Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Don’t be too impressed, folks–today’s victory was getting out of bed the second time. Even so, I doubt I’ll manage more than half of the things I was hoping to get done today. My hubby’s been coming upstairs late for the last week or two, and I’ve been struggling to fall asleep at night. Ugh.

Yesterday, however, was a milestone for my son–he was ordained a deacon in the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Both my in-laws and my nephew and his wife braved snowy roads to attend church with us, which was much appreciated. And after church, my 14-year-old made her older sister’s birthday treats while I exercised and my hubby and son dealt with snow. (Yes, her birthday was in November. We’ve missed some birthdays at our family dinners in Clearfield.) Our drive north wasn’t bad at all–it had more or less stopped snowing by then–and we had dinner and dessert and games with family before I realized we’d lost track of time and desperately needed to get home and put the 8-year-old to bed.

In other news, my son also started basketball on Saturday, and I finished listening to Elana K. Arnold’s The House That Wasn’t There, which was unexpectedly bizarre. To be fair, the book’s jacket mentions “mysterious, possibly magical puzzles,” but after reading her “Boy Called Bat” series, I wasn’t exactly expecting the sudden fantasy/sci-fi twist that happened about a third of the way in. Oak and Alder’s story–she moves in, they initially can’t stand each other, but coincidental connections start to snowball–seemed relatively straightforward at first, and it ends in much the same way; the journey from ‘at first’ to the conclusion, however, was not at all what I was expecting. Let’s just say that the animals in the story behave in surprising enough ways that I won’t be passing it on to my realistic-fiction loving 14-year-old, shall we? (Anything else feels like a bit of an unfair spoiler.) If not-at-all realistic fiction is your cup of tea, this is a worthwhile book that appreciates the importance of friendship and families, and you should give it a try.

Maybe the 8-year-old will like it.