May 2024 month in review

Look how good I’m doing, it’s May 8 and I’m starting this post. But, also I’m scared for how insane I know the rest of the month will be. It’s going to be insane.

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Week 1

I will have very few photos once the kids leave the house, unless I share endless photos of Leezard, which while wildly amusing in the moment I take them, end up as endless variations of her looking at me with a “Why haven’t you given me more food Mom? Don’t you know I’m starving? While amusing to me, probably not as amusing to you, and even I admit that later on the pictures look the same.

On the first day of May, The Artist held her first event for her Stars and Stripes project. She is rebuilding a greenhouse for Simple Sparrow Farm and I’m very proud of how she did. It’s more than a little terrifying trying to raise money for her project, and I am terrible at fundraising, and I have to admit she’s not much better.

I’ve got my April books all picture there, I need to fill out what I’ve read for this week, I found a series of books that are really more of novellas, what is the line between novel and novella? At what point does it transition to a full-blown novel.

Not pictured, but we finished off our current D&D campaign in the murder dungeon, that’s what I’m calling it because we almost died so many times, and it was almost a total party wipe at one point, where we all died. We did have the great amusement of Batman joining us over Discord with a “muscle wizard,” and another player with a barbarian joining in with his over-the-top proclamations. It was glorious.

We learned about Gideon in Sunday School and the craft was making torches with fake candles, which the kids had a lot of fun putting together.

It was funny, I thought I had a somewhat unusual idea, and they were all like, “Oh yeah, we know about this idea, we’ve done it before at school.” Sigh, this is the problem, there are only so many ways you can create crafts for kids who aren’t all super crafters.

Books read:

  • Second Chance Fixer Upper– I started this after DNFing another book with a similar concept (second chance with a high school romance). The one I didn’t finish basically seemed to hinge on “Love interest is so hot,” I’m sure there is personality in there, but most of it was centered on how hot the guy was, and “oh my goodness his abs.” UGH, so over that trend. But, THIS book, was a cute story of a newly single mom who meets her former high school boyfriend and they agree to fake date so she can learn how to date again (yes, it is silly, but I wanted silly and easy read at the time), it was cute, and I liked it
  • Blood of the Stars– I actually finished this first, it’s a 600 page book that I finished on May 1 or 2, high fantasy with lots of complex relationships and politics, unlike many books I’ve read recently that are series set-ups. This book clearly solves the problem of book 1, but sets up ideas of what will happen in book 2. All around I enjoyed it.
  • Wolves and Daggers– book 1 of a vaguely Little Red Riding Hood inspired steampunk book, I very much enjoyed this SHORT book, and was amused by the characters, so I headed straight into the second book. I had bought the first and second because the first was free from an author I’d read one of her books before, and the second was 99 cents.
  • Alphas and Airships– they introduced an idea of a love triangle in this one, and I was like, “Oh no, don’t want that,” but then it very clearly went away from that, while still keeping the fun characters, okay I like that, so I bought the rest of the series.

Games played

Week 2

Week 2 got even more busy.

All of my pictures are from the weekend, which I guess shows what the week was like.

Saturday was the first work day for Artist’s Stars and Stripes project. Everyone worked together to tear down the shed went much faster than anyone expected. Now the shed is just the wood frame, and on this coming Saturday we’ll put shelves back in.

Next, we have Mother’s Day. It was a nice day, Jeff and the kids planned everything. I had a delicious meal of steak and crab. Then we played Castles of Mad King Ludwig, and I lost so bad, but it was fun to play.

Oh, and something I didn’t get a picture of, but The Artist had a root canal on the 14th. Way back when she was like 5, a boy at church hit her at an event. At the time we got it x-rayed, and while it was a little loose, nothing else particularly seemed to have happened. Fast forward to now and the root of that tooth has been slowly dying, so she had to get a root canal for it. It was not fun.

Let’s see

Books read:

I don’t remember, will fill this in later.

  • Peppermints and Pentacles– all love triangle ideas are gone, and it was a nice Christmas monster story, and I was enjoying the groove we got into, but then
  • Bitches and Brawlers– The series got back into more werewolves, and she’s having fun with the idea that she can get away with calling female werewolves bitches, eyerolling and juvenile, but okay. But then she very much forced the love triangle back in here, obnoxiously so at the end of the book, and I was rolling my eyes
  • Howls and Hallows– another interesting mystery, but the love triangle was just so much, “How can I decide which attractive guy I should be in a long-term relationship with? I’m courting Edwin, but Richard just calls to me, woe is me,” Ugh, if I hadn’t already bought the sixth book, and if they weren’t like 160 pages each, I would have probably stopped this series with the fourth book, because I don’t like this type of story. At least towards the end, they did have the guy she didn’t choose make a bad decision, but he then came back and apologized for it. It is all the awkward. I’m unlikely to reread this series because I am so frustrated with the storyline, I wouldn’t have finished it if it wasn’t for having bought them, and outside of the relationship nonsense it’s an interesting book. Thoroughly annoyed with the author, so much that I don’t know if I will read her other series.
  • Lycans and Legends– The love triangle resolved in the last book, we finally get back to the whole werewolf problem and solve the mystery of who she is and why she is slightly more than human. I’m thoroughly annoyed because the author has interesting premise, but I hate how she actually writes her stories, and she’s starting another series in this same world, but set slightly earlier, and the premise sounds fun, but UGH, it’s so annoying

Okay, I’m done complaining about this.

Games played:

Week 3

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.

Books read:

I’ve written those down all out of order, but the next book in the series comes out in June, and I wanted to reread it before it came out. I might have gotten distracted and read way too much. That was not the best plan…

Week 4

Well, I’m writing this on June 3, after the time I prefer to have it published, not that anyone but me knows these things.

We started off the week with a trip to the Nature Center with cousins to celebrate the end of school. I got a before picture right before the kids headed over to play in the creek and I have so many adorable pictures of my niece in particular playing in there. She thoroughly enjoyed the 3 inches of water, somehow managing to get absolutely soaked. It was quite impressive.

Then we had the next work day for The Artist’s Stars and Stripes project. She did an amazing job explaining to the volunteers what she wanted, but it was more work than we expected so we had to plan an extra work day after that (we got all of the construction done on that day, and now she just need to plan a clean up and put everything back in day). After that we headed over to a final graduation party, and then just crashed for the rest of the night.

I finished off the individual posts for the Books made into movies lists, and got the Picture books published. Now I’ll only have to periodically update them as I find new movies, but it’s nice to get all of that done.

Then we headed down to Zilker to see the botanical gardens and the fairy houses there. The girls all had lots of fun looking at them and the mom and I had fun just wandering behind and talking occasionally.

Leezard had a bad day of seizures, and at one point as I sat outside with her, she slimed my iPad, and I had to get a picture of that.

We finished off May with our co-op’s End of the Year party which I have exactly zero pictures of. When it’s just the kids hanging out and my kids don’t want their pictures taken, I just didn’t get any.

Books Read:

  • I finished off re-reading the Mercy Thompson series in preparation for the new book in the middle of June, but don’t want to bother writing it all down
  • seriously, there’s a giant shift and I hurt so much right now, so I’m just gonna get this published and call it good.

Comments

One response to “May 2024 month in review”

  1. Natalie PlanetSmarty Avatar
    Natalie PlanetSmarty

    The last month of high school is bittersweet for sure. My husband is a huge fan of Mercy Thompson series. I promised to him I will start on them later this year but I am not such a fast reader as you are 🙂 I am on book 6 of Hades x Persephone series, my guilty pleasure. A lot of “adult scenes” and language but I liked the world she set up and how all the Greek Gods fit into it. I am looking forward to the last book that just came out.

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