Five Things We Did on Vacation

Mike and I took vacation the week after the Fourth of July. My mom drove up from Alabama and brought with her my brother's four children, ages 6, 8, 10, and 14.  Here are five things we did while they were here.

Took everyone out on the boat and forced the Alabama cousins to swim in the "freezing cold" Missouri River.  My family lives right on the Tennessee River in Alabama (I come by my river love naturally), which is much much warmer than the Missouri.  They got over the cold. Tubing was a huge hit.

Took a walk in the woods to look for bald eagles. We didn't find any, but the kids loved these giant trees. The white lines are the flood lines from 2011. Anna (6) is the only one willing to catch a frog.

Went to play on this walking park in our town. It's like a playground but each structure is several hundred yards down the path from the next, so they get a lot of walking/running in.

Took them on a Black Hills tour- we saw Mount Rushmore, Custer State Park (sadly, no buffalo), the splash pads in Rapid City, and I took the girls went through the Badlands on the way home.

Mike and I took a 48 hour mini-vacation to Sioux Falls with no kids. We shopped, ate, ran, and drank beer. It was terrific.

Next year we are probably headed back South, but it was really awesome to get to have Ryan's kids here and I'm betting it's memories they will never forget. "The summer we went to South Dakota!"

Maureen Johnson, Pinterest, Dallas

• The Bug picked out Lincoln Logs with his birthday money. He's such a little builder.
• Do you see the wrinkles in my rug in that picture? Does anyone have any ideas on how to stop the rug from wrinkling? It's driving me insane. I've tried to weight it down with the furniture, but no dice.
• Maureen Johnson talks about photoshop and advertising. "Altering the image creates something truly and profoundly OTHER. It creates the unattainable, which means you have the endless carrot and stick."
• This is an absolutely wonderful post on Motherhood. Seriously. Especially if you've struggled in those first few months.
• I love Pinterest, I really do, but I'm starting to wonder just where all these crafters are getting all their pretty thrifted wool sweaters (my thrift store has a nice selection of pilly acrylic ones) and decent used furniture. At some point there's going to be more play kitchens made from bedside tables than there are bedside tables.
• On Tuesday I had coffee with a new friend. It was terrific. I can't wait to do it again.
• Trish and Andi are agitating for me to drive through Dallas on my way from Alabama to South Dakota later this summer. This is only possible if I find a place to spend the night in the middle of Kansas, or southern Nebraska. Suggestions?
• I did not get the perfect job. I was very confident that I would when I applied. I'm pretty bummed. However, I'm now suspending the search for the perfect part time job until after the summer.

What I Read This Week (and other Bookish Thoughts):

• Speaking of Andi, she's persuaded me to pick Outlander back up.  I haven't yet, but any day now.
• My library copy of Insurgent came in, and I hope to start it today.
• My library still doesn't even have The Last Boyfriend: Book Two of the Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy in the system and it's making me crazy. I keep walking past it in the store and hovering over the link on Amazon.
• I read Midnight Bayouby Nora Roberts in two long sittings this week. It was good, but the ending was very rushed and left me unsatisfied. You can find more thoughts on it here.
• Last night I finised up First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh. I'm pretty sure I've read another Balogh, but I couldn't tell you what. This one was quite good. If I had a complaint it would be that the heroine is a tad too philosophically introspective. I might write more on it later.
• I'm also lugging around The Digital Mom Handbook: How to Blog, Vlog, Tweet, and Facebook Your Way to a Dream Career at Home, because it can't hurt to read it, right?

WW: Royal Gorge Overlook

At the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park in Canon City, Colorado.

12 years later

This is the last picture I have of my brothers and I. There are rumors that there is another set, but I've never seen them. This was taken in June 21, 1997, at a wedding. I was 22, they were 14 and 16. I had gotten married about 3 months earlier.


These two were taken last week, June 20, 2009. I have two kids and live all the way across the country. They have 6 kids between them and live within minutes of each other, one of them in the home we grew up in.

The first is in the same order.

These are not the most flattering pictures ever taken of me, so hopefully we have a retake sometime before 2021!

There's no place like home, there's no place like home.

8 years ago I'd have never thought I'd say that about South Dakota. Isn't it crazy how when I'm here, Alabama is "home" but once in Alabama, South Dakota became my home?

Anyway, we made it home yesterday afternoon but we were all too tired and cranky to consider blogging. From my front door back to my front door we drove 2879.6 miles. It was 1275 down and 1301 back (we took different routes.) The other 300 were from driving from my aunt's in TN to my mom's in AL and a little in town stuff. The Pirate is a mostly excellent traveler. The Bug? NOT SO MUCH. We were very happy to get home and even happier to leave them with Carol (daycare) this morning.

The trip itself was excellent. We were in the pool Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We were on the river on Thursday. On Friday my sister-in-law from the Phillipines made dinner for us. Don't ask what we ate, I don't know what it was called- something pork and pineapple, something noodley, something that looked like egg rolls but had pork and potatoes inside. This was the least stressful visit I've had with my family, almost every moment was truely enjoyable. This was my first chance to see my baby brother be a father and he really stepped up to the bat. I'm proud of him. I haven't had a chance to download the pictures yet, I'm sure I'll be sharing a lot later.

My Google Reader imploded. Here's a sampling of my labels:

Books (1000+)
Crafts (334)
Clothing and Fashion (22)
Favorites (81)
Kitchen Sink (107)
Parenting (52)

And then there are a ton of others that don't have labels yet, plus a ton I already cleared (I subscribe to a lot of flickr feeds, stuff like that) that probably totalled another 400. Plus I've skimmed a couple hundred of my quick read ones. At some point I'll probably give up and mark them all read, so if you posted something I have to read or a spectacular review, please give me a pointer!

We still need to unpack and collect the mail from my neighbor and scrape all of the crumbs out of the car, but it's nice to be home!

Random Friday- Alabama

My Google Reader hit 1000+ posts on MONDAY.

I am sunburned. The boys are not.

There are 8 kids 6 and under. It is chaos.

I got a great new pair of shoes for $15!! The color is much better in person. The yellow isn't so yellow.

I am starting to dread the drive home. We're debating leaving tonight.

More pictures later.

Numbers

1275.4 miles.

21.5 hours on the road.

1 perfect boy.

1 crabby patty.

2 tired parents.

Random Friday Trip Edition

We leave for vacation tonight after work. The car is packed and the gas tank is full. I've pre-written a few posts for next week. I don't expect to be offline the whole week but I like knowing the posts are ready to go. I can't wait to get there. It's a 1300 mile drive, one way. (Above pictures are from the end of the last camping trip, but I am hoping for a repeat performance.)

Have ya'll noticed the little widget I added to the bottom of my posts? I think it's cool. It doesn't seem to slow the blog down on either of my systems, but if it does yours please let me know.

You may have noticed (or not) that I am adding books read in the past to my sidebar. At some point I'll hopefully have all the years since 1993 done. The lists are not in the order I read them, but rather in the order I entered them at Library Thing. If you have explored those lists you'll have noticed that I read a lot of romance in college. I am a big supporter of romance novels, they just don't get a lot of play in the last 5 or 6 years.

Janssen has written a great post about no-reply bloggers and why you should have your email in your profile. She even included pictures!

This is an interesting idea: This woman is wearing the same dress every day for one year (she has 7 identical ones). Every day she posts a picture of how it's unique that day. You can see the pictures on the left side by click on daily or monthly.

Garden Update: It's rained here for something like 2 weeks. Some of the plants are a bit waterlogged. WHERE IS THE SUN??

We're home!

Actually, we got home yesterday. I was just too pooped to post! We had a great little vacation, but I think we were all very happy to be home. We went shopping (Barnes & Noble, World Market, The Children's Place), we went to the zoo(very sad old-style zoo), we saw Sesame Street LIVE!, we went to Falls Park, we went to the Washington Pavilion to see the Kirby Science Discovery Center (very interactive and hands-on, lots of fun, even for two year olds), we walked and walked and walked. We ate at the Spicy Pickle (twice), Cracker Barrel (twice!), Timberlodge Steakhouse, Phillips Avenue Diner and Famous Dave's.

I finished one book (review to come) and knitted half a bag. We pretty much avoided the hotel unless it were time for the Monkey to sleep, and the Monkey refused to go to sleep with any lights on, so we had to go to bed when he did. The horror!

Now we just have to find time to unpack, do all the laundry, and get in the mindset of WORK tomorrow.

I have updated the Monkey's photo page with everything except Sesame Street pictures. Feel free to hop over and look if you know the link. If not, email me and I'll hook ya up.

We're going on a trip...

Things have been quiet on the blogging front because we are frantically getting ready for a short vacation. We leave in the morning and come back Sunday. I'm taking a pile of books (none of which I'll read) and a bag of knitting (but the wrong size double point needles). We're gonna hit the zoo, Sesame Street Live, Barnes & Noble.... should be a lot of fun. I'll see you all when I get back!

Number The Stars by Lois Lowry and other bookish catchup

Despite taking a huge stack of books, and buying even more, I only managed to read one book on my vacation- Number the Stars by Lois Lowry- and that one I read on the plane home. Number the Stars is set in 1943 Denmark. It's the story of the Jewish detainment and one 10 year old girl's role in it. This is a very quick book, written for middle school aged kids. It won the Newbery Award in 1990.

The story is very clear, and simple to read, but I didn't think it was nearly as good as The Giver (also by Lowry) or The Book Thief (also about WWII and the Holocaust). The writing isn't as good, and I didn't find it as emotionally hard as either of the others. This was on my Newbery Challenge list, and I am glad that I read it, but it's not going down as a favorite book.

I also finished Hex in the City by Simon R Green. This is the fourth in the series and it just keeps getting more outlandish and better with each installment. This one sets up the story for the next few titles and ends with a bit of a cliff hanger. I have the next two at home (borrowed from the library) and hope to get to them soonish. I'd like to have at least one series that I'm all caught up on.

Reading goals for the next month or so- Harry Potters 5 and 6, finish up the Newbery Challenge, wrap up a couple odds and ends (The Faith Club, I Am the Messenger, Carved in Bone.) This is a lot of reading for me, those HPs are huge! I'm determined to reread them all before July 21 though.

Two weeks worth of math- 7 more from Paperbackswap (the last being How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater) plus the 7 I bought on vacation brings me to 86 books in since January. I finished two whole books in that time. This brings me to 52 books behind. This experiment is starting to get depressing. Good thing it's summer and tv is all reruns!

Ahhh. Home again.

Vacation is over and we're home trying to catch up on everything. I had 670+ Google Reader posts on deck! If I post a comment on something you said a week ago don't be surprised. I got smart and did most of our laundry at my mother's house so almost all the clothes are clean.

The vacation itself was very nice. Lots of relaxing, pool time, some chick-fil-a, a couple Krystals. I didn't get much reading done, just one Newbery Challenge book (review to be posted later) and a little bit of another.

His monkey-ness had a great time circling the pool at my aunt's house and playing with his cousins. He fell madly madly in love with my cousin Alanna and wanted to know where she was every moment she was not in his sight while in Tennesse. This is the two of them poolside.



















We also hit the Nashville zoo, which is gorgeous, but the animals aren't so exciting. We met up with my best friend since forever and her kids, and took them back to my aunt's house for a swim. This is the three boys (the monkey is third from the front) and me looking at the Zebras. OMG! ZEBRAS! The monkey was much impressed by them.

















I had posted 13 Things I wanted to do on my vacation, and we did everything on that list except for 2 and 4, so yay!

Book shopping was done- I came home with 7 new books:


















The Monkey learned to spell W-A-T-E-R in sign language at Ivy Green. No, not really, but that IS the famous well at Ivy Green.


















The cousins stomped in puddles.


















Ok, this one isn't from vacation, it's from our (no longer) overgrown backyard. But isn't it an EXCELLENT photo? I'm gonna frame this one.























And lastly, this has nothing to do with anything, but I love the song Hey There Delilah so so much. Please, no one ruin it for me. It's just so romantic and sweet as it is.

Did I miss anything while I was gone?