After a really wild ride the past few months (moving, traveling, strep throating, skiing), I feel like we’re finally getting into a new normal. We ate at home last night! I went to the gym this morning! Our house isn’t full to the brim with boxes!!
I need to do a big ol’ post about my amazing kids, but for now, I thought I’d share some of the things we’ve been digging on – like this excellent series of books about a pint-sized sleuth called Agatha Mistery. She and her cousin, Dash, jet all over the world, solving mysteries with the butler Chandler and cat Watson in tow. They meet up with various family members of the Mistery clan who are sprinkled all over the world. They’ve got a few pictures here and there which satisfies Ben and both kids beg for another chapter every night. There are 4 already out and 2 more to follow this year!
And while we’re on the subject of kids’ books …. I find recommendation for kids’ books online various places and then I will get on our library’s website and order them up. I got a really good batch a month or so ago and of the 10+ books we got, three of them made the “buy them!” cut. Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great is the story of a goat who is just a bit jealous of a new student in his class, Unicorn, who has garnered the attention of all. You won’t be surprised to learn that Unicorn envies Goat a few of his traits and they work things out. Great dialog, fun pictures and great for reading aloud.
Journey is just a beautiful book. There are no words. The story, about a little girl and her imaginative adventure, is told through beautiful illustrations. Ben loves this because he can “read” it all by himself.
The Day the Crayons Quit is probably my favorite of the bunch. The story is an airing of grievances from a little boy’s crayons told in the form of letters to the boy from said crayons. Great idea, really fun and colorful illustrations.
The rental house is actually proving to be pretty functional for all of us. We don’t really have any space for a dining table, so the kids are eating at their picnic table in their bedroom and Matt and I are eating standing up or in the living room on the couch or at the desk. Once we sell, we plan to bring our coffee table over so we can all eat together, but for now, it works! We also need plenty of organizing things to keep everything where it’s supposed to be. I bought this great organizer to get our keys and papers and that sort of stuff, all where it needs to go. It is great for now and will be super cute in our mudroom. Now I just need to get the minions to hang it.
Got a half marathon in less than 2 months. Guess how much I’ve run in the past month. Practically nothing, nil, zero, zip, zilch. I’ve been too busy skiing and moving!!! So now I have to get my butt in gear. We were able to take our treadmill with us to the new house, but it is in a tiny, kid of weird, auxiliary room that you have to leave the main house and go around back to get to (although it’s technically attached to the house). So while we have a treadmill, no TV. But happily we live in the streaming TV age and so we are not even getting cable anymore and I’ve used a few of the dollars we’re saving on cable to get some TV to watch on my ipad while I run. Parenthood, Castle, Two Broke Girls, Elementary. It’s an amazing world we live in!
And last, but definitely not least, Veronica Mars, The Movie is in theatres March 14. You better believe I’m getting there ASAP and in the meantime, re-watching the series.
We’ve always read to our kids but for some reason they especially love it now. Thanks for the great recommendations!
Those books look awesome. I especially want to see the one about the crayons. Thanks for the recommendations!