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March 2024 in review
Y’all, March veered wildly between so very very slow and how is it flying past so fast. I just have vague memories of some weeks and some weeks have many details.
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Week 1
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
Week 2
I swear I had written this out, but then I came into week 3 and discovered this was not so.
I don’t remember much of what happened aside from Superman’s birthday party, and I took pictures of a bunch of the countries that I didn’t have pictures of yet. I usually discover this when I go to write about that country and I see I’ve only got one random picture there.
Then I picked up as many of the 3rd-grade books made into movies as I could find so I could get a picture for the post. Sadly the books are still sitting on top of my table, so I need to get that returned to the library soon.
And that middle picture on the right there is from this meal I attempted to make that turned out horribly. It had a lot of flavor, but instead of the cheese melting and spreading throughout the sauce, it just clumped on top, that was not quite so cool. Sigh…
Finally, I grabbed a random picture of Leezard trying to get attention. It amused me.
Books read:
Okay, so I kind of forgot to write down what I read and am making it up based off the most recently read in my Nook and Kindle apps.
- Mortal Queens– I’m thinking I’ll make this into a book quest once the second book is out, it was an interesting political intrigue book set in the fae realm
- To Dust You Shall Return– A vague recollection of purchasing this because it looked interesting and was free (I follow a few places that announce free books each week, which lets me find all sorts of books), but it’s a Regency murder mystery (with somewhat of a romance, but it’s more of the interactions between a married couple and how they’re still in love, so a different type of romance), I enjoyed the book, but since I’m not a huge mystery fan, so I don’t know if I’ll get the other books in the series
- Just don’t fall– a rom-com author I like. I hadn’t been buying the books in the series because I’m not super interested in hockey, but this book was on sale, so I bought it, and it’s cute
- Mr Fenley and the Lady– an interesting Regency romance, I can’t quite decide what I think of the book. It’s a marriage of convenience trope, they had to marry because it looked like they were in a compromised position (they weren’t but society), and then we get the oddity of the love story that happens through it. While it uses that trope as the frame, it doesn’t fall neatly into the conventions, which is part of why I can’t decide what I think
Games played:
I don’t remember
Week 3
The pictures are way out of order, and I just now realized that. So starting in the bottom right corner.
Our Sunday School craft that week was painting rocks to remember what God had done for the Joshua and the Battle of Jericho lesson. The kids struggled to come up with ideas for rocks to paint, so most of their rocks were painted based on Bible stories, so it works.
Then, continuing around clockwise, I cooked our Saudi Arabia meal, and my kids continued to give me a hard time how I keep thinking these chicken and rice one pot meals will be popular, and I keep being wrong.
I did find one that was popular, but it wasn’t for a country, it was a random one that had a vaguely Italian-inspired flavoring. What can you do?
Flying back over to the top right, we played Dominion together one night while The Artist was babysitting, and I was reminded how much fun that game can be. This is what inspired me to write my Deck-building games post. I needed to make that landing page, and it also taught me that I still have not written about the Harry Potter game. Sigh. The never-ending to-do list.
We headed over to Rudy’s for Teen Hangout finishing out the week. It’s always amusing to me to see all the kids there happily hanging out. One of The Artist’s close friends was finally old enough to join in, which was pretty cool, but also one of those, “What, how did she get so old?” moments.
Right after that The Artist and I drove off for “Admitted Student’s Day” at Angelo State, which I have zero photos of because she doesn’t like her picture taken. I almost got selfies for myself, but thought that might be too weird.
Books read:
Okay, so I found a new book series from an author I like, and I binged it, then started working through the other mini-series in the world. It’s 3 books for each series, but it’s a shared world with supporting characters crossing over each series.
- King’s Captive
- King’s Shadow
- King’s Queen– This is the only trilogy I didn’t buy as an omnibus, ironically it’s also the most recent finished trilogy in this world, so then I went back and read the earlier books in a truly random order. This is an urban fantasy series with a bit of a slow-burn romance. Each book has its own story that is complete, but there is also an over-arching story. It’s an interesting way to do a series. This trilogy focuses on elves, which are believed to be extinct, but secretly are still alive, and the ramifications as this becomes public. The author put the series on sale for Valentine’s Day for a dollar each I think, maybe the first was free?
- Pack of Dawn and Destiny– then I searched to see if I had any of the other books in this series, and found I had the werewolf books. This is when I discovered, that each series stands-alone, and you can read them out of order (I accidentally read the trilogies in this order: 4, 3, 1, 2, currently reading). This series deals with werewolves, and again each books has an interesting mystery to go with the overarching story.
- The Book Witch– labeled a “cozy fantasy romance.” It’s a very short book, like maybe 130 pages, and I read it in a night. It was a decent book, but nothing I loved. I picked it up at some point, and I read it thinking this would keep me from buying the omnibus for the other two trilogies, it did not work. But it held me over until I got back from the college visit with The Artist
I feel like there were other books I read, but then those two trilogies were also probably around 900 pages each, so I probably didn’t actually read any other books…
And I think
I stopped writing in the middle of that sentence the last time I was working on this post, and I have no clue how I intended to finish the sentence. Sigh.
Games played:
- Dominion– there are so many expansions for this game, I’m only linking to the original, but it’s a fun game, highly recommend
Week 4
Wheeee! I dislike when the first MWF of the month is the 1st because that means I’m getting this done the night before, and don’t have much leeway.
I know, it doesn’t really matter if I get this out on a MFW, but for some reason that is what I have it in my head of when I publish posts. It doesn’t actually happen that way, but that’s how my head works.
The funny thing is the two pictures that are biggest, are probably what seems like the weirdest pictures to make big.
That top one is from today, we all dressed up in our inflatable T-Rex costumes and surprised the cousins. Jeff brought out Leezard on a leash, and we all had fun pretending to bite her, and she just stood there wagging her tail looking at us like, “Hi, I’m one of you too. This is fun.”
And then that melted plate. Okay, we have an air-popper. It’s one of the older styles with that little dish you’re supposed to melt butter in, that no one melts butter in because it doesn’t melt very well, and instead is just an annoying piece that you lose.
Mine is technically not lost right now. I know exactly where it is, but it’s behind the dryer, and no one in my house is small enough to get back there and retrieve it. So it just sits there. Each time I go to make popcorn, because I prefer air-popped with butter and coconut oil, I have to find something to put in that top space so the popcorn pops correctly.
And a glass plate is a terrible idea, because a glass plate will frequently blow off, and if you are very lucky it will not shatter. I’ve tried a variety of things, and this time I thought, “I know! This plastic plate. I can put it on upside down, so it stays on better, and maybe even add a bit of weight on top.” I came back about a minute later and the plate looked like that. So, that was not a good plan. I forget what I came up with for the new plan, but it was not plastic.
Now, back to actual pictures of people, first we have a picture of The Artist and Jeff measuring the greenhouse she will be replacing as part of her Stars and Stripes project. It’s going to be a fair amount of work, but I’m so proud that she decided to do it.
Underneath is a selfie I took with the Selfie Rabbit. I thought it was so hilarious that there is now a Selfie chocolate rabbit. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing?
And then on the other side are a couple of pictures from the cousin Easter egg hunt. A few years ago we started a tradition of hiding the eggs for the other cousins, and I think everyone enjoys doing that. It was a fun Easter together.
Books read:
I need to actually fill out my book, but looking from my Nook and Kindle records:
- Beta-read a new book from H.L. Burke
- North or Be Eaten– this was the Book Quest for Lorehaven, season 2 of the Wingfeather Saga comes out next month, so we read it ahead of the show.
- Court of Midnight and Deception– The final trilogy for the Magiford books that is finished. There’s another one that is in the process of being published, so I’m gonna wait and get the omnibus once that’s out, rather than the single books.
No games played this week. Much sadness.
Comments
One response to “March 2024 in review”
Happy belated birthday to your boys. It’s a funny story about the cake but I admire your perseverance. I can’t wait to hear where Artist and Superman are going to head for college!
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