A Fun Read
Lucky for me, I got a special treat in the mail the day we left for our anniversary trip. Holy Mama (aka Kelsey Kilgore) sent me a copy of her new book “A Love For Larkspur”. I quickly stashed it in my bag.
On Thursday as we headed to the beach I grabbed it and promptly started in once I got myself slathered with sunscreen. I am delighted to say it was one of those books that makes you laugh out loud. Hubby may have been a bit embarassed but I’m guessing I was smiling all the way through.
The amazon.com description goes something like this…
“Would you let your mother take the reins of your dating life? Lark-a twentysomething, strawberry-blond, freckle-faced Texan-has had enough of dating geeky, weird guys. So when her sociable mama suggests she pre-screen some guys for Lark to date, Lark’s just desperate enough to say yes. After all, with her three low-level jobs and the classes she’s taking, she’s not likely to snag The Someone anytime soon. But with her mama’s Man Getting Project, she might just have a chance. When Brant Stephens, her old classmate who lives down the street, tells her she resembles a sick cat, she chalks it up to him being the most boring, mean, and predictable man on earth. He’s got more degrees than she can remember, more annoying personality flaws than she can count, and all the gorgeous, shallow dates he could ever need. So why does he feel led to insult her every chance he gets? And what’s with all the eccentric flamingos popping up around town? Sometimes life looks just a little gray. until the brilliance of popsicle orange peeks around the corner.”
I marked a couple of my favorite spots - and I’m not sure if they’ll be quite as funny taken out of context, without you knowing the characters yet, but I had to pass them on.
“Poor guy. One day I look like a sick cat and the next I have cute hair, naked hairless legs, and the most flattering pair of shorts eBay ever had for a quarter plus shipping. And that whole “other men want me” energy - any girl knows that’s potent stuff.”
Then a scene while in the hardware store picking out paint…
“I decide I might be crossing some invisible lust-line by studying Brant’s legs like this, so I wander off and return with ugly canvas paint masks from a bin at the end of the aisle. Pretending I’m a surgeon, I put one on, and slip the other on Brant while he holds out two strips of blue paint chips at arms length…
Then we carry on as before, me studying his legs, and he studying blues, while wearing masks. I find it more entertaining to do this while masked, and Brant doesn’t seem to mind. And, I realize, I’ve just made studying his hairy legs way more medical than lust-y. Yea for me!”
So if you want very fun read, you must go get Kelsey’s book. Apparently her publisher is changing names so it is temporarily unavailabe at Amazon.com but there’s a couple used ones (Not mine- it’s a keeper) or you can add it to your wish list so you don’t forget.
Surprising a Control Freak
So last Thursday was our 15th anniversary and Mark came to work and took me to lunch - even let me pick Chinese food which is usually not his first choice.
During lunch he said “So do you want to know what your surprise is?” Which I thought meant “I can’t stand not telling you.” But it didn’t but he felt he needed to sort of tell me.
“You just need to be done with work for the week by Wednesday at 3.”
Hmmmm….
And that is where he left me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE surprises. I’m just a bit of a control freak so not knowing what is going on for 6 days drives me batty. But he was right. I definitely need to know that so I could have work projects done before that time.
I think I was fairly well under control. I did need to ask a few questions like “Do I need to pack?” (Yes). “Will we be gone through Sunday?” (Yes). “Do I need to pack my toiletries in 3 oz bottles?” (No).
He had arranged for MeeMaw to come stay with the kids. I got home from work about 3:15 and we were out the door by 4:20.
I had pretty much narrowed it down to either going to a resort on the East side of town (they have great deals in the summer) or somewhere in California.
It only took about 5 minutes til we got on the freeway going West that I realized we were headed to California. He tried to convince me that we were going to Gila Bend to the Space Age Lodge (funny family story) but I wasn’t buying it.
So we ended up in Huntington Beach. My honey knows how I love the beach! We spent some time at the beach on Thursday, Dave & Busters that night, some thrift store shopping, movie, lunch at Ruby’s on the pier and some relaxing time at the hotel.
It’s been fun to get away. We always have such a good time when we’re away together. I’m not really looking forward to going back to the heat.
Back to School
It’s official - all my kids are elementary school aged. When did that happen?
We made the decision to put the kids in Christian school this year even though we weren’t exactly sure where we’d find the money. It still felt right and so we took the plunge and God has shown up in big ways to make it happen.
The kids have been able to see the school (which is in a new building this year), and meet their teachers which I think helped with the new-school jitters. There are also a ton of kids from Palm Valley there -1 in Noah’s class and 4 or 5 in Natalie’s class.
This evening we ate dinner at Peter Piper - it’s kind of become a back to school tradition. Natalie went on and on (as she’s known to do). It’s a little harder to drag information out of Noah but it seems that he had a good day too.
Banana bikes
Today was kind of our lazy vacation day, we didn’t even go anywhere.
The KOA has a myriad of different kinds of bikes you can ride including these fun banana bikes.
Natalie couldn’t quite get the hang of those so her and I started out in a buggy.
Except she couldn’t reach the pedals and she wasn’t really steering. I tried to let her steer but she almost ran us into a tree. So she declared herself bored. The KOA people were nice enough to let us trade in our remaining time on a 4 wheeler for her and a banana bike for me.
After lunch it was swimming in the pool where Noah learned to play Marco Polo for the first time. The kids also found some new kids to play with and our camper became the video game playing hang out for the afternoon.
Oh and we got new neighbors (the 3rd since we’ve been here) who have the cutest basset hound ever. Tri-colored like Snickers was. Reminded us of her younger days. We were able to commiserate with them over the general misbehavin’ that bassets do - they were glad to hear it wasn’t just their dog who swallowed socks and chewed on the kids toys.
Another “bestest” day ever
Saturday dawned a little cloudy (like Friday) which is not unusual for California. One drawback to camper living is that I don’t get to sleep in on the weekends like at home. Kind of hard not to wake up when everyone else does which for my kids is around 7 a.m. (My normal Sat doesn’t start til around 10:30.)
We decided to hit the movies in the morning for an early matinee of Space Chimps (cute movie).
That’s Noah, not able to tear his eyes away from the previews long enough for a picture.
Then we drove over to Coronado for the beach. This has got to be my favorite place in San Diego. I could drive around and look at the houses for hours. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea. Finding parking is always a hassle but we lucked into a spot not too far away. The kids quickly got to digging and building. Noah was working on some engineering feat I’m sure.
Natalie, on the other hand, was busy getting sand on every inch of her body.
And I do mean EVERY inch! She managed to eat it a couple times as well.
My Kind of Camping
The extent of my camping experience w/ Mark consists of one overnight trip deep in the woods of Arkansas somewhere in a Pup tent. It lasted one night.
Somehow he got from that trip that I don’t camp, despite many camping trips growing up. True, camping is not my first choice for a vacation but I CAN camp.
This week our friends Kim and Gary are letting us use their trailer at the San Diego KOA. Beds, toilet, microwave, free WiFi, pool, playground and showers. Definitely MY kind of camping.
Noah engrossed in his book. He finished it the first night but luckily we found a Star Wars book the next day at the thrift stores.
I realized the first night that I neglected to bring any jeans for Noah. Mark forgot some too and as it gets quite cool in the evenings we decided to hit a few thrift stores on Friday morning. (We normally do this on vacation anyways 
We found $4 jeans for Noah, along with a puzzle, cute $2 capris for Natalie, hot wheels toy and Dad got….take a guess….a couple golf clubs and a King Cobra golf bag he can sell on ebay for 3 times what he paid for it.
After lunch the boys went off to visit the USS Midway. Neither Natalie or I were that interested and it wasn’t worth paying another $30 for us. So we hung out at the KOA. We went swimming, Natalie played in the bouncehouse they had set up for 2 hours. There was even a hayride.
“This is the bestest vacation day EVER!” Natalie told me.
Camping cannot be complete without S’MORES so we built a small fire last night and roasted some marshmellows. We didn’t really have proper kindling so I’m afraid we smoked out the neighbors, but oh well.
HSM3
My husband will laugh at me, but I AM SO THERE!
Think there’s a midnight showing?
Oh yeah, I might even bring the kids
Oooh, I just checked my calendar. The kids are off school that day. SCORE!
Holy Mama Writes a Book
If you’re not reading the blog of Holy Mama!, you should be. She was actually one of the first blogs I started reading and is so funny.
Well her first book, “A Love for Larkspur” has hit the stores, at least Amazon. I can’t wait to read it and thought I’d put a little plug in for her, since she hates doing it herself.
Finally
She has arrived…notice I said “SHE”. I have another niece - Annabelle Ruth - although the exact spelling is still being discussed after some more sleep. It was a long and difficult labor but they are both doing great.
She weighed 7 lbs 14 oz. Apparently they don’t measure the length in the U.K. Oh well.
She definitely got the amount of hair from the MacKenna side of the family as Gumm babies are typically pretty bald. I dare say it looks like a few curls though and those are definitely from her mommy!
