Okay, I have two more of these to create, so here goes.
January
I continued my terrible mishaps in the kitchen. I attempted schwarma for Qatar, and that was a horrible miss. Jeff says I made it before, but I don’t remember having done that. Then I made Moldovan cheese dumplings, and that went horribly. And that last one isn’t my fault, but I had put all the cinnamon rolls in the dish, and went to go get dressed as the oven warmed up, then Leezard jumped up and ate all but two. Those two weren’t eaten solely because the dish fell off the counter and she wasn’t able to get to them. Thankfully it didn’t shatter.
But look at how majestic she is sitting there over by the fire.
Stupid troublemaking dog.
To prepare for our yearly talent show I made a mask of Batman, which you’ll see in the movie below. The talent show was a big hit.
And then The Artist had her birthday party, only a few months late. It was a lot of fun, but I had so many dishes to wash afterwards.
And in that bottom corner you can see my wonderful masks. When we showed Batman as we went down for family day for his graduation, he rolled his eyes, but laughed at it.
Oh crud, I just realized I had that stupid cinnamon roll picture in there twice.
Oh well.
On the topic of food, we attempted Suya from Niger and Sambousek from Syria, which were both not hits. Sambousek was closer to something we might like, but for our taste there needs to be a sauce or something in there so it’s not quite so dry.
We made handprint burning bush crafts for Sunday School.
And here’s our wonderful skit for this year. This reminds me I need to share the video with Batman. He never got to see the wonder that it is.
Speaking of Batman, we went down to San Antonio for family day and then his graduation from AIT, we had lots of fun wandering around San Antonio, I finally got to try Voodoo Donuts which I’ve heard many people rave about, and I’m not that impressed with them.
He’s now off to his new duty station, and we’re planning to come out and see him at some point in the future.
Books read:
- Calor
- Lumen
- Nightingale
- Frost Gate
- Wolf Gate
Okay, it’s almost 10:40 and I had a long night the last couple of nights (at least partially because I stayed up too late one of those nights, but I’ll link up the books later, maybe. Calor and Lumen are both dystopian fantasy stories that I really enjoyed. Unfortunately I have to wait for the final book in the trilogy to come out. Then I read Nightingale because in theory, the series is vaguely based off of that and the myth of Hades and Persephone. I’m not quite sure I see either one, but maybe I will more once the series is done.
Frost Gate came out, and it’s a Snow White retelling, it’s like the fifth in the series, maybe. Each book in the series is more or less a stand-alone book, but this book we see a lot of characters from other books, so I decided to go back and reread the entire series. As I did I realized how very short Wolf Gate is in comparison to the other books in the series, and it feels less complete. Amusingly enough the author in her latest newsletter says she plans to update that book because she feels it doesn’t reflect the rest of the series, and I’d agree.
Okay, it’s now 10:40 for sure, I’m off to bed. I hope your January was good!
February
I’m going to pre-write some of this before I put the picture together.
My high school girls and I went to Ceramic Lodge and paint pottery. Afterward we went to Denny’s, one of the girls in my group this year is an exchange student, so we took her there so she can experience the “true American experience,” we plan to have her also eat at IHOP.
The next day Superman and I went to go see episodes 4-6 of The Chosen, because he wasn’t able to go with Jeff, The Artist, and I, so it was fun to see a second time and watch to see what his reaction was. He enjoyed the moments i was expecting him to.
Oh funny story!
I went to pick up The Artist from a birthday party and took Leezard with me. We’re in the rental car, and I left her in the car while I ran into the grocery store. While I was gone Leezard apparently figured out she can get into the front of the car. While there she turned the car off and on, honked the horn twice, decided the windshield needed to be cleaned, and had a short conversation with a random lady in the parking lot.
Now that alone is an amusing story, but we stopped at a gas station so I could run in and get a soda, and I had The Artist roll down the passenger side rear window so I could get my purse out from underneath the dog who was happily sitting on it. Then as I walked away I saw her lunge over to the driver side window controls and was a little confused, but I continued walking into the convenience store.
What I missed was Leezard jumping out of the window and happily running through the parking lot with The Artist chasing her yelling, “Dog! Dog! Dog! Dog!” before eventually tackling the dog and then awkwardly walking her back to the car.
I designed a cool Ark of the Covenant craft for our Sunday School this week, and I can’t wait to see how the kids react to it.
And I’m very proud of my finally mailing birthday presents for Tara and Josh, like 6 months later.
Since I pre-wrote it, here are the additional things:
Superman came in and said, “So my car is even more special now.” Apparently, now to shift out of park, or into park, you need to stick a screwdriver or something else in that vague shape into a hole to allow it to shift. I laughed, and thought, “your car is so ghetto,” revealing my 90s upbringing. Jeff hears about this and is thinking, “This could be dangerous, let’s take it to the shop.”
We take it to the shop, and hear back from them a few hours later. That problem not a big deal, it would cost $1500 to repair that, and to be quite honest, the car is not worth that. HOWEVER, the brakes were only a few millimeters from catastrophically failing, it was down to metal on metal, and was very scary.
So, we decided to fix the brakes, and Superman will continue with his ghetto gear shift. It was a total God thing for that to happen, because I’m pretty sure we would not have taken the car in if not for the fact that Jeff insisted on that, and the mechanic was quite terrified of how thin the brakes were.
And continuing the minor things that were a bigger deal. The Artist was in a minor accident, and the car was in the shop. When I went to pick it up, the mechanic told me how there was an estimate error. When he first got an estimate on the pieces needed he assumed the headlights would both cost the same. That is incorrect, one cost $1000 and the other cost $2000. If he had correctly appraised it, it would have gone over the total threshold, and replacing another car right now is not really how we want to spend our money. It’s not in the budget without getting into emergency funds.
I know, not all of you agree with me here, but I saw that and said, “Look at how God cared for us in small ways this week.”
Books I read:
- Lady Avely’s Guide to Truth and Magic– I enjoy this series, it’s a fun fantasy story in the style of Jane Austen, but it’s also a mystery, and this book has a similar feel to the original series, but she ended it on a cliffhanger, and that annoys me. The original story is clearly done, and then she ends it with this tag of “But someone set up the mal protagonist to commit murder 10 years ago using magic, who did that?” It annoyed me enough, I’m thinking of waiting to get the next book until the series is done because it was such an unsatisfying ending.
- Lion Warrior– final book in the Lightraider series, his writing style is not my favorite, but it’s a good adventure series
- Harvest Moon Homecoming– I read this more because I wanted a short book to read, because I’d finished Lion Warrio, but I have a book I request the library buy coming in today (March 1), so I scrolled through and opened several books I had, before finally finding this one, at only 130 pages, and I think 10 of those pages are a preview for the next book in this loosely connected series. Really, this book’s purpose is to give you a taste of the author’s writing style, and introduce a few characters. I like her style, unlike so many of the romance/rom-com authors she doesn’t feel the need to have the characters think longingly of his abs, or constantly talk about how kissable her lips are. Really, that gest old very fast. Maybe this is why I like “romantasy” because it spends less time on the “Oh my goodness, he’s so cute,” because there is usually some other part to the story.
Okay, that’s it, now I’ve updated this with the picture, and added in the books. I thought I was gonna do this last night, but I stayed up late talking with The Artist, and then Leezard randomly got ALL THE ENERGY at like midnight, so we played fetch filled with lots of “No! That’s my hand, your teeth are scary! You are way too hyper!” I think someone secretly gave her a shot of pure adrenaline.
March
I actually remembered to take a picture of my month of reading, and how I did with my various things I try to do every day. In case you’re wondering, I’m doing terrible with those habits I’m trying to work on so far this month.
We started the month with The Artist at a campout, so we had a fun weekend of playing various different board games.
Then in Sunday School, we taught about the Tabernacle, and my class loved looking at and interacting with the paper tabernacle I had, and helping me finish setting it up. That was pretty cool to see how excited they were by it.
Monday was the twins’ birthday, it was weird not having Batman here, but we attempted to celebrate Superman. But, let me tell you a funny story about that cake.
I asked him what type of cake he wanted, and he said either a lemon or chocolate cake. I don’t hugely like chocolate cake, so I started making a lemon cake. I messaged the artist if she had any tips for making it better, and she recommended adding the zest of a lemon and then adding the lemon juice. In addition, switch out the water for milk, and butter for vegetable oil.
Okay, I did this. I mixed it all up, and then I added in the lemon juice and started mixing and it started fizzing. That was weird, I grease the pan pour it in and start it cooking.
I set the timer, it goes off and I pull it out, and it looks way more brown than it should, and it doesn’t look like cake. In retrospect it looked like flan, but at the time I thought, that’s oddly the wrong color.
I let it cool, and when I came back to frost it, the cake had fallen, and it was no longer risen, and I was bummed, but I flipped it out, and started icing it.
I had these plans, I was going to frost it and then shave some chocolate to add on top. I thought that would taste good.
Only I discovered we didn’t have any chocolate to shave, so I got some lemon heads, smashed them, and sprinkled that across the top.
We sang him happy birthday, and I sliced everyone some cake, and I warned them of how it had fallen, and so it was thicker than usual, and everyone took a bit and said, “That tastes like egg.”
I don’t know what I did wrong, but something was horribly horribly wrong. No one finished the cake, The Artist in the meantime started making a chocolate cake from scratch for Superman, and her cake turned out great. I’m so jealous.
The next day it was Game Club, we had a whole bunch of people RSVP’d, and only two showed up, one who warned me he was going to be about 20 minutes late. The boys happily played several different games, and I worked on trying to figure out a few things on line. Which I now don’t remember quite what it was.
The next night, Leezard had a seizure, and then she had several more seizures over the day, and I thought, I’m going to open the windows to help air out the house.
Well, Leezard sees the open window and thinks, “I’m gonna go through that.” She hit the screen, and it didn’t open the very first time, so she turned around and ran out the back door, then back in and ran full tilt at the window, crashing through it.
Superman yelled, “Leezard! Window!” then followed her out the window, while I ran through the door. He caught her, and sent me back inside to get the leash for her. We attempted to steer her back to the house, only for her to have another seizure in the front lawn.
So, it was quite the day or so. I’ve done so many loads of laundry.
She had one more seizure today, March 7, which led to one last load of laundry and me spending large amounts of time cleaning the carpet.
Books Read:
- Tattoo of Crimson– I think I’m going to lead this as a book quest next month
- Ruins of Bone– because why not read the sequel
- Various short stories in that world, or bonus scenes
Games played:
- Hadrian’s Wall– I almost beat Superman, and I understood how the game worked just a little bit more
- Shadows of Brimstone– Superman got the Norse Dwarf hero, so we played a couple of rounds of that
- Transamerica
- Dragon Dice- I know this is not the actual name of the game, but it’s the only name I can think of
April
To show how our month ended, I’m finishing writing this at 10:00 on May 2.
Most of that week was nothing in particular.
I lied, no the last week of April was the nightmare of FAFSA. I had completed my portion of the FAFSA back on February 3. Then, we got notified there was a problem, so I went to fix it, and there was a problem with my name. So I spent two hours with “customer service” and got it fixed.
They said check back in a day or so and make sure it took.
Only it didn’t, so I login on Wednesday, and spend over an hour on so-called customer service, only to be told, “Well we can’t help you go call Social Security.” I got the phone number from him, only after spending over 10 minutes on hold I find out he gave me the wrong number, instead I had just called a medical alert bracelet company. I look up the phone number and get the one for Austin, I spend another 10-15 minutes on hold, only for them to say, “We’re experiencing unusually long hold times, call the national number,” and then click. They hung up on me.
I searched again and discovered the original number I was given was off by one number from the correct number. So I called them and got back on with customer service for FAFSA. I spent another hour or so, and in theory, got it all corrected. And each time I’m being reassured by the person that I won’t have to fill it out again, and it will all be fine.
Fast forward to Friday and I get another email saying I need to sign the form, I log in and there is no form to sign, but I can start filling out the paperwork all over again.
That is when I completely and totally lost it, and I just started crying. I called the kids and was such a mess that what I said was not English. Eventually, we got everyone sitting in the same room on like four or five different computers as we worked between us, and started over all of the paperwork from the start and submitted it again.
It was horrible.
And that is why I have a picture of us eating dinner at a restaurant because Jeff declared I did not need to be cooking after such a horrible day.
Bless the man.
Saturday morning Superman had a Kung Fu show, and that afternoon The Artist and I went with her best friend and her mom to the botanical gardens to get senior pictures. When I got home and uploaded the pictures I had over 700 pictures, and her mom probably had twice as many pictures as I did. I can’t wait to see those pictures!
Our Sunday School craft the next day was swords to go with the Othneil, Ehud, and Shamgar lesson. I’ll have to write up an official version of what we did, we made a much less sturdy version of the Roman sword project. Not too surprisingly it was wildly popular.
Monday, the Artist had her first work day for her Stars and Stripes project. Her troop decorated flower pots. Next week we’ll be starting the first part of the greenhouse tear down and rebuilding.
May
This was a week of lasts, and that has me feeling all the feelings, and I’m still working through all of them.
And it all happened over the weekend.
Just a quick mention, that left middle picture was the kids’ D&D group which was at our house that Friday.
Then up top, is The Artist’s final Court of Awards ceremony. They gave a send-off to each of the seniors. These women have been in her life forever. One since she was in diapers, and one since kindergarten. Not too surprisingly, there were not a lot of dry eyes as they talked.
Then in the middle bottom was Superman’s last Kung Fu demo team show. I made him take a picture with me afterward. From there, I headed to a graduation party for one of the graduating seniors. I stopped in long enough to say hi and get a picture with the grad, then headed over…
To The Artist’s second work day, was the longest one, and they worked hard starting at 9:00 until 3:00 getting the shelves installed for the greenhouse. That’s the middle right picture. It was a long hot day for everyone.
At the bottom, is a picture from Senior Sunday at church. They honored all of the seniors and had a photo booth. The Artist had fun getting a picture with some long-time family friends, the oldest of whom is graduating with her, but ironically is not in the picture with her. Superman had fun kneeling down and pretending to be short. The picture made me laugh.
So, all the emotions in three short days. I don’t have any particular stories to share from those events that I am at liberty to share, but it was a good time.
June
This has been a busy week, and you can see why. Batman is back from the army for two weeks. We started the week with Jeff and I going to see Inside Out 2. More of I forced him to go see it because I wanted to see it. The funny part is Batman got back into town the next day and I was talking about how I forced Jeff to see it with me because no one else would go see it with me, and then Batman said he wanted to go see it. Then suddenly Artist wants to see it (previously she was only willing to see it if we saw it with the cousins).
So, I saw it again with Artist and Batman, and it was still just as much fun. We had a lot of fun discussing the new emotions and our thoughts on anxiety as an emotion and what emotions we would say is our primary emotion, and if we were to say we had two “Fantasy should creatures” what would they be? You know like a shoulder angel, I said mine would be a fairy and a paladin. Which was generally agreed to make sense.
We went over to the Williams’ house, or as Superman said, “they’re kind of like family, but not family. They’re like surrogate grandparents because they were Uncle Sam’s parents and we went to their house so often growing up, it’s just part of our childhood.” Seeing them was one of the things Batman wanted to make sure to do before he headed off to the army that didn’t happen, so when he was coming back this summer, I wanted to make sure to set this up, so we had lots of fun talking and getting together.
That big picture is a recreation of a picture from the boys infancy of sorts. Right around when the boys were born Sam’s cancer came back and he was hospitalized. We went over to visit him as he got out of the hospital, and we got a picture of him sitting on the couch with the boys in the baby bucket carseats on either side of him. He’s got his hands on top of the carseats, and he has the most maniacal grin on his face. Jeff wanted to recreate that picture with Vern, Sam’s Dad since we couldn’t do it with Sam there since he had died years ago (this was a brief downer on the evening). This led to many fun variations on pictures and the kids just had fun goofing off, and Myra was having fun watching the kids goofing off.
Then I got to try out her long-arm quilting machine. Which was really cool. Like really cool, I’ve heard of them before, but never really used one.
Oh, and with Batman here we played many many games, including trying much harder version of some games, since Artist was at kids’ clubs that meant we didn’t have to worry about excluding her as she was not home, so much game playing was going on.
Books read:
- The Earl of Grafton and the Traitor- an enemies to lovers Regency book, it was a nice fluffy palate cleanser after reading The Visitation and Ignite
- The Visitation– our book quest for the month, and it’s a bit of a horror/thriller book with themes of spiritual abuse, so a bit out of what I usually read, but still an interesting book to discuss with friends
- Enhanced– I read this with Superman, I bought it for him knowing he likes dystopians, and then he asked we read it together, there is a lot of super relevant material as it talks about social credit score and genetic engineering
- Ignite– apparently this week was all about hard books, which may have been why I needed that fluff with Earl of Grafton, though most of these were books I’d read in bits and pieces over the month, this is coming out later on, and it’s also got some mental and spiritual abuse and how to deal disentangle wrong beliefs from the truth, all in a fantasy setting with phoenix, very interesting, I’ll be curious to see where book 2 goes with this series
Games played:
- Shadows of Brimstone– We played through the Adventures and the Ragnorak-themed version
- Batman Shadow of the Bat
- Touch of Evil
- I feel like there was more, but am not remembering it
July
Well, the first week of July was fun. With it being the last week of Batman’s leave we made sure to do as much as possible together. We played some games. I got a shot of our new book quest for Lorehaven, Vincent in Wonderland.
We had fun shooting off fireworks for Independence Day, Batman and I narrated quite a ridiculous battle between the chickens and the tanks. There was a random mother and son who happened to come by and watch us and I think we entertained them as we narrated our crazy shenanigans. I am quite sure the chickens won the war between the tanks and the chickens, and it was the creative use of the dive-bombers that we found that won the day for us.
My Mom paid for family pictures for all of us together. She wanted to come up with some kind of theme for the thing, and so on Monday I asked her to get some kind of final answer, which after way too many texts, we settled on my family would have blue formal shirts and black pants. I got shirts for the boys by going to Academy and buying them polo shirts. I then spent easily two hours at the outlet mall searching for a shirt for The Artist, and not finding ANY. Apparently, solid colored shirts are not popular right now. And if it was solid-colored it was too bright or too big, or just non-existent. So after over two hours of searching we found a crop top, that was boxy and not her favorite, but she was willing to wear it. Then I got home and discovered the shirt I had from earlier was gone. I no longer had a solid-colored blue shirt. And after all of the nightmare of the rest of the family I sure better have one. So I ran out, went to Salvation Army, none there. Old Navy, none there. Finally at Marshalls I found six shirts, and finally of those six one two fit. One was from the men’s department.
But, in the end we got some pictures of the family. There was much grumbling from my family, “why do I have to wear this?” “this is stupid” and so many other complaints.
But in the end, Batman went back to the army, and life has settled back into normal.
Books read:
- Perils of Lady Catherine deBourgh– I really enjoyed this third book in the series, I’m really hoping we get another book in this series because where they left the relationships in the series leaves it rather unsettled
Games played
August
This was our first full week with no kids, and here are my observations:
- We are no longer running the dishwasher a minimum of 1-2 times a day
- I no longer need to buy 2-3 gallons of milk a week
- Making a dish of enchiladas lasts for like at least 3 meals, seriously Jeff and I have eaten it for 3 meals and we have enough for 1 more meal
- I need to learn how to cook for 2 rather than 4 or more
We had our co-op Not Back to School party and had so many kids.
I made a fun whale craft for our Jonah lesson. The kids had fun putting the whales together.
Jeff and I went to go see the Daniel Sight and Sound production in the theaters and it was loads of fun.
Wait, no that’s not Daniel. Ummmm….. I don’t remember what that was. That was something else Jeff and I went to go see, now I have to remember what it was. I just had so much fun with Daniel that I”m remembering that the most. It will come to me as soon as I hit publish. Grumble.
Books read:
- Chaos Grid– this was an interesting post-apocalyptic book, then I read the back cover copy and thought, “They gave away way too much of the book.” I read it after a friend recommended it, so the back cover copy gives away all these plot twists revealed near the end of the book.
- Regency and Regicide– A Regency Romance with a twist, a Regency author falls into her own book along with the young man she’s in love with, it’s a fun sort-of fantasy book that a friend recommended saying “You’ll love this Ticia,” and she was right
- Emma M Lion vol. 1– Another book recommended to me as a somewhat cozy fantasy in a similar vein to Anne of Green Gables, and I can see what she was saying, but I find it frustrating because it’s so short. It’s only 121 pages and the author is charging $5.99 for the kindle book for that length, which is high. I bought it figuring I’ll see and maybe I’ll like it enough to think it’s warranted, and it is cozy, but I don’t like it enough to warrant wanting to end up spending close to $50 for the whole series. So it’ll sit there in a half-finished state. I wonder if I can convince my library to buy the series.
Okay, that’s our August in all its very messy glory. Now I’m hitting publish and heading off to complete the other stuff I need to get done today. This was a very crazy week.
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