Mommy Brain

Our week of endless VBS is almost at an end. I must admit that the free time in the mornings and evenings has been very nice, but I’m not sure it’s worth the over-tired and cranky-from-too-much-sugar kids. Next year will be different, since Natalie will have finished 6th grade, and therefore aged out of the VBS they’ve been attending for the past several years. I’ll have a daughter entering junior high next August – how did that happen?

Our weekend is looking to be much slower and quieter than our week, and that’s just fine with me. We need a quiet week to gear up for Independence Day weekend, when my sister and her family will be visiting, and we’ll be spending the bulk of our time at Mom and Dad’s. The following weekend we take Natalie to Bible camp. She comes home on Thursday the 17th, and on Saturday the 19th, the kids will participate in a Tae Kwon Do tournament. The following weekend, we leave on our trip. When we get back, it will be three weeks until school starts again. When I look at it like that, the summer’s almost over already!

From the news:

~ This is scary and ridiculous: a Canadian court rules that a father cannot discpline his daughter by grounding her from a school camping trip. The judge said that the punishment was excessive. The father was attempting to discipline his 12-year-old daughter for posting her information on an internet dating site and for fighting with her step-mother. The girl took her unhappiness with the situation to court – and won.

~ Owners of a family plantation in Maryland discovered a treasure trove of documents in their attic – dating from the 1660s through World War II.

~ Yellow Science at the Wall Street Journal:

Nevertheless, over the past several decades an increasing number of scientists have shed the restraints imposed by the scientific method and begun to proclaim the truth of man-made global warming. This is a hypothesis that remains untested, makes no predictions that can be tested in the near future, and cannot offer a numerical explanation for the limited evidence to which it clings.

Some great videos:

~ Electric strings group Scala appears on Britain’s Got Talent. These girls are amazing! Hat tip: Angela Hunt.

~ Where the H*ll is Matt? Hat tip: Chris Rice’s blog. Check out Matt’s web site, and his about page that explains how we had the opportunity to travel all over the world to make the video.

~ BBC Worldwide has its own YouTube page. Check out the QI clips – they are hilarious!

Movie stuff:

~ The movie version of Inkheart is coming in January – here’s the trailer. Looks like they made quite a few changes to the plot. I’ll reserve judgment until I actually see it. I guess.

~ Another book to movie: The Tale of Despereaux – coming in December. Here’s the trailer.

Education and learning:

~ Homeschoolers in college can sniff out the BS. Of course they can.

~ David McCullough’s commencement address at Boston College. Hat tip: Mental Multivitamin.

Read. Read, read! Read the classics of American literature that you’ve never opened. Read your country’s history. How can we profess to love our country and take no interest in its history? Read into the history of Greece and Rome. Read about the great turning points in the history of science and medicine and ideas.

Read for pleasure, to be sure. I adore a good thriller or a first-rate murder mystery. But take seriously –read closely –books that have stood the test of time. Study a masterpiece, take it apart, study its architecture, its vocabulary, its intent. Underline, make notes in the margins, and after a few years, go back and read it again.

Make use of the public libraries. Start your own personal library and see it grow. Talk about the books you’re reading. Ask others what they’re reading. You’ll learn a lot.

Win a book:

~ Head over to Puss Reboots for a chance to win Virus Games, the first in a new series geared toward 9 to 12 year olds.

At Books and Movies this week:

~ Review of Anansi Boys

~ Review of Maus

~ Great audiobooks

~ EW’s 100 New Classic Books

I guess that’s it – that’s enough, right? Oh, I also joined Facebook, so let me know if you’re there, too, so I can add you to my friends list.

…that all it takes is the taste of a cherry Jolly Rancher to make me feel 8 years old again?

Have you tried Wordle yet? Paste in any text, and it creates a beautiful word cloud. Here’s the Wordle of my Where I’m From post. (Click on the thumbnail below to see the full-size version.)

The kids are in VBS this week – one in the morning, one in the evening. That means lots of Mom-Time for me. Tonight, Michelle and I went out for coffee after dropping the kids off. There’s a new coffee place in town that actually has a place to sit down – AND has free wi-fi. If they would just add on some space for a bookstore…

I always feel refreshed after being able to just talk to a fellow mom without the kids playing in the background. Don’t get me wrong – I love our weekly playdates with Michelle and her boys, but they’re not near as relaxing as sitting down with a cup of coffee and a couple of hours to discuss anything and everything.

I haven’t been posting much of substance here at the ole blog, I’ve noticed as I paged through the past few weeks worth of posts. It’s not that there’s nothing happening; I guess I just haven’t been real motivated to write about it. I hate to settle for a bullet-list catch-up type post, but it’s all I’ve got time for before I get too sleepy to type.

~ Our house is still on the market. We’ve had a few calls and a few people come through. We’re trying to patient.

~ Next week, my sister Marni and her husband Hans and their two boys Peter and Andrew are coming up from Post Falls to visit for Independence Day. This will be our last visit before they move to St. Louis at the end of the month. I’m in complete denial and refuse to even think about it, thank you very much.

~ We are going to take our very first all-family vacation at the end of July. Other than when I took the kids to see my sister Deb two years ago, we haven’t really done anything like this – and Kevin didn’t come with us that time. We’re going to Portland first, where we will go to the zoo and possibly visit some family. Then we’ll head to Tillamook and visit the cheese factory, then head south to Lincoln City, which will be our base for the next four days. From there, we plan to head to Newport to visit the aquarium, the wax museum, and the Ripley’s museum. We will also visit a lighthouse or two, and spend lots of time on the beach and flying kites. This may be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing for us – especially if gas prices keep rising – so we plan to enjoy every minute of it.

That is the major news from our house. There is also a lot of reading, movie watching, and music listening going on. I may have to do a “reading, watching, listening to” post pretty soon.

So, what’s up with you?

(Definitely, Maybe was provided to me by Click Communications for the purpose of review.)

From the makers of notting Hill and Love Actually comes the charming and irresistibly funny romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe. When Will (Ryan Reynolds) decides to tell his daughter (Abigail Breslin) the story of how he met her mother, he discovers that a second look at the past might also give him a second chance at the future. Co-starring Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher, it’s the heartwarming story that makes you realize it’s definitely never too late to go back…and maybe find a happy ending.

Definitely, Maybe is a charming romantic comedy that leaves you guessing until the last minute. And although the chemistry between the main character and his three possible loves is real, it’s the love between father and daughter that makes this movie so wonderful.

Ryan Reynolds is sweet as the newly single father trying to make sense of things for his little girl. Rachel Weisz, Isla Fisher, and Elizabeth Banks do their parts justice, but if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself rooting for a certain one to be the one. And then I thought I was wrong. But I wasn’t. And I won’t say anymore than that, or else I’ll give something away.

Of course, Abigail Breslin steals the movie.

Definitely, Maybe is available now on DVD. The DVD special features include deleted scenes and two making-of featurettes.

Keep in mind that this film is rated PG-13 – and it definitely deserves that rating for some pretty frank sexual dialogue.

Natalie tagged me for two different memes, so here goes:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The closest book is The Host by Stephenie Meyer.

Her face was a mass of wrinkles, all of them turning down into angry lines. But there was something familiar about the features behind the lines. Melanie made the connection between this ancient face and another, smoother face in her memory.

And the second meme:

If you could change your name what would it be? When I was younger, I might have wanted to change it, but I like it now.

What is your pet’s name (it can be a webkinz or a real pet)? When I was growing up, I had a cat named Fluffy.

If you could change your pet’s name what would it be? I don’t know – she was a short-haired cat, so Fluffy didn’t exactly describe her, but I was only 5 or so at the time.

What is you brother or sisters name? Andrea, Debra, and Marni

If you could change their name what would it be? I wouldn’t change their names, but I do have nicknames for them: Ange, Deb, and Marn or Lynner (her middle name is Lynn).

Let me know if you want to play along.

This week involved a lot of driving: to and from basketball camp every day, to the dentist, grocery shopping, etc. I love my “new” minivan, but I’m hoping not to spend as much time in it next week! That hope is in vain, though, since VBS starts Monday.

I’m sitting in a quiet house right now. Kevin and all three boys are at archery, and Natalie is at a slumber party. Now that Josiah has decided to take archery, too, I will have every Thursday evening all by my lonesome. Woot!

Kevin and the boys are going camping tomorrow. After Nan’s last day of basketball camp tomorrow, she and I will have a girls’ night and watch 27 Dresses. Saturday, we will head to the lake for Noah’s birthday celebration. Monday, VBS starts…. Things don’t look to slow down any time soon. Sigh.

~ How to Recognize a Blond Antelope. Hat tip: Angela Hunt.

~ For all of you who have sons who have ever asked: What Happens When You Go Number Two in Space. Hat tip: Challies.

~ You know how I’ve been raving about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series? I’m reading her other novel, The Host, right now – and it’s shaping up to be a great read, too. You can enter to win an entire Stephenie Meyer library at Maw Books Blog.

~ A soldier finds a way to stay sane in Iraq.

~ Amazing pictures of ovulation. Hat tip: A Quiet Simple Life.

~ Don’t forget to enter my Gone giveaway.

~ Speaking of giveaways, Booking Mama is giving away a copy of The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton.

~ Video interview with Neil Gaiman, author of Neverwhere, Coraline, and Anansi Boys.

Here’s what I’ve been blogging at Books and Movies this week:

~ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – the kids and I went to see it over the weekend.

~ I reviewed Life Studies: Stories by Susan Vreeland.

~ The AFI’s 10 Top 10 Special.

Noah was born ten years ago today. He’s the one in the navy blue striped shirt. Ten years old! I now have two kids in the double-digits. How did that happen? We won’t be celebrating today, because Kevin is taking the kids camping this weekend, and we’ll celebrate at the lake Saturday.

Happy Birthday, Noah! I am very proud of the young man you are becoming. Keep loving Jesus; keep striving to do what’s right.

Guess what I got from the FedEx man today? Two more copies of Gone by Michael Grant! And these aren’t ARCs, they are the real deal: hardcovers.

Read my review of Gone, watch the trailer at the Gone Amazon page, and then come back and leave a comment here if you’re interested in winning one of these two copies.

I’ll leave the contest open until Friday, June 27th. Leave a comment before then, and your name will be entered to win. Since I’m covering postage myself, this is limited to US and Canadian readers only.

(The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Lip Synchin’ in the Rain was provided to me by Click Communications for the purpose of review.)

The curtain is going up on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody: Lip Synchin’ in the Rain! Get ready to laugh out loud at four outrageously funny episodes from the hit Disney Channel original series packed with mischief, mayhem and music!

Plus, discover if Dylan and Cole Sprouse are exactly alike in the exlusive “Tin-Tastic” bonus feature, loaded with fun facts and cool trivia about real-life twins, and watch the sidesplitting gag reel featuring hilarious never-before-seen moments from the entire cast!

TV’s funniest identical twins, Zack and Cody (Dylan and Cole Sprouse), and their friends Maddie and London (Ahsley Tisdale and Brenda Song) are feeling the beat – and the results are hilarious! Their school is putting on a production of High School Musical, and total chaos ensues when London beats out Maddie for the role of Sharpay! It looks like Maddie will do all the work and London will get all the glory, but the twins have a plan to reveal the real star of the show.

I’ve talked before about how much the kids like The Suite Life, and since we no longer have Disney Channel, they love it when a new DVD comes out. The Suite Life of Zack and Cody: Lip Synchin’ in the Rain is available now.