Reading Fool

This week I have been a reading fool. It's been a little hard actually because when I get absorbed in a book I don't do anything else and I get a little grumpy because I should be doing other things. Oh well. I still love escaping into a good book.

This week I read The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and I'm about halfway through The Goose Girl (for the 3rd or 4th time). I just bought both of these books at Borders last weekend, so I had to read them. I also just picked up The Host from the library. I have already read it, but it was awhile ago, so I wanted to give it another read. I don't know if I'm weird like that or not. Do you re-read books you like over and over?

Anyway, I also felt like I spent this whole week just waiting for this weekend. I sure hope it lives up to it's hype. :) Tonight the kids are going to have a sleepover with the Miller boys so that Ian and I can go to the midnight showing of Ironman 2 with a big group from Ian's work. I'm excited to have the evening to ourselves. And Weston is super excited to be having a sleepover.

Friday night we are going to our friend, Justin's graduation party at a park, so that should be fun. Saturday morning Weston has a Primary activity. Later that night Ian and I are going on another date! We are going to dinner and to the Utah Symphony. I haven't been to the symphony in years and Ian has never been. I scored us 2 tickets for $20 through Groupon. It was my first purchase through them and it was really quite simple and I liked that they had a live stream of questions with Utah Symphony employees to answer them right there on the webpage while I was trying to decide whether or not to purchase these or not.

Sunday is Mother's Day so it's bound to be a good day. :) Weston is giving his second Primary talk that day and singing with the Primary for the first time in Sacrament meeting. It's going to be a big weekend. I will try to remember to take lots of pictures!

I hope everyone has a lovely Mother's Day weekend!

Educational Viewing

This weekend Ian and I finally finished watching Dances With Wolves. I had never seen it. I enjoyed it. Interesting story and beautiful images. It was a little slow though and kinda predictable since I have seen Avatar.

We are also watching the series America The Story of Us on the history channel. The second segment was on last night, but it's on really late, so we will have to watch it another day. I think it's fascinating. I love learning more about our country's history.

I also won another blog giveaway this morning! Hooray! I have been following Blog Giveaways for a couple months now and I have won 2 tee shirts, a handmade soap, chocolate banana slugs, handmade shamrock earrings, a Scholastic DVD of animated stories called Giggle Giggle Quack, a $25 gift card to ecostoreusa.com, and most recently a Kodak Sports Camera! I enjoy looking at all the different blogs that I enter giveaways on too. Feel free to join in the fun and win some free stuff!

Today after Weston gets home from preschool we are going to plant his little sunflower plant out in the backyard. He brought it home a few days ago, but it has been raining every day since then, so today is the first day of sun. He is so excited about it.

Last week on Friday we went to Petsmart to look at the animals and came home with a .10 goldfish. Weston decided to name him Bruce. By Friday night I thought he was a goner. He was kind of laying on the bottom of the fish bowl and twitching, but he survived the weekend and seems to be ok. I had put the bowl on a lower surface so that Davin could see the fish too, but this morning I caught him up to his elbows in the fish bowl, so he lost his viewing privilege and Bruce has been moved to higher ground.

Can you even believe that it is going to be Mother's Day this Sunday?!? It totally crept up on me. Luckily I have everyone taken care of and will be making a trip to the post office tomorrow. I sure hope my boys have a good Mother's Day planned for me!

Life seems to just be plugging along. I am excited for our upcoming weekend of fun that will include a midnight showing of Iron Man 2, a friend's graduation party, a Primary activity, a date to the Utah Symphony, and, of course, Mother's Day! In the meantime I will get this house clean, do the laundry, and keep everyone fed. :)

Brrr

It is currently 34 degrees outside and snowing. It is April 29th. Can you believe this never ending winter?!? I don't think we have ever had snow this late in the almost 10 years that I've been in Utah.

Today is library day. We are going to go to story time this morning and then this evening they are having a Zoo Mania show with a bunch of different animals. We're all pretty excited.

This weekend I have several awesome coupons to take advantage of. Borders Rewards sends me 40% off any item coupons every once in awhile. I got one for this weekend. I'm thinking about finishing off my Twilight series collection. I am only missing Breaking Dawn. Then I can start collecting the Goosegirl books. I also have 50 free 4x6 prints at Sam's Club and a $10 off $20 purchase at Kohl's. The trick is to only spend the $20. :)

These photos are from our second trip to the Tulip Festival on Tuesday. We went a different route through the garden this time, but still managed to end up at the waterfall. I really want to do some more serious exploring of the gardens though. Apparently there is a secret garden and I want to find it.

Sigh

Today it rained/snowed. It was cold. I didn't have plans and I didn't feel like doing anything. Luckily I forced myself to shower (barely) in time to go grocery shopping for the week. I am doing cash this pay period and I still have $17.24 left for the week. Go me.

Weston brought home a sunflower he planted in a Dixie cup from preschool. I can't decide if I really want to plant it in my yard. We'll see.

This afternoon I cleaned bathrooms and baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Weston didn't nap, but he didn't really help me either. He just sort of followed me around all afternoon asking what we were going to do. So we played a little bit of indoor soccer.

We are having leftovers for dinner tonight. It doesn't sound very good, but I hate wasting food, so we will eat it anyway. The kids don't like the leftovers we are having and I don't feel like a fight. I will be making them macaroni and cheese instead.

Tonight I am looking forward to Ian coming home from work! And watching Modern Family. It never fails to make us laugh out loud. And tonight I could use a good laugh.

Slacking

I have been a major slacker blogger. I just feel like there's not much to share lately. We've been doing our thing. Last week was rainy and cold and we did a lot of kicking around the house. Literally. Weston got a Bernstein Bear book about soccer, so he's been all into it lately. Davin looked so cute wearing Weston's hat backwards. He put it on like that himself too.
Davin got a haircut. It's adorable and makes him look like such a little blondie! On Saturday we went swimming at the indoor pool. Both boys loved splashing around and swimming in the current circle. That night we went to my cousin, Blake and Whitney's, open house reception. It was beautiful and had an amazing dessert spread. You can see Dav's haircut in the horrible picture of me. Yikes that's a bad angle. Oh well.
Ian has been really busy at work for the past couple weeks. The day he finished up a big presentation they got another rush job for 12, yes 12, videos. So he had been at work Saturday afternoon. We went to drop him back off at work on our way home from the open house and amazingly Batman was there for a photo shoot! (It was really just a co-worker of Ian's who was doing this for fun with his cool camera) Weston thought it was awesome. This is off to the side, but they were photographing Batman and Catwoman in a black mustang convertible. Pretty funny. Davin was freaked out. He went close enough to high five Batman and then ran back to me.
Weston talked about it all the way home. He told me that Batman is just in the movies and that this guy must be someone who wanted to be Batman. He asked what Batman's powers are. I told him it was mostly that Batman had awesome toys, like his flying cape and his batmobile. Then he said, "Yeah, but can he spin around on his head with his legs and arms out?" Break dancing powers? I don't think so, but I guess that would be cool.

Weston is a rather precocious child. We love him, but there's no fooling this kid. When Ian was getting ready to go into work after we came home from swimming, he came into the kitchen where the kids were eating lunch in the outfit he was going to wear to the open house. Weston looked at him for a second, then said, "So what are we wearing tonight? Because it looks like you're just wearing your regular clothes but with church shoes." I told him that he didn't have to wear a tie or anything and he picked out his church khakis with his stripey sweater. He also enjoyed all the attention he got from telling his potato joke at the open house.

Ian and I started watching Dancing With Wolves on Saturday night since I have never seen it. But about 30 minutes in we realized that the version Ian had downloaded was missing the Sioux Indian subtitles. I don't think I would have a very good idea of what was going on without them.

Yesterday evening we curled up and watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It had been awhile since I'd seen that one. It made me smile. Hooray for old movies!

I can't believe it's the last week of April! Holy smokes this year is flying by. I completely spaced that Mother's Day is in just a couple weeks. I need to get on that. My job this week is to work on whittling down my ginormous pile of un-read magazines. Other than that we are going to try to enjoy the nice weather until another several days of storms and 40 degree weather. Brr.

Tulip Festival 2010

This weekend was pretty busy. It was sunny and warm, so we spent our Saturday working on the yard and running errands. That night Ian and I went on a date. We ate In N Out then wandered around Lowe's and priced out all the materials we will need to re-do our den. We ended the night seeing the movie Date Night. Tina Fey cracks me up, but it wasn't the best movie ever. Definitely a nice night though.

Last night we had some friends from the ward over for Family Home Evening. It was really fun. We had a prayer, song, and spiritual thought then played some games. Later that night I went and helped clean the temple. I had never done it before. It was kind of neat to be there after hours and to help keep it clean and beautiful. I just vacuumed for about an hour. I had to take a nap today to make up for not getting to bed until after 1am last night though.

Today was gorgeous, but a little windy because a storm is blowing in. The rest of the week is supposed to be rainy and colder, so I wanted to go to the Tulip Festival today. Ian was swamped at work and couldn't come with us, but luckily my friend, Tara, was up for the last minute outing. We really had a fun time. We did a lot less walking than we did last year, but still got to see lots of beautiful tulips. We spent most of our time at the giant waterfalls. The kids ran up and down the grass hill while we ate our lunch at the top. After we ate we walked up the trail that goes behind the waterfall. We saw a goose sitting on her nest and an owl! It was really cool. What a great Earth Week outing!

How are you celebrating Earth Week?

Sprung

Spring has finally arrived. The thermostat says it's 70 degrees today! Hooray. We have been getting out and enjoying the sunshine this week. Yesterday we took Weston's bike that he got for his 3rd birthday with us. He is finally getting the hang of riding it. I think it's about time he gets a real bike though. I actually think he would do better on a non-plastic one. He especially loved riding/coasting down this little hill.
Speaking of my non-jock child, Weston, he is rather fastidious about his clothes. He thinks all his pants are too long and rolls them up every day. Even if that makes them look like highwaters. This is what he did to avoid getting them wet on our Easter Sunday walk. What a dork. I fear for his high school years. At least he could possibly have a manly career in construction? Can you tell he likes to pose? That might be a problem in the construction world.
I have been really enjoying our time outside too. This is my favorite weather, so I am trying to get us to the park almost every day. This morning we went to the library. I took back all the library books on Monday, so we have been without any library books the entire week. It has been a minor travesty. I let Weston pick 10 books today to make up for it. I'm so grateful that my kids love reading.
I'm looking forward to a gorgeous, productive weekend. My plans include weeding out the front planter. I didn't get any tulips this year and I think it was my fault for not weeding that planter. Sad. Ian is going to work on the lawn. The kids will no doubt run around and get dirty. Ian and I are going on a date tomorrow night too. Yay!

Happy Weekend!