Book Review I.O.U.

I'm taking the month off - my mad reading dash slowed down in July and I think I only read another Brandon Sanderson book (Elantris - pretty good though definitely a first novel) and part of a biography of Louisa May Alcott (the author of Little Women). Not much to say so I'll have to owe you all a book review. Next month!

Lately

Summer is going way too fast and I haven't been keeping up with the pictures very well, but I have a small sampling of the bits and pieces we've been up to lately.

More apricot jam - I made it mostly by myself this time!

Lots of baby stuff piling up in the crib and on the lower rung of our makeshift closet:

 Lots of this going on...

And of course, every week we roll out our huge quilt at "our" beautiful park and  play lots and lots of games.

And other than Tim's homework (no pictures of that - sorry, I know you're disappointed), that about sums it up. We're trying to get lots of little things done before we've got a new baby to take care of and trying to keep our heads above water with balancing everything. And of course, trying to stay cool which just isn't happening for me. Only a few more weeks of summer left!

Published!

Over a year ago, I entered a writing contest (and won second place!) and all these months later, my essay has finally been published in Sunstone magazine. It was kind of thrilling to see my essay actually in print.

I worked with the magazine's editor to edit my essay, and while I appreciated a lot of the suggestions, I didn't love some of the changes. But hey, I can add this to my resume and officially say I've been published and that's pretty awesome!

Feeling loved

Yesterday was my baby shower and I felt so loved! My amazing sister Rachel went all out creating beautiful decorations and putting together lots of yummy food and organizing onesie/bib/burp cloth decorating - it was so great! And I was so happy to see so many friends. Thank you all for coming!!!

Pictures from the day:

And here are the onesies everyone decorated. Aren't they super cute?

And thank you again and again to everyone who went in on the stroller and car seat. It was so generous and we really really appreciate it - now we can have a baby!

Luck and Apricot Jam

Forget Friday the 13th - Thursday the 12th has always been a day marked by luck for me in one form or another. I remember being particularly lucky when I was in the 3rd grade; I think my team won during P.E. and I got to keep our poster or something along those lines. There were probably more things that were good that day, but that's the one I can vaguely recall. More than the actual lucky moments, it was established in my mind that Thursday the 12th was for me a lucky day far more.


In keeping with tradition, yesterday's Thursday the 12th was definitely luck-full, but it was all of the bad variety. My car died in the middle of a very busy road (like, so dead my hazard lights wouldn't come on) during the hottest part of a very hot day, our internet was down for most of the day, and I lost all the work I did from home during the afternoon to a corrupted flash drive. Lucky, lucky me. I'll have to be more careful of my plans on any Thursday the 12th from now on - the luck could go either way!


In other news, I took a stab at becoming a domestic goddess this week and attempted homemade apricot jam for the first time. Tim did most of the actual work but I will still claim credit, especially if it's turns out to be delicious! We are still waiting for it to set completely, but look how pretty the jars are!

Happy Fourth!

Hope everyone has a happy, safe, fire-free holiday! I took no photos of the festivities (bbq with Tim's family earlier, dinner with my extended family later, and Stadium of Fire fireworks to finish off) but here's my patriotic photo tribute. Happy Fourth of July!