IT IS PRETTY GOOD!
Monthly Archives: June 2013
The Fenway Foul-Up: A Review by Cinco
Filed under Books, Cinco's Reviews
Well Intentioned Disaster I
A circus tent from behind (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is my first well intentioned disaster since I started the blog. You see, I always planning things that seem to somehow go slightly wrong– not on purpose or anything. It’s just I have a talent for messing things up.
The latest disaster involves a trip to the circus. I bought five tickets– one for me, one for each kid, one for The Captain and one for a friend. I THOUGHT I purchased them for today June 15th Saturday! It turns out, I somehow managed to buy them for TOMORROW– June 16th Father’s Day. Now, the problem is The Captain hates any and all things to do with child centered activities– this includes birthday parties, kids entertainment shows, Disneyland, Legoland, any child theme park. I have learned this is not atypical when it comes to dads. None-the-less, I somehow or other got The Captain to say he would go to the circus on the 15th. But now, that I bought the tickets for FATHER’S DAY…well that’s another story.
Just another of my well intentioned disasters.
Filed under Well Intentioned Disasters
Review: Dead Ever After
In Harris’ final Sookie Stackhouse book, she managed to neatly tie up the saga. Going into this book, Eric was slated to marry another vamp against his will and Sam was brought back from the dead. (By the way, book 12 was really bad! And, all set up for this one.)
It seems that a fair number of long time fans of the series did not like this ending. Personally, I did not hate as much as many people did. A little weak–but not horrible.
While reading the final book, I also realized how many men Sookie bedded. She starts the series as this sweet little southern girl who is a virgin and ends with an amazing amount of lovers in a short time. I know its fiction, but good heaven woman— slow down!
***SPOILER ALERT***STOP READING NOW-Because I am going to write freely about the plot!
I love Eric as much as everyone else. And, he was barely in this book. And, Sookie did not end up with him. But, I am not truly surprised. She truly wouldn’t end up with him. He was too intense for her to be with him long term and unless she was going to be a Vamp (which she did not want) they would have to part ways. Making it forced on him was actually a nice plot move in my opinion.
As for her being with Sam, from the first book, I felt as if those two were going to get to together. I mean, they just had such a solid friendship. The only question is why it took so long. Answer: To sell more books!
All and all, I think it was a fine ending–not great, not surprising, but fine.
Filed under Books
Did I Mention Devil Dog was also a Cirque Du Soleil Cast Member?
Here in Vegas we have more Cirque shows than you can count on one hand. Just about every casino has a show and I swear to god Devil Dog must have been in one of these shows in another life.
The no peeing on the patio saga continues. Devil Dog will pee on the grass for my hubs. However, every time she sets foot on the green stuff she act as if she is actually walking on hot coals. I have never really seen a dog “prance” until now. This is not the Cirque move I am talking about….
Devil Dog’s Cirque move is that she can some how crap on the side of the bath tub. We have a tub with jets on the side and on each side of the tub is a ledge. Somehow how Devil Dog is able to hang her butt over the side of the tub and poop on the tiny ledge without falling in the tub and killing herself. I have cleaned up the poop, but you can see in my photo the potty area. It is a favorite spot of hers and both my mother and baby/dog sitter can testify that Devil really does leave “presents” in this area! This amazing fete leads me to believe that Devil Dog may in fact have once been in the show.
Filed under The Odds and Ends
Review of And the Mountains Echoed
This is another in the series of books by Khaled Hosseini
(think Kite Runner)
about people from Afghanistan. This book spans about 60 yrs and takes us from Afghanistan to Europe and the United States.
First, the things I liked. Hosseini opens the book with a children’s story about a giant taking away a man’s child. I found the story at the beginning of the book to be an amazing introduction to the book. It set the tone and provided structure for the rest of the book. Most of the book consisted of vignettes about people who are linked together when a brother and sister are separated. Without the introduction, I think the individual stories would have been too disjointed.
I also loved the language and images the author uses to tell his story. For example, In chapter 4 he writes the line”a life lived from the backseat”. It is a very gripping image of a person who is somehow afraid to strike out in life and stays behind watching others live. Again, masterful writing is seen when Hosseini writes, “…it would be the dripping faucet at the back of her head”. These lines reflect Hossieni’s ability to use words to bring forth images in a dramatic way.
All this being said, I liked the book. But, I did not love it the way I did his previous works, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns).
I am sure there will be many people are not happy with me for only giving 3 stars. But the others were better in my opinion.
Filed under Books
Mom Camp Day 3: Rainbow Day (Not in a Gay Pride kinda way)
Even I have to admit that yesterday’s Mom Camp was hurting. Amazing enough The Princess and Cinco both gave it pretty decent ratings (6 and 5 out of 10) . I gave it a 2! Today is going to be better and cooler and way more fun! I promise!
Its Rainbow day (The Princess’ idea). We start with a rainbow breakfast of all fruit. The kids picked out the fruit yesterday — Strawberry, Oranges, Pineapple, Grape, Blueberries, Blackberries (I know the blackberries is cheating a little but oh well!)
Our activities for the day:
- Oil, Water and Color: Borrowed from Highlight’s Website (I loved that magazine as a kid!) we did a project where place food coloring in oil add the oil to water and watch the colors sink down into the water. I thought this was going to be awesome…. but our projects sort of fizzled. The water mainly just changed color and we had to do the experiment about three times before we got it to look ANYTHING like the example.
- Milk Rainbow: Borrowed from Come Together Kids , we did a milk experiment with food colors, milk (has to be whole milk– which meant I had to make an emergency run to the store last night–we only have Almond Milk in the house) and dish soap. The kids add food coloring to the milk, nothing really happens. Then they add the dish soap and the soap causes the fat in the colored milk to move away from the soap. We actually used both almond and whole milk to see what the difference. The almond milk was a dud, but it was useful for the kids to compare the two kinds. We recorded our observations as well.
- Old C
D Art: I found this in the book
You take old CDs and cover them with acrylic paint. Then you swirl the paint around making designs and hang it up as art. So easy and simple even the four year had a great time doing it!
- The final fun project was making our our faux-tie-dyed-t-shirts. I borrowed this one from The Art Girl Jackie.
Super fun, really easy. You need sharpies, T-shirts and rubbing alcohol. Both kids enjoyed this little project very much. And, although you might think it would be messy with a 4 and 7 yr old, it was pretty much a snap!
As for books and movies… I came up blank on the movie with a rainbow theme, other than Rainbow Bright, which I thought Cinco would not appreciate. Although, he does tend to be pretty tolerant when it comes to little girl movies.
Books:
Over the Rainbow by Judy Collins: It’s basically just the song written out with some lovely illustrations added. But the book does come with a CD of her signing the song and we listened to that in the car on the way to Costco.
Joseph and His Coat of Many Colors by Sue Kassirer.
And, that brings us to the end of the exciting Rainbow Day activities!
Filed under Books, Mom Camp 2013
Mom Camp Day 2: Theme Clean-Up Your Toys
Okay, okay. This might not be the most fun activity ever, but I do think we need to start the summer off with a toy clean out! How are we going to find any thing with a toy bin that looks like it was the product of an FBI warrant search?
To make the day a little less painful, I have attempted to theme it out….
1. Toy based worksheets:
- From 1plus1plus1plus1equals1 I borrowed a few pages from the Toy Story Pre-School Pack for The Princess. We did not use all the pages as some were not suited to our needs. However, it is adorable and I highly reccomend it!
Cinco even woke up saying the worksheets looked fun and wanted to them right away. Go figure.
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ESL Kids Lab Crossword
For Cinco, I found some great worksheets on money and shopping at a toy store on Eduction.com. Also, I discovered that ESL worksheets can be a great tool for younger children still learning english themselves. You can find some toy themed worksheets at ESLkidslab.com.
2. Books: We themed out our reading today with books like:
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
- Olivia and the Missing Toy by Ian Falconer
- Toys in Space by Mini Grey
3. Movie: For our movie time (also known as mom makes dinner time) we watched The Velveteen Rabbit. The movie was a little different from the original story, but the kids still liked it.
Non-Toy themes activities: Included Cinco’s batting cage practice.
Filed under Mom Camp 2013
Mom Camp: Day 1 (Bored by 6 pm… its going to be a long summer!)
Today was sort of an unofficial Mom Camp. We had an award ceremony of Cinco and then a day full of action packed fun.
8:30 — Awards
9:00 — Donuts
9:15 — Swim Play Date with a friend
12:30 — Movie Epic and Hot Dogs
3:00 — home — free time
4:15 — Book Review, Math practice and worksheets
5:00 — Make CornBread
5:30 — Dance Party!
6:00 — Bored, (Are you kidding me??? its only day one!!!)
6:30– Dinner
7:00 — Cuddles and movie with Dad
Filed under Books
Cinco’s First Book Review
Pirates vs. Cowboys by Aaron Reynolds
It is a fiction picture book. This book was about pirates and cowboys that were attacking each other. My favorite part of the story is when the half-cowboy, half-pirate yells out P.U. to the other characters. It was very funny! I liked this book and think girls and boys would also like it because it is funny.
Filed under Books, Cinco's Reviews
Welcome to MOM CAMP
The day is here! It is the last day of school! The Princess finished yesterday and Cinco has field day today and an award ceremony tomorrow.
Today I got to work on the Mom Camp starter kits—
It is just a bunch of little things from the dollar store-ice cream chalk, baseball cards, a bug kit, glow sticks–.
Plus our exciting sign. The Princess and I made it this morning (Notice her backwards “e”).
Filed under Mom Camp 2013
The Booky Mom 