A Touch of Spring

Saturday was the first soccer game of spring.  We weren't sure Gwendolyn was going to play the spring season, but she said she really wanted to and promised to participate and interact more this season so we  agreed.  And just look at that form when she kicked the ball!  What can I say, she says she is also training to be a musketeer and sometimes her kicks are the same.  :)

I'm linking up Another Day, Another Diaper's Theme Thursday: A Touch of Spring because even though there may not be much green in the picture or any flowers, I'm thinking the first soccer game of the spring= a touch of spring.

Wordless(ish) Wednesdays: Dog Ears

I pulled Maggie's hair into two little dog ears Saturday morning.  Suddenly she went from being a wild haired, baby-faced toddler to being a little girl and NOT a baby at all.  But more than that, they were just precious.  

Maggie supervised Gwendolyn's first soccer game of the season Saturday.  It kills her that she can't be out there playing with the big kids.  We bring a spare ball for her to play with on an adjacent field or sidelines, but it is just not the same.

Linked up with Photo Challenge (Two) @ Simplicity, Wordless but with words Wednesdays @ And then, she snapped, and Wordless Wednesday @ 5 minutes for Mom, Wordlessish Wednesday @ The Paper Mama, Wordish Wednesday @ Supermom

5/ 52 weeks of happiness

After a week of warm temperatures allowing me to let the girls run around in the back yard as much as they wanted and opening the windows to let the house air, it turned cool again and started raining again last week.  We had to shut the windows, turn on the heat, and stay inside.  This didn't please any of us, least of all Maggie, who at almost 20 months barely speaks but lets us know clearly (and constantly) that she wants to go outside ("uh-side!") and swing ("swee") or play ball ("baa").  So on Thursday, once the temp was in the 50s and it stopped raining, I had us all put on our rainboots and go outside.

And Gwendolyn showed me some new tricks she learned for going down the slide.  

Of all the things I expected her to learn at preschool, going head first down the slide never crossed my mind.  Look how happy she is though!

Then Maggie decided to test out the mud. 

She stomped around for awhile, and eventually, one of her boots stuck in the mud.

And she chose the most obvious way to get the mud off her foot: her hand.  Unfortunately she did not consider that using her hand would also get her hand muddy.

Maggie was both surprised and perplexed by the mud on her hand.

She was not pleased and did not like having her hand muddy.

She was not pleased at first, but you know what she made a bee-line for and tried out as soon as we went outside the next day?  Yep, the mud.  So maybe the mud wasn't as bad as her first impression made it seem.

Linked up with 52 weeks of Happiness @ Leigh vs Laundry, Sweet Shot Tuesday @ My 3 Boybarians, Show and Tell (surprise) @ Paper Heart Camera, Tuesdays around the World @ Communal Global and You capture (fun) @ I Should Be Folding Laundry

Fruitcake Reads: The Next Queen of Heaven and a couple others

source

Keary got me this book for Christmas because he knows how much I love Gregory Maguire's books.  Wicked is one of my my all-time favorite books, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister ranks pretty highly too.  So, even though I had not heard of The Next Queen of Heaven, I was excited to read it.

The previous books of Maguire's that I have read were fantasy-based.  The Next Queen of Heaven was based in reality and centers around several people living in a small town in New York who don't really fit in and are anticipating Y2K and changes in their lives.  This was a good book, but I think I prefer his fantasy books.  The characters and plot just felt a little lacking: the characters were normal, regular people like you and me, and the plot and actions seemed that way too.  Some people may love a story like that, but I prefer to escape the regular and normal when I read.

Would I recommend it?  If you are a fan of Maguire's, sure, just be prepared that it isn't fantasy based.  If you   read the back cover and are intrigued, do read.  It delivers just what the back cover indicates it will.  

I've read four more books over the past couple months.  The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins was fantastic and I can't even come up with fitting enough words for a review.  I went into reading them not thinking I would like it, but since it was so highly recommended, I wanted to try it.  Oh my!  Loved it!  The writing style wasn't my favorite not was the subject matter, but it all fit so well together and worked out.  Read them.

Another highly recommended book was The Book Thief.  I wanted to like it, but I couldn't get into it.  I read about half of it, but reading started feeling like a chore and I stopped.  Maybe I will come back to it in a few months, maybe it just wasn't for me.