Sunday Salon: January 23-30

The highlight of this week was getting away this weekend with eight of my closest girlfriends for a scrapbooking retreat. We rented out a four bedroom loft from Friday afternoon through Sunday morning. We always have so many laughs when we get together.

We cooked most of our meals in the loft but Saturday night we went out for dinner and drinks. I normally don't drink at all but the place we ate at had such tasty martinis that I had three! The loft is in a small town so we were immediately recognized by the restaurant's lounge singer as out-of-towners. He dedicated his cover of James Taylor's You've Got a Friend to us. He very much reminded me of Bill Murray's lounge singer character on Saturday Night Live. My friend Dianna livened up his lounge lizard version of The Door's Light My Fire and had us all in stitches.

Even though I didn't get much sleep over the weekend, I came home from the retreat feeling recharged. I even ran six miles on the treadmill instead of taking a nap like I usually do on the Sunday afternoon after a girls' weekend. It's so much easier to be a good mommy when you have some time away once in a while. I'm lucky to have a supportive husband that totally gets that.

Bad Day Spot

Cash decided that he wanted to make a "Bad Day Spot" that he and West could sit in when they were having a bad day. He made the ground with grass growing in it and then Travis helped with the tree.

Look, West is feeling better already:

Book Review: Bad Faith

Bad Faith by Gillian Philip

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bad Faith is a dystopian young adult novel. Set in a theocratic dictatorship somewhere in Europe, it follows Cassandra, the daughter of a rector in the ruling One Church. She and her boyfriend Ming discover a corpse in the woods – someone has killed the Bishop Todd, leader of the One Church. The story twists and turns, leaving Cassie, Ming and the reader guessing to the last who killed the Bishop and why.

In addition to being a great mystery, this book is a brilliant political satire, pointing out that society's problems will not just disappear if everyone follows the same religion. One part that particularly cracked me up: someone is listing all the God-fearing nations in the world and she names The United Midwestern States as one of them. Wonder what happened to the poor heathens on the coasts?

I highly recommend this book for fans of dystopian fiction and/or mysteries.
View all my reviews >>

Teaser Tuesday: January 26

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Tally walked along the riverbank, searching for a good place to leap in, slowly gathering her courage. She realized she'd never been naked outside before."

-p. 162 Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Kids Say (And Do) The Darndest Things

I've decided to do a weekly wrap-up every Monday of all my kid related Facebook posts since some of the grandparents don't have Facebook. I don't want them to miss out on any of the cuteness (or strangeness)! These are from the last couple of weeks:

West at dinner "Mommy, how do dead guys go potty?"

West is excited about what he calls "Martin Lizard King Day".

Cash told me, "It's so hot today; it feels like summer!" It's 30 degrees.

Cash just called Travis "bro".

The
boys watched Finding Nemo for the first time this afternoon and it was
too scary for West, my selectively sensitive boy. He cried from the
denitist office scene til the end. Then said he wanted to watch the
movie again.

Cash: I wish you weren't married anymore! Me: You do? Cash: Yeah, so then Daddy would take West to live in a different house!

Sunday Salon: January 16-22

So far I'm making good progress on turning my New Year's Goals into habits. I've been to yoga class once a week – now I need to work on finding the time to practice at home as well. I've also been going to bed earlier which has helped me get up and stick to my running program. I ran six miles yesterday morning even though it looked like rain. (I'm a precipitation wimp.) And sure enough, I got rained on for the last mile!

I haven't started on my one scrapbook layout per week yet. That should change after next weekend. I'm going on a weekend scrapbooking retreat and I plan to use the time to teach myself Photoshop Elements. Being able to scrapbook digitally will hopefully allow me to get more scrapbooking done in the future. I'm on my laptop all the time anyway, now I can be even more productive with it!

Books I've completed since my last Sunday Salon:

Kiss of Midnight by Lara Adrian
Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian
Bad Faith by Gillian Philip (review forthcoming)

Christmas in January

The boys had their preschool Christmas program Tuesday night. It was postponed from December because several kids were out sick on the original date. Of course I thought my boys were adorable in it but MAN, you could tell the kids had just come back from a three week break. Only a few kids remembered the words to the songs and sang, the rest looked very confused. This girl in front remembered all the words:

See the veins bulging in her neck as she screams, I mean "sings", the words? Cash told me afterward that his ears hurt standing behind her. Mine hurt too and I was at least 50 feet from her. She definitely stole the show and had everyone laughing.

West told me before the program that it was too close to bedtime and he was too tired to sing. The pictures we took of him all look pretty much like this:

Book Review: Kiss of Crimson

Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Kiss of Crimson, book two in the Midnight Breed series stars Breed warrior Dante. Dante and a new character Chase are in search of the person who created the street drug Crimson – it's turning nice vampires into Rogues. Dante, badly injured by a Rogue hopped up on Crimson, breaks into a veterinary clinic and feeds from the female veterinarian in order to heal his wounds from the attack. He doesn't realize until it's too late that the woman, Tess, bears the mark of a Breedmate. He has now inadvertently bonded himself to her forever.

The chemistry between Tess and Dante wasn't as hot as between Lucan and Gabrielle in the first book but it was still pretty charged. So far I don't feel like the books in this series are formulaic. This book had plenty of twists to keep me guessing.
View all my reviews >>

Teaser Tuesday: January 19

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"She had it so right my cheekbones burned by embarrassment. I picked black out from under my fingernails, hoping she was going to change the subject in the near future, or leave, or be struck dumb by her (so far) incredibly tolerant Maker."

-p. 96 Bad Faith by Gillian Phillip

Book Review: Truly, Madly

Truly, Madly by Heather Webber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lucy Valentine is the daughter of world famous matchmaker Oscar Valentine. His ability to see people's auras is what has made him so successful. Unfortunately, Lucy lost the family gift after an electrical surge – now she can only find lost objects. Lucy's parents leave the family matchmaking business in her care while they go on vacation. Can she be a successful matchmaker without the family gift?

This book is the first book in the Lucy Valentine series and is scheduled for release on February 2. Lucy is a fun, spunky character who reminded me of Stephanie Plum or Sookie Stackhouse. Truly, Madly was light and funny, with elements of both mystery and romance. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviews program.)