Finished The Graveyard Book

As the title of this blog suggests, I finished reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman today. It was a pretty quick read, 166 pages. In case you missed my earlier synopsis of the book, I will re-cap.

The book is about a 2 year old boy who escapes the same fate as the rest of his family when they are all murdered by a man. He wanders into the local graveyard, where he is protected by the spirits living there. The ghosts and such take care of him as he grows up and he finds mischief along the way, as children always do. I won't go into too much more detail (I wouldn't want to spoil anything for any potential readers), but Neil Gaiman, so far, never upsets with his writing.

I have several books on my "to read list" and I'm really not sure what to read next. I am always up for suggestions, though!

I imagine this will be my last post for a little while unless I start a new book or something interesting happens. I work for the next 3 days and then I am going on my last "mini vacation" before the start of the school year. Just a long weekend in South Carolina with the kids and my mother. Should make for interesting tales! 

Friendly Lunch and a Monsoon

I've been pretty busy lately. Not with anything in particular, just busy days cram-packed full of either work or home stuff to do. I will be a more consistent blogger, I swear!!

Thursday, I had lunch at a brand new Olive Garden with my bestie. I had a great time chatting and catching up and it was nice to finally have some "girl time." We hardly ever see each other anymore and that kinda bums me out. The food was pretty tasty, too! We had an appetizer of spinach artichoke dip (which came out as an entree) and the all-you-can-eat soup, salad and breadsticks (which came out as the appetizer). I learned that the gnocchi soup is pretty tasty (like a very thin chicken and dumplings), but I still like the pasta y fagiolli the best!

That evening, we had plans to meet some friends at Stone Mountain Park to take in the laser show. The weather as of late has been fairly rainy torrential in the evenings, so we were hoping for the best. Once we arrived, everything looked promising.

We brought a tent to set up on the lawn because there are usually a ton of bees swarming the grass in front of the carving. That ended up being the best idea EVER!! The afternoon went splendidly. The kids played with bubbles and we threw frisbees and played and danced. The laser show doesn't start until 9:30pm (to guarantee darkness). At 8:50pm, it started to sprinkle. Then, it started to pour. Everyone was running off the lawn to get to shelter. A few people brought tarps and were standing under those on the lawn. But WE had a tent!!! Ohhhh yeah! All 8 of us piled in, hoping it would soon pass. It let up long enough to enjoy about 5 minutes of fireworks, but the laser show was cancelled.

See? No rain. It lasted about 5 minutes before it started up again.

Of course, by the time we got confirmation that the show was cancelled, it started to pour again. The guys had to pack up the tent in the pouring rain while the kids and us ladies went to guest services to obtain rain checks. Despite the weather and the lack of lasers, we actually had a lot of fun! 

I'm still reading The Graveyard Book. I haven't really had time to dig in to it. (Haha! Unintentional Pun). Maybe this weekend.

Tomorrow's agenda? I'm baking cheesecake brownies for my boss's birthday and I am going to go for a 9 or 10 mile run (assuming the weather agrees). Not too much longer before the half!!

Play Date!

The kids and I went on a play date with one of Gabriel's friends from school, her sister and her grandmother. This was the first play date we have ever been on. Shane was, of course, sleeping from working the night before and from the lack of sleep he got on Sunday with me having to work and all. We met them at Chick-fil-A at 10am for breakfast. Apparently, CFA just changed their breakfast menu, because now all of the combos come with the fruit cup instead of hashbrowns. If you want the hashbrowns instead, it's a $1.30 upcharge. Oh yeah, you read that correctly, they charge more for substituting hashbrowns for fruit!!! Now, I kinda get it. You (CFA) are now forcing me to eat healthy and penalizing me for making an unhealthy choice. That's actually pretty cool, since it's usually the other way around, but in the grand scheme of things, the hashbrowns cost at TON less than fresh fruit. It's a good thing I usually only get the biscuit and a drink. (I really wanted those hashbrowns this morning, though) Anyway, they screwed up and gave us fruit cups anyway, so we had to have them bring us hashbrowns and we kept the fruit cups and the kids ate them! (Bonus!!)

We ate our food and then let the kids go outside on the playground while we sat and chatted about how our summer had gone so far. I think the kids played for a little over an hour before they started to get cranky from the heat and the running around. Plus, by that time it was lunch and there were lots of kids showing up with their "stay at home mommies." We decided it was in our best interest to call it a day. They are going out of town for a week and we will be out of town next weekend, so we plan to get together again before school starts.

After the play date, I decided to let the kids have a treat since they were cranky and hot. We stopped at the local froyo place and I bought us all a cup of tastiness! The kids really liked it. Then, we came home for a few hours before we had to leave again.

I learned today that I am dependent upon Shane to get Gabriel ready for Martial Arts class. I didn't know that his gee had a button on the side for a strap and, although I looked it up on YouTube, I could NOT tie his belt correctly to save my life!! I ended up bringing it untied with me and letting one of the employees do it for me. I have now made it my goal to learn the proper way to tie it!! Speaking of Martial Arts, our free trial ends this week and I officially registered him for ongoing classes! I hope it really helps him with his focus and self esteem. They are having a belt test in a couple of weeks, but I don't think Gabriel will be ready for it, but he should be by September. We'll see...

Oh, lastly, I am now reading, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's a pretty short read and it's kinda strange. It's just interesting enough to keep me wondering, but it's not SO interesting that I cease to function due to the inability to put it down. I think I'm about a third of the way through it. It's about a baby that manages to escape being murdered like the rest of his family by leaving the house and going to the graveyard up the hill. The mother's ghost asks the ghosts of the graveyard to look after him and keep him safe, so they do. So, this kid is growing up in a graveyard. Weird, right?