Reading Fantasies and More Pictures

One of the reasons I have not been keeping up with my blog lately is because of my Kindle!  Amazon has a whole bunch of free books offered to Kindle owners every month.  The trick is that many of them are the first in a series and they get you hooked and you have to buy the rest of the series.  The nice thing about Kindle is that most of the books are around $10 or less.  That's what happened to me and it was a book that I thought I would not be interested in but was really good.  The rest of the trilogy was under $7 so it was not too bad.  It's called The Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobbs.  The other 2 in the trilogy are The Royal Assassin and The Assassin's Quest.  They are  fantasy books located in a fantasy time and place complete with Kings, Queens, a Fool, Assassins (duh), deceit, court politics and dragons (last book of the trilogy).  Hobbs writing is good and keeps you wanting more.

  I never got into fantasy too much until I read Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and loved them.  I have to admit something about those books.  I read them at school when we had the ten minutes every hour every Wednesday to do nothing but read.  I think it took me almost 2 years to finish all 3 books of Lord of the Rings (I had read the Hobbit first as instructed by Marianne).  My students caught me crying as I finished Return of the King not only because it was sad but because there was no more to read about.  Don't you just love books like that?  I tried to stay ahead of seeing the movies and I did, which I like because the books are way better than the movies but I love the movies too.  I really would plan a whole vacation to New Zealand around visiting the sights where they filmed it!  What fantastic scenery and those sets must have been terrific too.

Back to the Assassin, I think these books would make a good film too.  Lots of intrigue, battles, heartbreak, even drugs to keep the action going.  I think I am ready to try some other fantasy books now that I have gotten my feet wet.  Of course I need to try some other genres too.  I still can't get into the vampire stuff too well.  A long time ago--even long before the movie--I read An Interview with a Vampire and absolutely loved it.  I have to say, though, that I can't get into the Twilight series.  I started the first one several years ago and couldn't even finish it.  Just not my thing, I guess.  Futuristic and Sci-fi are also not my bag although occasionally I like one of those too.

I have a lot more freebies to read plus I want to read some of the recommendations of friends as well.  Can't wait for summer to sit outside and get in some good summer reading at the cabin.  OOOOPS! I forgot for a moment about the mosquitoes, flies, and sunburn possibilities.  Silly me!

Carla and my empty chair await me at the cabin!

Here's some more pictures of what's going on here!  Click on the pictures to make them larger and hit the browse button to get back to the blog.

Mr. Grassman in less than 1 week after Easter.

Nat and Maizie wonder whether he needs a haircut after 2 weeks!

What do you think?  I vote to wait and see if they curl like Nat's

Samara getting up on the balance beam.  She does a roll over on it in the video I took.

Samara is mounting the high bar.  This was her last gymnastics class of the season.  Next week she starts swimming lessons!

Children's Birthday Party Texas Style

Yesterday I took Samara to her first birthday party not at someone's house but done by a business.  I was overwhelmed!

It was held at a Pizza place similar to Chucky Cheese's but on a much grander scale. This place (America's Incredible Pizza Company) is huge.  The party was for a boy just turning 5.  There were at least 30 4-6 year olds and their parents in attendance.  The kids had all the pizza they could eat, all the drinks they could drink, ice cream, cup cakes, and cookies.  Meanwhile the parents could go eat at the buffet, complete with all kinds of pizza, mac and cheese, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, tacos, nachos, salad bar, spaghetti, etc, etc., etc. and ice cream and cookie pizzas for dessert plus all the drinks you wanted. All this was part of the birthday package.  One person was assigned to the party room just to keep the kids entertained and keep the food and fun going!  After about 90 minutes in the party room the kids were given bags of candy and toys and a charge card kind of thing to go play the games in another huge room.  They had 3 attractions and all the games they wanted on the card.  Attractions included mini golf, bumper cars, bowling and I don't know what else but a lot!  I can't even imagine how much this cost the parents.

  Micah had to do sound that night at church so we had to leave before the games commenced.  Not to worry, she still got her charge card that does not expire, and a whole bunch of tickets for prizes that she must have won while I was in another room eating pizza,  and her bag of toys and candy.  I just glanced into the game room and noticed it went on forever!  Huge!  Being a Saturday afternoon there were tons of parties and people there but it was totally organized so not frustrating at all.

I can't believe that birthday parties have grown to be so big although I kind of suspected it and encouraged my students to start themselves a business of doing birthday parties on weekends.  They couldn't hold a candle to this kind of thing.  Alyssa has been invited to swim parties that are organized so parents don't have to do the work and I have seen PJ's and other accessories for all invitees to a sleep over that cost lots of $$$$$, too.  I kind of like doing my own thing and making an original cake and organizing my own fun things like scavenger hunts and stuff.  I guess I'm glad my kids are grown and I don't have to feel obligated to do a huge big expensive do for each of their birthdays every year!  Come to think about it, I don't even remember doing any birthday parties for my kids.  I think I just took cupcakes to school which we all know is not politically correct anymore.  I guess we just had family birthday parties with all the cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and maybe a friend or two.  And that's all I have to say about that.

This is Fiesta week in San Antonio and it is really a big deal.  Alyssa doesn't even have school on Friday to give families a chance to attend the parade of flowers on the river!  I guess businesses must close down too.  Anyway, I will cover that in another post but here are some pictures we took at the children's festival in the rain that kind of kicked off the Fiesta (it was supposed to start on Thursday but was canceled due to pouring rain!)

A Hawk demonstration went awry when the hawk was scared of the big crowd and flew up on the side of the mall and hid for 1/2 hour while the man tried to get him down!

The hawk gets ready to take off!

The girls made "medals" to wear.  Here Natalie shows hers

Samara wears her medal

Alyssa proudly shows off her medal

The man shows off a rare hawk that they are trying to reintroduce into Southern Texas

Getting Caught Up After A Very Busy Week! Part 1

In my last post I had some pictures of Kim and Micah getting ready to leave for their cruise.  We were holding down the fort here while they were gone for the week.  We were to get reinforcements by afternoon, but JJ's flight was canceled due to a big snow storm in Elko.  It caused the little plane she was flying out on to have to turn around and go back to Salt Lake City before it could land in Elko!  They redid her ticket and she was to arrive at midnight.

Meanwhile Aunt Erin and her friend, Eric, were driving down from Dallas and were to arrive in time to dye Easter eggs with the girls.  They got here early and we dyed the eggs all different colors and had a fun time.  Even the "ugly" egg turned out more beautiful than our plain colored eggs.  You know, the ones you dye after you mix all the colors together?  Well we decided to just mix some of the colors together and that's why we got a very pretty egg.  I don't remember which colors we used , though.  After the egg dying and bed time, Erin and Eric had some bunny cake.  Then we had to go get JJ and all 5 of us were ready to start taking care of the 3 little girls!

 As always, click on the picture to make it larger and hit the back browser to get back to the blog!

EASTER EGG DYEING

The whole gang dyeing their eggs

Alyssa's is purple.  Notice the missing teeth!

Samara's egg is a pretty pink

Natalie's egg is a beautiful blue green

All done and a very nice set of eggs if we do say so ourselves!

Next morning the girls got up and found their Easter baskets.  They decided a new bunny had come because he didn't know the right place to put their baskets and we had to help them figure out whose was whose.  They didn't have much time to play with their baskets because we had to get ready for early church.  We had a wonderful celebration of the Resurrection at church complete with confetti and bouncing beach balls. The girls had Easter egg hunts (Alyssa's was under the black lights) and lots of goodies.

All dressed up in their Easter finery!

Nice back view of Mama Jay as she gets Natalie seat belted in!

Ready to go to church!

 They remembered their Easter baskets for the egg hunt

On the way home we decided to start a new tradition for Easter.  First you have to know that Auntie Erin works at Starbucks and needed to pick up her weekly free pound of coffee.  There is a Starbucks right on the way home so we stopped to get her coffee and bought coffees for everyone (actually cocoa for the girls) except Old Grampa because we didn't know what he wanted and were going back later for gas anyway and could get him one then.  When we got home we all enjoyed our "Starbucks".  We got Grampa's order and left him with the girls and went back to get gas and his coffee.  When we returned we found that they had fixed their own lunch without Grampa's help.  The girls got out their Easter eggs they dyed and ate them .   We found colored egg shells all over the living room!  Clean up time was definitely in order! Natalie went to bed for a nap and Alyssa and Samara  had a jelly bean hunt in the house since the weather wasn't too great outside.

MMMMMMMMM!!!!

 Aren't we so cute!

Later in the afternoon, Erin, Eric, JJ, Alyssa, Samara and I went to see a matinee of "How to Tame a Dragon".  The girls really liked it and so did all of us.  I was afraid they might get scared but they didn't.  I'm sure that if they had seen it in 3-D they would have been.  I might even have been!  The only thing is, Alyssa and Samara have never seen a 3-D movie and they might have been so busy playing with their glasses they would have missed most of the movie anyway!

We got home and had our big ham and mashed potato dinner and some Easter candy for dessert.  Then off to bed since Alyssa had school the next day.

"See, we had our lunch!"

"Are those eggshells on the rug?????"

"What a mess!  Better get busy!"

"Clean up, Clean up!

Thanks for the help Auntie Erin! "