This and That...

• I just got back from a week in Georgia visiting my family.  I have lots of pictures to post but I'll probably save them for a big picture post, for now I think I just want to empty my brain a bit.  I drove to GA a month ago for Harrison's graduation and on that trip I made the mistake of not taking the time to find books on CD that I would for sure like.  I brought two and neither kept my interest at all.  It made for a long and boring ride.  So, this trip I did some research and planned ahead and ordered a few books on CD through the county system and I was actually kind of excited to have long stretches of driving (7 to 8 hours there and then home) when I could listen to my books uninterrupted by the kids.  I brought a DVD player and loads of movies and tv show dvds to keep them occupied the whole drive.  We usually don't hook up the DVD player until we've been in the car for an hour or so, big mistake this time...when we went to hook up the DVD player we discovered that we didn't have the power cord.  It was at home in a basket behind my chair.  We were all pretty frustrated and I set out to find a Walmart to buy a new cord.  I bought one and it didn't fit.  So, we had to make our road trip the old-fashioned way.  Thankfully, I had a book that I wanted them to listen to anyway, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  It was told from the voice of a gorilla that lives in an exhibit in a mall.  It was a good book and lasted about 3 hours.  Then we played the alphabet game for about an hour and then listened to an audio drama I had gotten free at the homeschool convention.  After that was over we listened to music and then we were there.  On the way home we listened to 2 Jim Weiss CDs (Tom Sawyer and Sherlock Holmes) that I've had for years and we've never listened to, they were great and then we played the alphabet game and finally listened to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the last few hours of the drive.  
• One of the books I was so excited to listen to was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  Hannah read it a couple of weeks ago and highly recommended it.  I had listened to about half of it driving to Orlando and back for the homeschool convention and was really into it.  I was in my car enough alone while in GA to finish the book and it did not disappoint.  It was a gut wrenching story about a teen girl with cancer who meets a guy at a cancer support group and they really hit it off.  That's all I'm going to say because I think you should all read it and I don't want to spoil it for you.  I was a little scared of how gut wrenching it might be and although it was sad, it wasn't overwhelming.  
• We are officially on summer break and I'm super happy about that.  We have a few plans this week but mostly we will have a lot of free time which means my kids will probably get bored very fast and want to watch Netflix all day.  I'm going to make them trade reading for Netflix...reading for half an hour can equal a half hour of tv...or I may make it a little easier--read for half an hour can equal an hour of tv.  Before we can settle into doing nothing though, I plan to spend Monday morning cleaning the whole house.  I am having a jewelry party here on Tuesday morning and the house has to be clean.  If you're local, you're invited by the way.  
• I'm taking a big FB break for the summer...kind of my way of disconnecting a bit.  I will probably check it about once a week and check in with some of my favorite peeps but I want to be present with my kids this summer and FB is a huge distraction for me.  Not to mention that I have all sorts of things I'd like to get done this summer and books to read and puzzles to do and pools to swim in...
• I have some new popsicle molds.  Time to search pinterest for popsicle recipes.

Well, I'm tired and it's been a long day so I'm going to wrap this up.  Stay tuned for pictures from our week in Georgia!