Rain Delayed

Thanks to Hurricane Isaac, my walk/swim today was rain delayed. I should have gotten on the treadmill instead, but I think I'll give my foot a break today. Plus, I'm sleepy! I stayed up last night and finished The Little Lady Agency and the Prince by Hester Browne.

It was a longer read than the other 2 books, but enjoyable. I was pleased with the way things ended up for Melissa, but the ending was rather abrupt. I suppose it didn't need to be all that detailed, all things considered.

I realize that I am quite cryptic in my book "reviews," but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. I'll provide much more detailed reviews for stand alone books or first books in a series, but I really don't want to give too much information on a book later in a series or, in this case, the last book of a trilogy.

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I think my next read will be, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It's apparently about a circus and two rival magicians that fall in love.  It was one of the top reads of last year and I think the hype has sufficiently died down so that I can enjoy it. It seems that everyone is still on a Fifty Shades of Gray campaign.

As for the rest of this rainy day, I am going to pick the kids up from school in a little while and then head over to work for the evening.

Today It's About Baking and Reading

Aside from this sentence, I am not going to talk about running today.


We had my son's 5th birthday party yesterday and I baked him a cake and cupcakes. It's something I like to do for my kids and I'll keep doing it as long as they let me :) . That being said, he wanted to have an Angry Birds party, so I baked an Angry Birds cake. I decided not to get too complicated with it, so I just did a simple background and used some pencil toppers that I bought on clearance at Wal-Mart.

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 I also made some cupcakes to match the cake (since it was only a round, 1-layer) and I topped them with Angry Bird fruit snacks from the Dollar Store.

The cake was Devil's Food and the cupcakes were a plain, white cake. They both had vanilla buttercream frosting. I didn't have any complaints on the flavor and I'll just have to go with that because I didn't actually have any cake or a cupcake. The left-over cupcakes actually went flying around in the back of the car on the way home and ended up flipped over and a serious hot mess destroyed.

I was a little bummed out by the turnout of his party. I had sent invitations home with his classmates at school the last week of school. Then, I sent e-vites to all of the friends of his that I had email addresses for. I even sent a Facebook message to one of his teachers (who has children his age and go to the same school) and, out of all of that, I only had 1 RSVP. One kid (who isn't even attending the same school next year) messaged to say they were coming. I did know that one of his other friends couldn't come because of the parents being out of town, but really? At least say, "no." So, of course, I felt compelled to spend extra time talking to the parents of the one kid because everyone else there was family or has been in my "family" for so long that they knew each other (more or less). If you don't take anything else from this rant, please take this: RSVP to parties even if you aren't going!!!!!!!

And.....breathe!!!!

Moving on to books. I think I have picked out my next read. It's Under A Vampire Moon by Lynsay Sands. It is the 16th book in a semi-series. I say semi-series because the books do reference each other in a way, i.e. characters and a bit of background, but they can each be read stand-alone. I have read the previous 15 of them, however, and they are quick, sultry reads. You all know how I like my vampire hunkies!! I don't anticipate it being a long read, but it will fill the gap until I find something else that suits me. (I am still refusing to give in and read Fifty Shades of Gray. I just won't be that trendy). 

Falling Off The Wagon

Vacations always screw my world up. They are much needed, but bad for me at the same time. Every time I go on a vacation, I come back with a serious lack of motivation. I still haven't run since coming back from Florida. I was going to get up this morning and get on the treadmill when Shane got home from work, but I went to sleep at 2am. (I downloaded a new book to read and I had to start it) So, my new plan is, I am going to wake Shane up in a few minutes so that I can run before I take a shower and go to work. I really don't have the luxury of time before the half and I MUST finish that race!!!

I finally mowed the lawn yesterday. It rained the 2 available days I had before vacation, so our yard looked like a jungle! We have baby bunnies in our yard and one of them played cat and mouse with me on the mower yesterday. It was SO cute!! (I probably would have taken a picture of it if I carried my mini camera with me everywhere I went like I should.) We also took Gabriel out to dinner and for froyo for his 5th birthday!! His actual party will be on Saturday, so there will be pictures then.

As I said before, I started a new book this morning last night. It's the latest book in the Fallen series by Lauren Kate called Rapture. It is the final book in a series of 4 about Fallen Angels and the relationship between one of them, Daniel, and a human girl named Lucinda (Luce). I only read 2 chapters last night before falling asleep, but they were good. I was glad that I could remember most of what happened in the previous books and the 2 short stories that go with the series. It should be a pretty fast read. It will be a toss-up to find what I will read after this. I really hate to be "trendy" and read Fifty Shades of Gray. I was also considering Divergence, since I have known several people who loved it. We'll see...

As for now, I am about to go and run. I AM....