Monday 21 April 2014

A Week in Review (April 20-26)

A Week in Review (April 20-26)

Watched: My friend Laurie recommend that I watch the triology Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.  If you haven't watched them, the premise is that you meet a couple every 9 years from their mid 20s to their early 40s. If you like movies with HEAVY dialogue, then I would recommend picking them up.  Nick watched the last one and he was not a fan. 

Read: I started up When Will There Be Good News?.  I wasn't sure what book to read net off my list and Jack selected this out of my pile for me because the author's first name is Kate. It is fairly good, but I haven't spent much time reading this week because I been watching the movies. 

Listened: Since I don't have an audiobook, I have been just jamming out to Fun. album Some Nights. It is just a feel good CD and I don't mind listening to most of the lyrics with Jack. He even knows the words to some of the songs.  If you are looking for a good spring album to clean too, take a listen. 

Made: It through another long week of Nick being gone. He had to extend his trip again, while he was in SLC. At least this time, he thought to pack an extra pair of clothes. Jack and I get in a good rhythm, but we miss him. I am thankful for his practices to help break up the together time.

Felt: So excited. My girlfriend announced that they are expecting their 4th kiddo. It is a busy time in her life, but she makes a great mom. I love getting to celebrate new life. My Bunco group will have several new babies coming up.  Baby sprinkles have not been successful Bunco nights, but we will keep trying. 

Planned: For Jack to miss the Lego contest that the library was holding because we were tenth on the waiting list, but Thursday afternoon we got a call that a spot had opened up. We were excited to for him to be able to participate. He spent Friday evening creating a piece entitled Party Castle. He made a dance floor and positioned all sorts of mini figures in fun ways. It was very popular with the kids who are huge mini figure fans as well, but the judges didn't see it the same way. He was bummed he didn't win, but I think he got over it. 

Loved: Celebrating Easter.  Jack had around 48 plastic eggs, a giant rainbow egg, a dozen confetti eggs, and a dozen real eggs to hunt. We found almost all of them. He was very excited because the Easter Bunny left him a set that contained the Golden Ninja.  He actually took the time to assemble to the Ultra Dragon and played with it for a lot of the week. After a yummy dinner, we went out to Hillsdale and just explored. We had so much fun. Nick found a cool limestone stairway in the water. We skipped a ton of rocks and Jack "scaled" a few rocks.  We were the only people on the beach. It was a great way to spend a Sunday!

Here are the pics for the week:
What do you think of the hairstyle?  Cute or not?  He took a picture so he could show it to Kate when she came for their play date, but we forgot, so we will take your opinions. 

An egg in the tree

Jack and his rainbow egg

Confetti eggs 

The Limestone Stairway


Love, love this pictur from half time of their game!

Jack and his Party Castle

A Week in Review (April 13-19)

A Week in Review (April 13-19)

Watched: Jack have a great time with Callum.  Laurie had to attend a funeral and so we were able to play Callum for a few hours.  The boys had a great time.  They continue to bond over their mutual love of balls.  I love the pic of them below playing with the ball maze together.

Read: I finished up The Circle.   This book was recommend from my local libraries Facebook page as one of the best reads of 2013. The premise seemed intriguing to me, and I wasn't let down. I think that the book, for me, is best summed up as an updated version of the classic 1984. I am not a huge fan of the science fiction genre, but I did enjoy this story. I wondered if our timelines went along the same way, what side of the story I would be on. If you are looking for an adult dystopian novel, I would recommend giving this a shot.

Listened: To Jack have a great time on Saturday. As you will see in the pictures below, on Saturday we started out with a football game against a pretty intense team, but they managed to stop them a time or two (which we heard one little guy from the other team complaining about on the way out!).  After that, we got the boat out to storage.  When we did that Jack realized that he wanted to spend some time messing around near the water, so we went to the rock beach and had a blast skipping rocks and exploring.  Following that we stopped by the store and got some marshmallows and graham crackers for the fire Jack was building.  It was a good thing we had them because didn't turn out to well, so while we scraped together some other things, toasted marshmallows sandwiches were nice and filling!  We also managed to color a dozen Easter Eggs that day too.  It was a busy and fun Saturday!

Made: A rainbow egg for Jack. He remembers this egg from a Team Umi Zoomi episode that he loved. I hope he is excited when he finds it.  Nick and I decided to give him the Golden Ninja inside it and then put the rest of the set in closet to find.

Felt: Excited that Jack finally lost his tooth. He has had a loose tooth for a couple weeks. At football practice on Thursday, he missed a catch and took it in the face. It was apparently the last straw for the tooth,.but there was still a lot of blood and if he sees blood, it's just freaks him out. I took a picture so he could see that he was fine.

Planned: For Jack to attend an Easter Egg hunt at his gymnastics place.  He had a lot of fun.  We had fun goofing around before hand.  He loves wearing his basket for a hat.  It totally cracks me up.  After a fun egg hunt, they got to do an obstacle course spoon race, break confetti eggs, and just have some open gym time.  He had a good time and I think it was worth rushing home from Wichita for.

Loved: Taking a Friday lunch with Nick.  We just threw some PB&Js and Ruffles and headed over to his work. We went just about a mile down the road and there was this cool trail with a train bridge, and a creek, and some hills. Jack was just so excited to be with Nick and exploring and it was a great treat after Nick's unexpected road trip. 

Here are the pics for the week:

Easter Egg Hunt Picks




We went to Academy Sports after the egg hunt and stumbled upon the clearance section.  We found this on the wrong rack and Jack just had to try it on.  We decided it looked like something Tio would wear.  For some reason he decided to strike this pose in homage to him.  Haha

Jack and Callum

The lost tooth

Jack climbing the walls during a fun urban oasis picnic lunch

The crazy team we played on Saturday.  While this is a horrible picture, you can tell that this team was ultra serious. They all had expensive matching shorts, their names printed on the back of their shirts, and they were actually making game film.

And here is our team with my boy as the QB. They are a bunch of rag tag ragamuffins, but they care about each other and I think that they are having a lot of fun. 

Jack and his big catch. Haha

Have fun skipping rocks 

This water is 38 degrees!  And still he just couldn't stay out of it :)

Some serious shimmery egg painting. I definitely will not be buying this kit next year. 

His joker face after his crazy egg dye experiment made a giant mess!

Jack has been wanting a fire, so we had two this weekend. On Saturday, we purchased some jumbo jumbo marshmallows. Jack had a good time catching them on a fire. It was more fun than eating them. 

Sunday 13 April 2014

Week in Review (April 6-12)

Week in Review (April 6-12)

Watched: I requested that we watch Frozen for my birthday. While I enjoyed the movie, it was pretty typically Disney.  I loved the character of Olaf.  Nick tolerated it. Jack liked it despite himself. He feels like it is a "girl" movie so he can't enjoy it.  However, he liked it so much he requested renting it so he could watch it on the way to Wichita. 

Read:  It was a good week for reading. I finished up PanicWhat a fast enjoyable read. I think coming from a small town like Carp made it more realistic for me as I could see a bunch of kids being this stupid. Nothing too plot twisty, but I did enjoy the ride. After that, I was also able to complete Lost LakeThis was another good story by Sarah Addison Allen. It lacked the strong magical realism that her other books seem to have in spades. If you enjoy her works, but don't want something over the top sweet then I would recommend this book to you. Now, I will focus on The Circle

Listened:  I recently found out that our library has an app that you can borrow audiobooks through.  I have enjoyed being able to listen to parts of 
The Circle. However, it appears to be killing my battery.  My car charger cord died (my lifeproof case seems to eat them!), so I don't see myself being able to listen to many that way. 

Made: Time to go meet baby V on Monday. Jack has been so excited to meet her and was just amazed that he got to see her when she was 0 days old. We also had Culver's night and a dance party at my work that evening. We also had to make sure that we had Nick ready for Utah. While we were waiting for Nick to meet us, Jack informed me that he was going to work in a hospital when he grew up. I asked him what he was going to do. He said he was going to help get babies out of the vaginas (As you can see we've had plenty of conversations on how a baby generally comes into the world. Thank goodness he hasn't yet asked how a baby is made!). Then he proceeded to tell me that he knew it was bloody so he had better start playing some Caller Duty (I laugh that this is what he calls Call of Duty) to get him used to seeing blood.  Nick arrived a few minutes later so we didn't have time to discuss that in more detail. 

Felt: Sad to learn that Nick's great Uncle Joe passed away from colon cancer on Thursday. We had known for sometime that it had reached a terminal phase.  Nick and Jack went down to Wichita on Saturday while I had to keep a meeting to purchase all the negatives from our wedding photographer who is moving overseas and was clearing out his stalk. 

Planned: On Spring Flag football being similar to Fall. But it's not and I am trying to become okay with that. Yesterday, the coach gave me Team Mom responsibility, so hopefully I will be able to organize everyone. There are only 8 boys on the team and Jack is the only one that has played before.  He was able to play the entire game on Saturday. He was tired, but he enjoyed it. 

Loved: Celebrating my birthday!  
With the help of my co-workers, Facebook well wishes, calls and texts from family, visits from neighbors, and time with my boys, I had a fabulous 35th birthday!  Jack picked me out an extremely thoughtful gift and I was touched that he did. They also each bought me a frame from wedding pictures that they knew I was getting. Jack was very proud of their wrapping so I took a picture and included it below. 


Here are the pics for the week:

Jack and V


Just being a goof


Jack and his Lego Club creation 


My birthday presents


A sideline view of Jack's game. 


Sunday 6 April 2014

A Week in Review (Mar 30-Apr 5)

A Week in Review (Mar 30-Apr 5)

Watched: Gravity with Nick on Saturday night. It's not very often that we have Jack down to bed and enough energy left to watch an entire movie. Since Jack was gone for the weekend, I decided to rent us a movie. Not one either Nick or I would recommend. Some cool special effects, but that's about it.

Read: I finished up Sarah's Key.  Maybe it was because such an eclectic group of my Goodreads friends had rated this so highly that I was expecting too much from this. I was really let down by the whole story. While it is a tragic story, I felt it was very bland. Nothing to exciting or shocking. Not a book I would recommend unless someone was asking for a book that met some very specific requirements.  I had both Panic and come off my library hold list. I began with Panic. It doesn't seem like it will take me long as long as I get quickly hooked on the story. 

Listened: The best thing about  to parts of  Sarah's Key  on audiobook was having all the French pronounced correctly. While reading them I butchered them with my English take on the word.  It's clear that I don't know much about the French language. 

Made: Jack some dessert of strawberries and sugar. They were some of the biggest strawberries I had ever seen. He thought it was just hilarious to be munching into something so huge. It reminded him of one of his favorite books, .

Felt: Excited for the weekend.  Nick had purchased us tickets to War Horse as a Christmas present to me.  Denise agreed to keep Jack for the whole weekend so we could just enjoy more time together. Thursday, Rachel called saying that she and Q were going to be in KC for a short trip and would take Jack home with them on Friday. Jack was very excited for one-on-one time with his cousin.  So Friday afternoon, we headed out for an early dinner and drinks. Neither of us had any idea of what the play would be about. Nick thought it would be something like The Horse Whisperer and I thought it would be about the Trojan horse.  Turns out we were both wrong. It is about a boy and his love for his horse. I had a hard time getting past the people moving the animals.  My minds eye just couldn't make them disappear. However, I must say that did a superb job of three people working together to accurately imitate the movement of a horse. The pony phase of the horse was super freaky to me and of course that happened at the beginning of the play. I have included one of the theaters images below. Remember that none of the people you see are in the show.  Their only function is move the horse around the stage.  I did enjoy the overall story line and have added the movie to my watch list. On Saturday, we spent the day having a lazy afternoon, followed by Nick working on the finishing touches for the floor and me researching some different methods to achieve a good look. The trim piece was just about 4 inches short and so we had to pause until Sunday to see if we could get another piece in at the store. 

Planned: A great April Fool's trick. While cooking, I dropped some red food coloring on my hand and ran outside hooting and hollering for Jack to help me. Jack hates the sight of blood so it was pretty funny. When I revealed the April fool, he said "Ahh Mom, you got me good."  I also fooled several people via Facebook and text. It was a simple bit of fun that left me stained pink the next day. 

Loved: Being at home with my hubby this week. Since he has started traveling, we had plenty of places that took us away from each other.  It was good to just spend every night with my leg draped over him. Sometimes it's the little things.

Here are the pics for the week:

My April Fool's prank


Jack's Red Ripe Strawberry

The pony for War Horse. Again. None of those people are playing a part except to move the horse.