Books Are Cool, Reading Is Cool

Monday, June 8, was Name Your Poison Day.

At one point, Lucky looked at the calendar and called out, "Name your poison, Nichole!"

Without missing a beat, Nichole called back, "Ricin!" 

 

I told her the Daisy Dalrymple books I've been reading have had poison used several times. Mystery books are cool. I like that we've got generational mystery readers. My mom introduced me to Agatha Christie books when I was younger and I got into them. I introduced Nichole to Agatha Christie books when she was younger and she got into them.

 

For the Orem Library Adult Reading Challenge this year, I needed a book recommendation from a friend. Nichole recommended a mystery book for me. She's my friend.

It is fun to have book discussions with my children. I love that books and reading are one thing we all have in common in our family. We may have differences in tastes. I wouldn't recommend my "kissing books" to everybody in the family. I did make everyone watch the movie, Seeking Persephone, but only a couple of us have or will read the book. It doesn't stop me from sharing with Jeremy when I'm really enjoying parts of those books, though. 

We do all enjoy similar books from time to time, though. I've taken book recommendations from Lucky before who reads more junior fiction books than I do generally. We all like Terry Pratchett books on some level. Audiobooks on car trips can be fun. We went through the whole (original) Fablehaven series on audiobooks a while back when we were traveling more. 

 

Isn't this funny? I just wanted to mention the funny interaction that happened on Name Your Poison Day then I kept going about mystery books then books in general and... blah blah blah blah blah.

Books are cool. Mystery books are cool.

Here is a picture I made three of my children pose for so I could put it on this blog post.

Oh, look. Jr. Jr. is reading a Fablehaven book. Lucky is reading a Terry Pratchett book. Nichole is reading a mystery. I did not tell them what books to grab. I just told them to grab a book. Ha Ha.

Family Home Evening Circus

One day after school, Jet was excited to show us he got circus tickets. How fun. Now we knew we weren't going to take him to the actual circus but we knew we could create a circus at home.

My idea for it was watching a circus movie and eating popcorn. Simple celebrating like we did with Drive-In Movie Day.

Jeremy, awesome husband that he is, suggested some other ideas somewhat last minute to add to the "experience" so it was still simple but this is how it turned out for Family Home Evening this week (when we finally got around to doing this activity).

Jet picked a family member to come with him to the "circus" because he had two tickets. He kept changing his mind so I don't know who finally came with him but it doesn't matter because again it was mostly for him.

So... he (and his guest) presented his tickets to whoever was taking them. We had "Entry of the Gladiators" (the epitome of circus music) playing while they watched Jr. Jr. juggle light up balls. 

Lucky made Jet a balloon animal. 

Jeremy filled the stock pot to the top with popcorn. 

We also had more gummy sharks (because Jr. Jr. requested them) and some peanuts. 

At one point I looked at the kids on the couch and said, "And there are the clowns." Tee Hee. They're so patient with me.

Actually Jeremy showed the kids a picture of him with clown makeup on and I complained about how I never liked clown makeup when it was requested for shows. Yeah, we can do circus things.

We watched the movie, The Greatest Showman, because... of course. I didn't fall asleep and watched the whole thing.

FSY

Jr. Jr. missed some of our celebrations last week because he got to go to FSY. Luckily this time he wasn't "assigned" a place and time so we got to choose and chose for him to go to BYU like Nichole and Jr. went years ago. Much easier when it's so close.

Anyway, I dropped him off Monday so he missed the bird show at the Provo Library but I picked him up Saturday morning so he didn't miss the "drive-in movie" that night.

I got to BYU at a good time to pick him up but on the way back... the Utah County Marathon was happening so that affected traffic. To make a long story short, we drove down to Springville while he told me about FSY and we took the freeway back up to be on the "home" side of the race.  

Jr. Jr. had a good time. He even put together and performed a juggling routine at the variety show.

I'm glad he had another good experience. I love that kid so much.

Drive-In Movie Day

June 6 was Drive-In Movie Day.

Jet got to sit in a box "car" with paper plate wheels, with a pillow and a Switch steering wheel inside. He got to "drive" into the living room (thanks, Nichole) 

and ordered the Deluxe movie package, which consisted of watching a movie and snacks: pizza, nachos, popcorn, candy, lemonade. 

He had a blast. The food was brought out to him (I made the other kids serve themselves), and the kids and I enjoyed a movie, the animated Disney Robin Hood. I enjoyed most of the movie. I fell asleep before it was over.

It took some effort (mostly preparing the food. Nichole put toppings on the pizza, Jr. made the popcorn, and Lucky made the lemonade) but the car was very simple.

We love finding reasons to celebrate. 

Cheese and Gingerbread Donuts

June 4 was National Cheese Day. I decided to watch a cheesy movie to celebrate. I didn't finish it.

I did however make dinner with cheese in it.

 

June 5 was National Gingerbread Day and National Donut Day. I combined them and made Baked Gingerbread Donuts from averiecooks.com 

My gingerbread loving youngest child couldn't stop eating them. 

I Forgot

I mentioned something to Jeremy and the kids while we were on our Southern Utah trip that I forgot to blog about so now a while after the fact, I'm going to share it with you.

 

This is the only picture I have that sort of shows the general landscape we were in so here you go.

 

Anyway, here's the story:

Back when the youngest boys had their end of the year dance festival at the elementary school, Lucky's grade danced to the song "What Time Is It" from High School Musical 2.

While we were in St. George area, we were passing a golf course/resort and I mentioned that this area looks like where they filmed the second High School Musical movie. I knew it was filmed somewhere around there. As we were passing an entrance, I saw the name of the resort and quickly looked up where the movie was filmed. It was that exact place. Ha Ha. So I told everyone, but especially Lucky since he had danced to the song from the beginning of the movie, that we were passing where it was filmed. Ha Ha.

 

What made me think about it was that I recently watched the movie because of the opening number which was not filmed in Southern Utah and remembered I was going to put it in my blog post about our trip but I forgot. 

 

Another Palindrome Day

6-2-26 was another palindrome day. I wrote the date on bags I was filling with rotisserie chicken Nichole divided up. Thanks, Nichole. 6-2-26 was National Rotisserie Chicken Day.

It was also the anniversary of when Babe Ruth retired. We talked about Ruth in the Bible for scripture study.

 

6-3-26 was not a palindrome day. It was Repeat Day. I asked Jeremy, "Pete and Repeat were in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left?" He did not have a satisfying answer. 

I wore the same shirt as the day before. I did have to go back and do some things over that day. Sigh.

The day before I took Nichole and Jet to the Provo Library for some library activities. On Repeat Day, I took Jeremy to the library to do a story trail with me. "Crocodile's Treason." The kids and I read that one on a story trail back in 2022.

Lots of Summer Reading activities going on.