February 2024 in Review

It’s February~!

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Week 1

Having kids who really don’t want to be in pictures means I rarely get any pictures, unless you want me to share loads of pictures of my dog. And they’re not even creative pictures of the dog, it’s just the dog being a stupid dog.

February technically started with Batman’s graduation from AIT, and I just realized I got a family picture and somehow missed adding it to the collage. We had a good visit with him, at the last minute we were able to drive him to the airport.

He got to his posting, and is still (as of February 13) waiting to be officially part of his new unit. He will get to do some additional training that sounds super impressive, if a little scary to his Mom. He’s super bored right now, and has decided to start running a sci-fi D&D campaign with a random grouping of people he’s set up.

But in other news, we went to a chocolate-making workshop, which wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be. We only spread it out to make chocolate, but I did still learn a lot, and it was really cool to go there. I ended up buying some extra chocolate from the tour in addition to what we made.

The next day the Artist got into an accident, so we currently have the fun of figuring out how to play car scheduling. Thankfully no one was hurt, and we heard from the car repair shop that it will be a relatively simple repair, but he’s having to see how quickly he can get the parts to repair it. So that’s good news.

The top right picture is the door handle of Superman’s car, and it’s so very obvious it’s his car because I wouldn’t have that there. It greatly amuses me.

Jeff is running a fun fae campaign, which I enjoy, and that’s the bottom left picture, but at times it feels like I’m the only one driving the campaign forward and trying to make things happen.

And that top left picture is of the wildly popular with young boys craft for the 10 Plagues, once you stick that balloon through the slit as it deflates it causes the balloon to spin through the air in a crazy corkscrew pattern. But what the boys really love is how it makes a farting noise. Yep, very popular.

Books read

I read books, I’ll look them up later.

It’s February 28, here’s me looking it up:

• Rose Gate
• Lily Gate
• Glass Gate
• Frost Gate
• Lorenzo’s Secret Mission– expect an American Revolution Chapter books list. And it screams to be made into a unit.

Games: I don’t know if we played any.

Week 2

I’m going to pretend it is not almost February 21 and I’m writing this on the 15th. I so am not doing that, but I can pretend.

The start of this week was DNow, it’s my last one with my girls and I loved it. We stayed up way late on Friday night talking, though not as late as some of the other groups, then had a fun day hanging out and talking.

Sunday, I taught about the second half of the plagues and the kids happily made locusts out of clothespins, and googly eyes that don’t have particularly sticky backs anymore. It’s a good reminder to me not to buy too large of a bulk order as the glue on those does eventually go bad.

I like to listen to the “My Soundtrack” on Amazon because sometimes I find really fun music and this particular day I was wildly amused to discover there is a Goosebumps Musical! I know, like what is that even like?

And then we played the Batman game again Tuesday night, which prompted Superman and I to plan to play it again this weekend (February 16) while Jeff and the Artist are up in Dallas to better solidify how to play the game, because we haven’t played it often enough to have a really firm grasp on that.

Jeff and I celebrated Valentine’s Day together, but didn’t get any pictures because it was very low key. We had a steak dinner cooked at home in between picking up the Artist from her babysitting job. We don’t have a car she can drive right now all of the time, so there is a fair amount of car juggling going on.

Books I read

• Just Stab Me Now– I was so glad when this came out, the YouTube Shorts series this was based on was hilarious
• Falling for Your Best Friend’s Twin– I randomly felt like re-reading this series
• Falling for Your Boss– This is the book I feel most ambivalent about in this series, one or two of the scenes are just weird
• Mr. Popper’s Penguins– Ugh, all of the covers for this currently are stupid. This is the least offensive cover, and it still has very little bearing on what the book is about

Games played

• Batman: Shadow of the Bat

Week 3

I am so not putting this picture in on February 28.

Okay, it was a busy week and also at the same time not super busy. I’m also noticing these pictures are not at all in chronological order.

The Artist and Jeff went up to Dallas for a faith and science conference, which had some really cool ideas from what I heard. While they were up in Dallas, Superman and I played games. Friday night we played Batman Shadow of the Bat again, figuring if we played it again a short time after playing it, it would help us remember how to play the game.

We were correct, and we’re slowly refining how we should play it, AND we’re also figuring out which rules we need to tweak how we play it. Which reminds me, I need to head over to Board Game Geek and look for extra missions.

The next day we had a couple of Superman’s friends over to play Shadows. At one point, one of the boys needed to roll 36 dice, and with that he rolled an abnormally large number of 5’s and 6’s. Which was good because it kept him from dying horribly.

Monday, The Artist had a tea party with her AHG troop, and I snuck a picture of her talking with one of the girls, one cool part of seeing her grow up is how she has started mentoring other girls in her sphere of influence.

Oh wait! I didn’t include the pictures of this, but I made a couple of recipes for Cooking Around the World, they were cookies I brought for my contribution for the tea party, and they did not turn out like I’d been hoping.

And then I enjoyed the ridiculously warm weather on Wednesday and took my Bible study outside. Sadly, today on February 28, that super gorgeous weather is gone.

Books I read:

• Falling for your Fake Fiance– this one has some really funny scenes
• Falling for your Best Friend
• Falling for your Enemy– an enemies-to-lovers story that actually works, unlike most of these which are just weird
• The Dragon and the Stone– I read this more to be able to recommend it when parents ask for middle-grade fantasy books. It’s a decent book, but there were a few times in the book I was aware I was reading, if that makes sense. It’s not bad, but it wasn’t great. But, I am able to give it a positive review, just not a raving review.

Games played:

• Batman: Shadow of the Bat
• Shadows of Brimstone

Week 4

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.