it. Nick made my favorite lemon blueberry pie for dessert, but the kids had ice cream instead. It was a really good day.

Saturday the 23rd we got up and Nick made us a quick breakfast before the kids and I left for College Station. On the way to the car, Ben stepped on the back of my shoe. I kept going forward, but my toes did not, as they were stuck in the shoe. It hurt a lot, but we were in a hurry, as my sister was just in CS for a limited time and we were already running late. So we drove to CS and my foot swelled and turned purple while we were in the car. There wasn’t anything I could do for it besides take off my shoe. Got to my parents house, hobbled inside, put ice on it and kept it up all weekend as much as possible. The kids dyed eggs & threw confetti eggs with their aunt & grandparents; I took photos but kept my toe away from people. We watched The Kings Speech and ate a mini-Thanksgiving dinner (my mom’s been obsessed with that since we did T-giving at April’s house this year). April left after dinner & instead of going out to watch the Doctor Who season premiere with friends, I sat with my foot up & kept icing it. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain, so I stayed up late talking with my dad, the only upside of the whole foot pain episode.

The next morning I tried to figure out how to go to church with shoes on. I tried, I really did, but ended up barefoot. My parents church is really casual most of the time, so no one said a thing. There was beautiful music (most of the Brazos Valley Chorale was in the choir & their director is the music director for church). Greg spent time in the little kids classroom, but Ben had to stay with us. He wasn’t happy about it, so he curled up under his chair and went to sleep. After the service was over the kids went on an egg hunt. We brought the eggs home, but discovered that they were full of ants, so we took them outside and threw out all the chocolate candy, as they were the ones filled with ants (why they would fill eggs with chocolate on an outdoor hunt in the fire ant capital of Texas, I don’t know). Anyway, we had leftovers for lunch and then my friend S brought baby S over to visit. Baby S is getting bigger and bolder and cuter! 🙂 Love her! And then it was time to leave, but not before stopping off at my other friend’s house to happily hand off all the baby/toddler/family books we’d outgrown, since they are just about to grow into them. 🙂 (Sadly I hadn’t brought down the little boy clothes another friend needed, because I thought they were out-of-town, but they weren’t! and now I’ll have to mail them after all.) We made a billion stops on the way home, much to the unhappiness of my toe, which by then I was convinced was broken, so we ended up getting home just in time for bed.

Monday the 25th was the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. We had two church services and a potluck in between. I wore my flattest shoes and still limped around. In the morning I played clarinet with the ensemble (which included a couple different people from the week before), and also played a piano duet with my mother-in-law for offertory. After the ordination of some deacons & deaconnesses (who know Nick’s church had deaconnesses? Not me.), the kids sang a couple songs with the kids choir. People afterward kept coming up and asking when Nick and his dad would sprout some musical ability and join us up on stage. It was pretty funny. 🙂 After potluck(there was lots of brisket. Hmm. I wonder where that came from?) I played with the ensemble again. By the end of the day I thought my foot my fall off on its own, so I called the doctor and set up an appointment for the next day.

Tuesday I got up, got the kids ready in record time, and took them over to my parents house here in town. My dad loaded the kids back up in my van after second breakfast and drove them to their various schools while my mom drove me to my MRI. Remember that? I’ve still been having that numbness and tingling off and on and off and on, though never as bad as it had been that one Saturday. We went up to the hospital, got some more bloodwork drawn, had an IV installed, and went off to wait. They did the first MRI without contrast and the second one with contrast. A nurse took a very detailed history of my issues before I left for the radiologist to look over. We went straight from there to my primary care physician’s office, where I had three x-rays of my foot taken, just to make sure that nothing else was damaged besides my toe. To my surprise, nothing was broken, just very badly sprained. I was told to a) wear tennis shoes from now on, and b) never, ever wear high heels again because my feet are very susceptible to injury. Pretty much what I expected as far as instructions went. Then he asked about the MRI and told me that he expected answers within the next day or two. The rest of the day went by fast. I put my tennis shoes on and my toe immediately felt better (not 100% but quite a lot). I picked up kids, hung out at my parents house for a bit, then took kids to piano lessons.

Wednesday the 27th we had nothing much going on. My parents left town and Greg and I were on our own for the day. We did some cleaning and played. Big kids came home and it was more of the same.

Thursday the 28th I woke up exhausted and stayed that way. After I got all the kids to school I declared it rest day and spent some time catching up on the internet and some TV. I perked up enough to hit a close-by estate sale in a house I’d always wanted to see inside, just for a little bit, before picking kids up. We had a fairly normal afternoon and evening.

Friday was super-extra-long in itself, so we’re moving it off to tomorrow. 🙂

Books, health, I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness

Day One: Food, Fitness, & Faith

During the spring campout a church a few of us ladies were chatting (while making lunches for the kids) about how we were all in need of a little help with our waistlines. Most of us had gained 40 or more pounds since our weddings (although one had gained a lot less, she was a lot closer to her wedding than the rest of us as well) and we had all tried lots of diets or exercise plans and not had them work.

Well, one of the ladies had a new plan: God, by way of the Sam’s Club book counter:

Food, Fitness, and Faith for Women: A 21 Day Journey to a New You

We all agreed that God had been the one thing really lacking in our past plans, so we got hold of the book and we set a start date and now that day is here.

The book is pretty simple and slim on details: you find your own diet and exercise plan, something doctor approved, and then this book provides the Scripture and encouragement and opportunity to journal daily. A little paragraph about health, a lot of quotes from the Bible and elsewhere, and then a journaling prompt.

Here’s how today went:

I did really good in the morning: got up, read the chapter, made myself a little plaque with the main quote from the book to put up in my kitchen, worked out, ate a reasonable breakfast & skipped snacking.

Afternoon wasn’t bad either: a decent lunch, then skipped the afternoon snack because I was having a high calorie dinner, walked a fair distance to the car & back.

Evening though, well, some of you know that I went back home after the play. Nick didn’t go back to work (surprise!), but had been preparing a special dinner.. So I did not do well in the evening after all that work the rest of the day. *sigh*

But that’s okay! The book didn’t really have any goal for today other than make a list of healthy choices you’d like to follow and unhealthy ones you’d like to drop and an admonition to look at portion sizes, which I totally did.

My healthy habits list:

Eat less bad for me things
Drink more H20
Exercise at least 5 days a week

Bad habits to change:

Eating junk just for something to do
Drinking caffeine & alcohol
Not exercising because “I don’t have time.”

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting

Long awaited kids post, part one.

Nick is in the shower and the kids are digging through the spoils of last nights party, so I might be allowed a few minutes peace to write this post (edited to add: nope, my eldest came in a minute later with “alien ears” he made for me out of a ruined slinky). Here’s what’s happened since the last update:

April 12th I went to the doctor & got unwelcome news (posted about here). After the appointment, my friend Tanya brought me a couple loaves of bread as part of her “5 Little Loaves” project (she brought bread to 5 people a week for about a month – 1 loaf to eat & 1 loaf to share; this was serendipitously my day). God knew that I needed a friend to talk to that day. She brought the bread in, chatted with me a bit, gave me a hug, and then we had to speed out of there to piano lessons. But it was so good to have an actual person there in the room with me to talk to.

Thus sustained, I was able to make it to the big kids piano lessons.

Wednesday the 13th my friend SJ and her little ones came over for coffee. They brought me a lovely coffee/saucer/spoon chime set as a thank you for all our lovely coffee mornings.

Such sweet friends. All the little ones played together nicely, regardless of the smallest one’s having just learned the word “no.” 🙂 That afternoon another family came by and carried David off on bikes for a playdate. He loved that! 🙂

Thursday the 14th we had my friend HM & her son over for coffee (finally! a much rescheduled gathering due to illness and other things). T & Greg rode scooters, jumped on the trampoline, and built miles of train tracks while us moms got caught up (we had both been being hermit-like during the winter).

I gifted her a water bottle with a globe on it in celebration of her new business (I’m posting that so later when I can’t remember who I gave it to I’ll know)! 🙂 I was glad to hear that she and her family are doing so well in their new endeavors. Greg went to MDO after they left and I spent the day tidying up in preparation for deleavening for the Days of Unleavened Bread.

Friday afternoon we went over to Nana & Pa’s house for dinner and haircuts.

Nick’s mom and I worked on our duet, too, and tried out a few other pieces to see what we might like to do later on. The kids all got mini-pizzas in several different flavors to try out (some of those little 89c ones are so yummy!). Nick stayed home and worked on deleavening the rest of the living room and dining room.

On the Sabbath my parents were in town, so we visited with them before going to church. After church (& piano practicing & media copying & snacks, etc) we headed out to another little town for Nick’s co-worker/friend’s retirement party.

There was bbq and cookies and fishing for the kids. 🙂

Sunday morning we visited with my parents again before they left town. D had a friend come over unexpectedly (apparently D had invited him over for Friday and then we weren’t home, which was …well, rude on D’s part), so they had an impromptu playdate.

B and I ran off to get D’s birthday party invites and to have a Mama/Boy Date at Andy’s Frozen Custard. Mmmm.

We got home just in time for Nick to get ready to go to the Passover service at church (only baptized members of their church may attend and while I’m doubly baptized -both sprinkled as an infant and immersed by choice later on, it wasn’t at their particular church so it doesn’t count to them. Which makes me wonder what God thinks about all this, but He isn’t saying a thing on the subject.)

Monday the 18th was a weird day all around. Nick had arranged to be home for the day because we were originally going to have people over for Night To Be Much Observed, but instead we were going elsewhere, but the day off was already arranged, so he took it. So we headed off to Fresh, which was fairly empty, but still stressful to me, as Nick let Greg have charge of a mini-cart. We stopped and chatted with friends in the cheese section and thereby were introduced as friends to the Cheese & Olive lady for the store. Score! We spent the rest of the day getting stuff ready to take to dinner, which we were having at my in-laws in-laws house. (Stop there and think that out: Nick’s sister’s husband’s parent’s house. There.) Once we picked up the kids and got them all tricked out in nicer clothes, we headed on over. The evening was hosted by Nick’s sister’s husband’s sister and her husband, whom we love (we spent time with them at the Feast last year) and they made delicious filet mignon and lamb and twice baked potatoes. Others brought green beans almondine, various unleavened breads, cheeses, olives, wines, etc.

It was a very filling and fulfilling night, we got to see lots of people we hadn’t seen in ages (KATE is practically a grown-up now!), and all the kids got along marvelously, even if they weren’t interested in the videos we brought for them.

We left from there veryvery late and spent the night at Nick’s parents house down the road.

Tuesday morning was my littlest niece M’s 4th birthday. We got together for our traditional First Day of Unleavened Bread brunch. M started out the morning yelling “I am grown bigger now!” It was excellent! Lots of good food, fancy-schmancy cards for the birthday girl (her family doesn’t do presents so we find fabulous cards with games or stories inside), and lots of kids running round and round (they’d brought T over for D to play with, too).

D and I got our birthday cards, too. That afternoon we had church and I got to play with The Ensemble for the first time. It was a very small ensemble, but I think we played pretty well, especially since we hadn’t practiced together at all. 🙂

This is getting very long, so I’m splitting it into two parts. 🙂

health, My Own Personal Weirdness

Medical testing

I’ve made a big post about this at my other blog, but in case you don’t read over there, or don’t want the whole long story of it all, here’s the short version: I had a majorly weird episode last weekend and the doctor is thinking either a) I had a mini-stroke or b) I’ve developed multiple sclerosis. Most likely B, as I’m already taking medications that would cause A to be unlikely and B is a side effect/co-morbidity of the immune condition/medications that I already have. So I’m going back to the hospital for more testing in a week or so (we’re waiting for insurance to say yes to it all).

There will be a fun kid related update tomorrow. 🙂

Books

Books 2011

Books 1-5 posted about here.

There were a couple other books I read before the Kage Baker ones, but it’s been so long that a) I can’t remember and b) I’ve already returned that batch to Steph. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

The Sons of Heaven (The Company): The Last Book. Oh how I cried. I was really sad to be finished with this series and it seemed to end so quickly in this book, all the pieces coming together beautifully.

Not Less Than Gods (The Company Series): I actually read this one last, as that was where it was in the pile. It was a good book, but my heart wasn’t in it at that point.

The Anvil of the World: Kage Baker writes fantasy! Who knew!? I’ve had this book in my pile for ages, never realizing it was Kage Baker until Steph mentioned she had the rest of those books. I was a bit confused at first because I really thought for a while that they were in space, not on land, but once I got over that I really enjoyed the characters and storylines in this book, although I did think it felt a bit more like a long line of short stories than one whole novel.

The House of the Stag: I really think this one should have been first in the series, though I did not enjoy it as much as Anvil. It was harder to get into, with a lot more anguish and suffering than I usually enjoy in books, although I did come to enjoy the backstory of the world.

10.

The Bird of the River: this book follows different characters than the two before it, but we get a few cameos and overall I liked it better than the first couple books.

11-17.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians :
I read all five of the first series of Olympian books, plus the Demigod Files and the Ultimate Guide books all in one fail swoop, mainly because my eldest child was checking them out from the school library. I read the first one ahead of him to make sure it was okay, then raced to keep up. It was the first series we read at the same time together and we really enjoyed being able to share it. I enjoyed what the author did with bringing the gods & goddesses up to modern day. I think in some ways it would be much better to read the guide books first, though, so you know more about what the characters and creatures are first (and pronunciation guides for the kiddos, too, as David was mispronouncing things left and right.)

18. Mr. Chatworth (I think) – some weird book about a giant dog. It looked interesting from the description, but once I found out that this menacing guy everyone was so scared of was a giant dog, I couldn’t read any further.

19-21.

The Callahan Chronicals: I really enjoyed the first couple books in the Callahan series, but petered out after the second one. Since I have the omnibus, I feel compelled to read the third one just for completions sake, but I’ll wait until I hit another book lull for that. That being said, I did enjoy the first couple books. I love the idea of Callahan’s Bar and it’s helpful band of sometimes-not-so-merry drinkers.

22.

The Time Travelers (The Gideon Trilogy): I really enjoyed this first book. The story was interesting, the kids were realistic (which becomes drastically more important once you have kids), and I loved all the historic detail.

23.

The Time Thief (The Gideon Trilogy): also a very enjoyable book, but there were a few problems with head-jumping pov’s. I didn’t feel like there was quite the same level of historical detail in this one, either. Still very interesting series and I love that the author pulls no punches with the characters.

Organizing

Iheartorganizing’s Project Purge: Week 2: The Kitchen

I was a bit nervous to start in the kitchen, as I really didn’t think there was much in there that needed to go after all that tidying I did in January. Boy was I wrong!

Project Purge: Kitchen Edition

VIEW SLIDE SHOW

DOWNLOAD ALL

Photo1: In 2009 I only had one apron, that black one from the café I worked at in college. It was ugly, so I acquired a few more in nicer colors, but soon realized a couple things: 1) lower half only aprons are silly & don’t help at all and 2) You can only wear one apron at a time, so why have a billion of them? (That last one was the kids art apron, which they never wear these days)

Photo 2: Spare bits of things we don’t use any more. Those glasses are from our wedding. They’ve never been touched again. One was broken immediately after this picture was taken.

Photo 3: These were all hanging on the walls of my kitchen. They don’t go together well and were just taking up what I like to call “eye space.” I took down one other picture, but it’s going in the “find another home in the house” pile rather than the “leaving the house” pile.

Not pictured: a pile of papers & shelf full of glass jars that got recycled and a coffee grinder that got tossed because it ceased to work (it should have gone to the recycling center, too, now that I think about it). Also I’m making up a box of only-for-parties items that can go live in the garage, so I can make better use of the space in the kitchen for things I actually do use a lot (like my muffin pans & cooling racks, which are always impossible to get to).

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: