Friesencold

I like my friend Lauren’s video, so please vote for her to win. Here’s the post about that! And you just might win something yourself.

The boys liked being on the backhoe and tractor at my grandparents’ house when we visited NC a couple weeks ago.

Cash liked looking out the airport window for planes and he likes his new Thomas toddler backpack that we got him as an early birthday gift so he could carry it on our trip.

He likes his sweatband too!

I like my $9.50 Old Navy shades (and of course I like my tattoo). I thought I was going to buy some sunglasses from The Sunglass Hut so we recently ordered a SGH gift card from our Discover Rewards Program. However, I ended up not finding any I really loved at SGH and finding these ones I did (and do) love at Old Navy. So…all of that to say I have a $60 SGH gift card that I’m trying to sell for $40. If you know of anyone who’s interested, let me know.

Bauer likes this shirt he made at the space-themed VBS he attended earlier in the summer. He already has it set aside to wear this week for Cash’s birthday party on Wednesday night. Cash likes the new red shirt with Disney characters that my aunt gave him for his birthday when we home visiting family. I like my mom’s shirt, and I also like the cool old floor in my grandmother’s house.

We all like our new Snack Taxis. I posted more about them on the MealBaby blog today. “Edgy Veggie” is my favorite.

Bauer likes pretending to talk on the phone, especially if it’s a phone in a hotel room.

And TJ? Well, TJ likes getting our new house all ready for us to move into. He has been working so hard and doing a fabulous job. We have officially started packing and have less than 2 weeks to go!

The following post is somewhat emotionally heavy and very text-heavy. I thought I’d lighten it up with some fun pictures from our recent stay at North Myrtle Beach when we were home visiting my family last week. The pictures have nothing to do with this post, but enjoy them as you read, read, read.

Cash HATED the sand!

I have been having some major second thoughts about homeschooling lately. If you would have asked me a few months ago, I think I would have said I was 99% sure that is the route I wanted to go, but over these past few weeks, something has started stirring in me and I can tell my heart and mind are changing.

It started just a tiny bit when I visited my friend Shannon in Florida back in June. She and I were talking about homeschooling and one thing she mentioned was what a great public school experience she had and how some of her teachers had really impacted her and influenced her life in big ways. I didn’t really have that experience in my school years, but the way Shannon talked about it sounded really nice. She wasn’t trying to convince me not to homeschool….if anything, it was probably more the other way around. I wasn’t trying to convince her, but I was feeling so sure of this being the route I wanted to go just a few months back, that I’m sure I spoke pretty strongly in favor of schooling at home. In fact, after the time spent with me, plus some other factors to be sure, Shannon decided to take her son out of the preschool she had him all signed up for this fall and keep him at home with her another year. So I guess we influenced one another more than we realized. I didn’t leave Florida thinking at all that I wouldn’t homeschool, but it did just give me a different perspective on sending Bauer to school, which I guess you could say was a seed that since then has started to grow further in other ways.

Even Bauer wasn't peachy-keen on it. He did enjoy the waves though!

We just bought a house in Naperville which is a big step for us because up till now, I think we haven’t really felt settled, and when you are not sure where you will be living when your kids get to school age, it is quite comforting to think you don’t even have to worry about the place or the school district since you plan to homeschool anyway.  Well, I am convinced that when we least expected the blessing of a home, God gave us a little present and said, “Here, I have something for you and I’m not gonna make you work for it or anything. You can just have it because I love you. If you had gotten that other house – the short sale one in Aurora that you tried so hard for 4 months to get – it wouldn’t have been the end of the world and I would have still loved you and good things would have still happened in your life living there, but this is so much better for you because I know what you like and that you want to walk places and still be near downtown and you need some more room for the boys to run around and grow, so here is the house I was holding just for you. Even if it doesn’t have a 47 in the address, I hope you like it!”

We do!!!!!! That deserved a lot of exclamation points! We are so thankful and happy to be moving to a new (and bigger) house in just a couple weeks. It’s not a new house, as in just-built (it was built in 1960-something, making it approximately 47 years old) but it is new to us, and it has been remodeled on the inside, and the outside has just been painted, and it has a new roof, and is about to have a new driveway and new windows! Whew!

And it is 0.3 miles from Trader Joe’s which will be just fabulous. Enough said about that.

Cash was a lot happier when we got back to the pool area of our hotel.

And now back to the homeschool debate in my head: Well, our new house is just around the corner from the neighborhood elementary school. I don’t know if the close proximity is the thing or what, but now that we are feeling a lot more settled in Naperville after buying a house (even though we haven’t even moved in yet), I am thinking how great it’s gonna be to get to walk Bauer to school every day.  No drop off or pick up lines, and I could practically see him at recess if I walked to the corner of our street and looked. Side note: when TJ was in elementary school, he got to come home from school every day at lunch because his house was right across the street from the school, and he would eat 1 or 2 peanut butter and jam (not jelly) sandwiches, a huge plastic cup of cows milk (ewww!) and some cookies. That is a story I’ve heard probably more times than any other from his childhood and I just like hearing it for some reason.

Bauer had never seen a Lazy River before, but he jumped right in.

You know I visited my friend Gretchen in Texas back in April so I could observe her as she homeschooled her two boys, and I just loved seeing her in their home classroom doing school. She was a big inspiration to me, especially because I feel like our personalities are similar in that we like having some structure and a rhythm to our days and it was great to see how that could look played out in the homeschool arena. I also thought it was so cool that one afternoon after lunch, we headed to one of Gretchen’s friend’s homes who also homeschools her kids and could spend time with others and let the kids play together when normally they would have been tied up at school.

He couldn't get enough of the waterslide!

How did I get from that excellent visit in April, where I first learned about Tikki-Tikki-Tembo No-Sa-Rembo Chari-Bari-Ruchi Pip-Peri-Pembo and have loved him ever since, to where I am today thinking I am most likely not going to homeschool? I think the main thing that has happened to me, or for me, is that I’ve started to realize that the most important thing to me is that I treat Bauer with love and kindness and respect. I don’t want to just do this occasionally but I want to fight like h-e-double-hockey-sticks to DEPEND AND NOT DEMAND, to ACCEPT AND NOT ASSERT, in other words to give up feeling like I always have to be in control of things, which I think is the underlying cause of my general frustration and passive-aggressiveness (which ends up looking a lot like anger) with the kids. I want to give Bauer a safe place to land, and while I had been thinking that meant for me to homeschool as a way to have the quality time with him at home (and also to protect him in some ways from whatever I may fear is out there at school), I think what it actually might mean is that I use the time and energy that I would have put toward planning and implementing school with Bauer to just letting go of trying to control him and instead just accept him and enjoy him and let him enjoy me.

I know that all might sound a little vague, like isn’t homeschooling something i can actually DO to work on a relationship with Bauer and look how great all the alphabet activities this summer have turned out, and how exactly are you gonna use your time and energy to let go of control, like that’s something you just decide to do and it’s done? Well, I can’t quite answer that yet, but my overall feeling is that choosing to homeschool Bauer would be setting myself up for failure. And I don’t mean I would fail at figuring out what to do with Bauer….in fact that is something I think I would enjoy and be good at and will actually sort of miss by not homeschooling him. The kind of failure I’m talking about is failing Bauer emotionally and relationally. And I feel like that’s the fast track I’m on if I just keep going like I am, trying to control, placing demands and expectations on the people around me, holding myself to an unattainable level of perfection and then taking out my frustration with my imperfections on my kids. I think Bauer needs the space and freedom from me and I need it from him if we are to bloom and grow well. I could see it getting ugly if I try to homeschool and Bauer nor myself lives up to my notions of what it should look like and how each of us should perform in those roles. And let’s be realistic, Bauer is 4 and I act 4 a lot of times, so really it’s just not gonna be perfect. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.

And so help me God, somehow I’m gonna spend my time and my energy and my strength making peace with the reality of that, which really means making peace with myself and with Bauer.

Cash was very happy to sit in the chair and watch for Bauer.

I think this is going to serve Bauer in the best way possible, that he can go to school each day knowing that I love him and can’t wait to see him in the afternoon when I pick him up and then we can talk about his day, instead of me trying to do a couple hours of activities or lessons with him to get it done and finding myself impatient and frustrated and taking that out on him, unfortunately, and then being glad when it’s over so he and Cash can get out of my hair and go play while I try to recover from what just happened. If you think I’m being a bit dramatic or exaggeratory, well I probably am, but I also bet if you asked Bauer if I’m hard to please and he actually understood your question, he would probably say yes. Let me stop right here and remind myself, though, as my wise friend Ellen who raised two boys herself reminded me recently, that I’ve certainly tempered the bad with lots of good, and that counts for something. It counts for a lot in fact! I don’t want to live like I just described above (caring more about the task of homeschooling than the relationship I have with Bauer in the process) because that isn’t life and what isn’t life can’t bring life to others. The way that Todd Cartmell, who wrote Respectful Kids, talked about parenting styles is either being a demolition expert or a gardener. I know I have been hanging out on the demolition expert side of the fence too much when what I really want to be is a gardener, a good gardener. I think for me that not homeschooling Bauer is a step toward the gardening side and I’ll gladly take that.

And maybe I’m beating a dead horse, but lastly, it sort of solidified the schooling debate for me when I thought of the fact that it would feel like I was punishing Bauer to keep him home with me. I think what Bauer wants is ME and the best way I can give him the best me there is at this point in my life is to give up in so many ways and let someone else teach him reading, writing, and arithmetic and I’ll teach him what unconditional love and patience and respect look like. I have come to the conclusion that the GOOD MOM he will hopefully get by me not homeschooling him will be better than if he got me as the GOOD TEACHER AND SIMULTANEOUS BAD MOM if I did homeschool him. I think in the back of my mind I was thinking if I homeschooled Bauer it would make up for the deficit that exists from the fact that I haven’t been there for him emotionally or relationally so much of the time. But really I don’t think it would make up for it at all…I think it would potentially make matters worse. I know I act crazy sometimes, but why would I do that?

The hippo baby slide was a thrill for Cash once I showed him how a few times.

I am very excited about the possibilities of the future. This year I will have Bauer at home with me since he misses the cut off for Kindergarten by 15 days, and I can’t wait to do our Library Day each Monday while Cash is at Parents Day Out. I really think we are gonna have fun doing that together. I also may do a few of the lessons in the book I have already purchased called The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as a way to test the waters and see if he seems ready and eager to learn to read or not. I don’t want him to know everything for starting Kindergarten a year from now, but I do think it will be nice to at least begin teaching him to read, or if nothing else, to read aloud to him a lot this coming year before he goes to school. I’m excited that I’ll get to have some time with just Cash when Bauer goes to school, assuming we don’t have another baby by then, which I sort of hope we do. But even then, Cash will get a totally different experience of me than if I was homeschooling Bauer and I really think it will be better for Cash in that way too. I am excited that Bauer can be released of the burden I was about to place on myself and him, and so thankful that I’ve walked this road I have in order to be at the place I am today saying that I truly 100% considered homeschooling as a viable option, and I still totally admire and respect all my amazing friends who do it, but I won’t be joining the ranks for now. I don’t know what I’ll be thinking a month or six months from now, but this is where I am today and I thank you for listening.

And just in case you missed it on the MealBaby blog, I wanted to make sure you see what I saw in NC. Two sides of the same sign in front of a roadside produce stand….

Love it!

I could maybe forgive them this mistake.

But this?!

Then I started thinking this last one was perhaps a subtle attempt to remind people not to text and drive, or take pictures and drive!

I had a great time in Tampa this past weekend visiting my friend Shannon, who I was roommates with in college. She and her family moved to Tampa just after we moved away from Orlando three years ago, so we hadn’t gotten to see each other in a really long time (at least 5 years!).

We talked and talked. We sat in her backyard and talked, took a walk and talked, went to the pool and talked, ate at Tijuana Flats and talked, ate slices of Publix cake and talked, stayed up late one night and talked, and went to bed early another night and read. We also spent lots of time just hanging out at Shannon’s house with her two cuties, Chase and Siena. Because Shannon has little kids, like I do, it felt sort of like being at home. It made me miss my kids for sure. But I didn’t have to wash any dishes, brush any kids’ teeth, or break up any fussing. That was nice.

I also had the time while I was away to read an entire book, Anne Lamott’s Imperfect Birds. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it because it’s her fiction work, which I haven’t been crazy about in the past. But this time, I loved the fiction because so much of what you could hear Anne Lamott saying in her non-fiction books like Traveling Mercies and Grace (Eventually) came through in the dialogue among the characters in Imperfect Birds. It was also the first book I’ve read in an online format and I enjoyed that a lot more than I expected to, too. I will definitely read another book on the iPad. I loved being able to bookmark quotes I liked as I went along, although now I have to figure out how to print them….or maybe I’ll just take my sweet time and copy them all down in my Goody Book where I write out all my favorite quotes from writers such as Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Berg, Marisa de los Santos, and of course Alexander McCall Smith.

TJ took great care of the kids while I was gone over the weekend. They went to Bauer’s swim lesson on Friday morning. The lessons take place at Centennial Beach, shown below, which is an old rock quarry.

See Bauer? He’s wearing blue goggles and floating on his back.

Bauer is in a class with only 3 other kids which is great, and usually at least one of the other children doesn’t show up, so it’s even smaller. Unlike Bauer’s bladder! If only he can make it through his 30-minute lesson without having to take a break to go potty, I’d be a happy camper. I made him go pee two times this morning before his lesson and he still only made it till 10:26. I didn’t even give him a smoothie this morning, but uh-oh, it must have been all the cantaloupe he ate! At least he doesn’t go in the water.

TJ took the kids for more water fun on Saturday afternoon at a friend’s house. Their mom, my friend Jaime, was out of town as well, so the dads got together and let the kids play outside in the sprinklers.

On Sunday, TJ helped Bauer make quicksand for the letter Q. There were great step-by-step instructions in the back of Tomie DePaola’s The Quicksand Book. Bauer made a brick sink!

Totally unrelated to the letter Q, they also made a Boogle House in the backyard. This was inspired by the book Why I Built the Boogle House by Helen Palmer.

All weekend, TJ was texting me little videos and pictures of what was going on with the boys. That was a fun and easy way to see them while I was away.

And now I’m going away from the computer.

Lots of pictures and lots to blog about. More to come in the next few days. I must do it in stages.

The week before Christmas, Bauer had a little Christmas sing-a-long program at his Parents Day Out. He didn’t do much singing along, but he and Cash sure did look cute in their matching sweaters. I love how they are looking in opposite directions.

Also the week before Christmas, Bauer got really into his Geo-Trax stuff again. He hadn’t played with it in months so it was very entertaining for him and even for TJ. Shown here are two amazing tracks these two amazing guys built.

The Sunday afternoon before Christmas, we went back to work on the Christmas Stocking Project. Bauer’s job was pushing the pedal.

TJ was the man with the plan, and he did a great job figuring out where to do the stitching of the white cuffs to the red stockings to make it all turn out right.

When it was my turn to do some of the sewing, I told Bauer he had to find something else to occupy him besides the pedal-pushing. I was afraid he’d go too fast for me. TJ said I did just fine.

Cash got in on the action, and was as happy as a lark with that orange Sharpie in hand.

You thought the next picture would be the finished stockings, but alas, they still didn’t have our names on them yet. That would be closer to Christmas before getting done. Stay tuned….In the meantime, TJ and I got away to downtown Chicago for the night of the 22nd to celebrate our 9th anniversary. The kids did great with our amazing babysitter, and we had a nice time taking the train, walking around the city, having dinner at Bandera, seeing the movie “Up In The Air,” and doing some shopping.

Nana and Papa with Cash, Bauer, Bethany, and Meredith

We had a GREAT trip to Canada a week ago. It was our first road trip (other than the RV trip last Thanksgiving) since we lived in Orlando. That was when Bauer was Cash’s age.

This trip to Canada was to spend time with TJ’s extended family, meaning grandparents, aunts, uncles, first cousins, and second cousins. They all live in Canada, pretty close to Niagara Falls. TJ’s parents and TJ’s sister and her husband and kids (who all live in PA) met us there so it was a big Friesen family vacation.

We had planned to stay in a camper with TJ’s mom and dad at a place called Sherkston Shores, kind of a like a family resort/campground/water park. But once we got there, we realized it probably wasn’t going to work very well to have Cash in the pack ‘n play in the camper because there was nowhere to put him other than in the small middle gathering area of the camper and it was here we would have had to hang out in the evenings. It was rainy the first couple of days we were there, so for us to just be outside while he was sleeping wasn’t really an option. Thankfully, TJ’s cousin Lori had an extra room we could use at their house. That was where TJ’s sis and family were staying anyway, so it made it even more fun for Bauer and Cash to get to be around their cousins Bethany and Meredith. Plus Lori and Dean have 6 kids, two of whom were about the same ages as Bauer and Bethany, so there was pretty much free entertainment for all the younger kids the whole time we were there.

There is so much more I could say about our stay in Canada (for example, TJ and I came away with so many positive feelings and things we learned from spending time with family), and maybe I will someday, but for now here are a few pictures of some fun things we did:

Dinner at Lori and Dean's house

Bauer and Noah at Sherkston Shores

Bauer and Noah using the squirters on TJ.

Bauer and Noah playing in the front yard.

Bauer and Noah playing in the back yard.

Bethany, Hollie, Bauer and Noah on the trampoline.

Visiting Great-Poppa in the retirement home where he lives.

TJ with his grandpa, dad, and our boys

Our family, Tera-Lee and Joe with their girls, and Nana and Papa

Dean and Lori took us waterskiing!!

It had been 5 years, but Ginger remembered how...

and TJ did too!

On the car ride home: snacks and movies...

and a little Tim Horton's.

This wasn't on our trip but I had to include this one of Cashie.

Last one for today.

Arm-bow is what Bauer called his elbow the other day.

Bounty Basic paper towels are one of my new favorite products. We used to use the regular Bounty, but the Basics work just as well for what I use them for, and they are of course cheaper.

Cash is adorable. Check out the whole photo album here.

Did you think I forgot Bauer? He is big-kid adorable. Here he is, so excited about his sprinkler pool, dolphin, and beach ball he snagged at a garage sale last Friday.

Edamame and shiitake mushrooms were in the dish I cooked for dinner last night. I will post that recipe next time.

Flaxseed is 1-2 Tablespoons for our smoothies (This is to answer Rebecca’s question, or just click on Recipes from the list of tags on the right side of the blog and look for the exact smoothie recipes there).

Glasses and mazes are still a part of Bauer’s day for 20 minutes every day to help correct the amblyopia. We bought some new eye patches recently, and TJ is so good at keeping Bauer’s maze notebook replenished with new printouts.

“Has anybody seen my mouse? I opened his box for half a minute, just to make sure he was really in it.” These are the opening lines of one of Bauer’s favorite poems from A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) is the verse we are currently learning with Bauer. We haven’t been as consistent practicing his verses lately, but that’s the thrill of hiding God’s Word in our hearts. Once it’s there, it’s there. He still remembers A, B, and C flawlessly. He needs a little help at times on D, E, F, G, and H, but once we get him started, we’re always amazed at how well he remembers them.

Just one more month till I turn 30! Living the dream, baby.

Kale, organic, is what I plan to steam and puree and freeze in ice cube trays for Cash next. I also plan to find a way for Bauer (and us) to eat it.

Lettuce is what we have picked and eaten from our garden so far.

Mr. Deeds is the movie that TJ and I are still not done watching, but we love it when we can find a few minutes to spare.

North Myrtle Beach, here we come!

Ocean Drive, to be exact. Going to see my family at the beach for a few days.

Posts on Money-Saving Mom are fun to read!

Questions all the time are what I get from Bauer. Especially questions about the pictures in the books we read together.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman is the book TJ and I are reading/discussing together. It is very good. And tons of stuff that I need to hear (and do).

Starbucks Decaf Soy Latte is a little treat I got for myself this morning when I had a babysitter watching the kids so I could go to my doctor’s appointment.

Tea Time for the Traditionally-Built is the latest Alexander McCall Smith book, which I just finished reading. I heart Mma Ramotswe.

Undies dry for one week of naps for Bauer earned him an hour of games at Chuck E. Cheese. I used to think I could never take Bauer to Chuck E. Cheese because TJ read about the germies galore. But we attended a birthday party there earlier this year and Bauer absolutely loved it. (What kid wouldn’t?) On our way there this week, I told him that while we were there, no hands in the mouth or eyes, and then he made sure to add “or eyebrows.”

VBS starts for Bauer next week. And TJ is volunteering to help with the music on 2 days. I dig that.

Whole Foods veggie pizza is what we had for dinner tonight. $8.99 Wednesday special, and only $1.00 more to add spinach!

X is what Cash keeps doing to books. He ripped three pages out of one of my favorite books of Bauer’s:  Cookies by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

Yellow No. 10 is in my favorite Listerine toothpaste, TJ pointed out to me a couple nights ago. Now I’m trying to start liking the more natural toothpastes. I’ve tried them in the past, but felt they didn’t freshen my mouth like the Listerine. Now I’m feeling like I don’t want to be a victim of whatever Blue No. 5 and Yellow No. 10 do to you.

Zzzzzs is what TJ and I need more of, if only the little critter in our room would sleep past 5:30 a.m.

We saw lots of different family members on our recent trip to NC. I am going to see if TJ can make a new photo album with more pictures from the trip but here are some to get us started:

Gigi (my mom) with Cash

Granddaddy (my dad) with both boys

Mary-Ma (my grandmother) with Cash

Granddaddy Lambert (my grandfather) with Bauer

Aunt Kathryn (my dad's sister) with Cash

Aunt Suzy (my mom's sister) with me and Cash

Chase (my 1st cousin, Aunt Suzy's son) with Bauer

Chase with Cash

Here is the spring rules chart that Bauer and I made the other day. The rules are the same, but it was time for an updated look. Bauer loved decorating the chart with spring stickers and he did a great job not putting them over any of the words.

Here are the new vitamins I had promised a picture of a while back. Bauer takes the VegLife Vegan Kids Multiple multivitamin at breakfast, the Natures Way Primadophilus Kids cherry chewable at lunch, and the Dr. Sears Go Fish Brainy Kidz Children’s Omega-3 DHA soft chew with dinner. The best part is he likes all 3 and wants to take them.

I had a great time in NYC with my mom. Here are a few things we did:
-Saw Wicked and it was amazing
-Saw Alexander McCall Smith and I got his autograph
-Visited Times Square

-Had some great meals, including Toasties, Zen Palate, and Houston’s (yes, the Houston’s)
-Went to Rockefeller Center and shopped in Anthropologie and a few other stores

-Shopped a little in the SoHo District
-Bought some jeans for me
-Bought some shoes for my mom
-Watched “Little Miss Perfect” at midnight on the WE channel
-Bought fruit from a fruit vendor
-Visited FAO Schwartz and the Toys R Us with the big ferris wheel inside
-Bought Bauer a t-shirt from the M&M’s store

-Looked at cool cards at Papyrus
-Read in our hotel room
-Did a ton of walking which meant lots of time outside

I already want to go back to New York. And I want to take TJ and have him see Wicked (I want to see it again!). I have visited NYC 4 times now and each time I like it better. Thank you, Mama, for a great early birthday present!

Alexander McCall Smith is one of my favorite authors. He wrote three different series that I enjoy a lot: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Isabel Dalhousie Novels, and 44 Scotland Street. My mom introduced me to AMS just after I had Bauer back when we lived in Orlando. She was at our house for a visit, and I saw she was reading a book called The Tears of the Giraffe. I thought that was the weirdest name for a book, and the cover totally didn’t interest me. I didn’t know it at the time, but Tears was the second book in the Ladies Detective Agency (LDA) series. I started reading the series upon my mom’s recommendation and before long I was hooked. To date, I’ve read all 18 books that comprise the three series I named above. The latest in the LDA series comes out in hardcover in April.

It’s not so much that the stories themselves are the most fast-paced or moving stories. The stories are good, but sometimes can be slow. However, it is AMS’s use of language that had me from hello. I am now an avid fan of his and can’t wait to see how he puts words together in each new book he writes. Here are two examples of the language that I love so much:

“He looked at her and thought: I have found myself in you. Bless you. And then he thought: what a strange, old-fashioned thing to think. Bless you. But what other way was there of saying that you wanted only good for somebody, that you wanted the world to be kind to her, to cherish her? Only old-fashioned words would do for that.” (Love Over Scotland)

“She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry: the load of being ourselves.” (The Right Attitude to Rain)

While AMS is off somewhere writing stuff like this, and I am here waiting to eat up what he writes, I’ve got some other things to be excited about in the meantime. First, HBO is going to begin airing the LDA series starting tomorrow night. We had to order HBO for a month so I could watch the show and see how I like it. Not sure exactly when I’m going to have time to watch, and not even sure I will like it since what I love most about the books is the language and I’m guessing TV won’t be able to do that justice – but of course, my initial feeling is excitement about the show.

Even more exciting is that I get to see and hear Alexander McCall Smith himself. My mom got tickets to see him in NYC this coming Wednesday night and she invited me to go with her. It’s going to be an early 30th birthday present for me, not just the AMS tickets, but tickets to Wicked on Broadway, too. And this isn’t even counting the fun one-on-one time I’ll get with my mom for a couple days. We plan to shop, eat, and get lots of exercise walking around. I am so excited about this trip and so thankful that TJ could take a few days off work so he can keep Bauer and Cash.

In May, I will get to see another of my favorite authors, Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I like referring to her as AKR. She’s the one who wrote the Cookies books and Little Pea and Little Hoot books for children and for those who love children’s books. She also wrote The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which I received for Christmas last year and just about cried I loved it so much. She is coming to Anderson’s Bookstore for a book signing in May. The last book signing I went to was Anne Lamott, another of my very favorite A-named authors.

I plan to update my books on the right side of the blog so I can show more easily what I’m reading. I’m not too crazy about using GoodReads for this purpose. I’m currently reading 3 books and enjoying them all. So stay tuned to find out what they are.