Finished!!

Woooooooo!!! I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows about 11pm last night. I started it about 8pm Wednesday night and got 3 good reading sessions in. Morgan went to a sleepover so we wrote down her page number and I got busy reading. I didn't TOUCH the computer yesterday at all...not once. LOL! I was serious about finishing that book. :-)

I will not spoil it for anyone but if you haven't read it yet or haven't finished it....OMG it is good. I think I felt every emotion there was! I can't believe it is over though. I liked having the epilogue but I want to know more! Yep, that's just me. I cried for those that died and rejoiced for those that didn't.

If you want to talk about the book you can email me. :-) I have to keep quiet around here until Morgan finishes!

Time

Time, time...it is time for a lot of things right now. It is time for us to send in our notice of intent to homeschool this year. It is time to get ready to start hs'ing for the year. The kids are actually asking for school work. Shocking I know. LOL! I need to go through the books and workbooks that we have and see what we need, if anything, for starting back up. It is also time for GC to have her back surgery. It will be major as they are fixing a lot of problems and fusing 3 vertebrae together for stability. I will be taking care of her so we will be crazy busy for a few weeks. Part of me thinks I must be nuts trying to start back to school right now but I really think it will give the kids something to do, something consistent during the next few weeks. Dance classes and bowling league and such don't start back up until the end of August so we don't have to fit that in our schedule right now.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince but Morgan hasn't finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet...so I'm in a holding pattern. ;-) But in all honesty the next few days will be busy getting everything ready for the following weeks and then I will have plenty of reading time at the hospital while waiting for mom's surgery.

A Harry Potter weekend

Well, it has been a Harry Potter weekend for our family. On Friday we got Morgan's hair color, she opted for purple instead of pink, and some snack stuff. Then we went to the library to help decorate. It looked really cool by the time we were done (a bunch of us were there). After that we came home and made & organized our goodies. We made chocolate covered spider legs and magic wands. We filled a jar with Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and 2 bags of regular flavored jelly beans just to mess with people...never know what you will get. ;-) We filled a jar with a variety of owl pellets (bridge mix) and then did a jar with dried flubberworms (sour patch worms). LOL! Then we got everyone ready. Corey decided to be Sirius Black after all. We attended the library party from 7pm-9pm and it was fun. Lots of snacks, butterbeer, and fun. We played HP Scene It - 2nd edition (first 5 movies), had a costume contest (Morgan won 3rd place and got a new wand that lights up), and played a variety of games. Then we headed into Cool Springs to meet up with Michael and my mom. Mom took Alex back to her house and Morgan, Corey & I headed into Borders. Oohh...after someone backed into us in the parking lot (no damage). We waded through the crowd to see what all was going on. We saw so many people dressed as characters...even saw a Dobby and a Hedwig -- that was a good one! In the children's section they had a Whomping Willow (funoodles as limbs), wand making, and games. They had a trivia game around the customer service desk and palm reading in the New Age/Inspiration/Tarot section. We decided to get in line for a palm reading. That was fun. Michael found us at that point and we wandered some more. It was already crowded when we got there and every minute it got more & more crowded. Corey got in line for coffee..and an hour later was at the register to place his order. Egads!! We found some friends from the library and visited with them a bit. Morgan started getting tired and bored. The crowd was too much and it wasn't what she thought it was going to be. She tried to get into the costume contest but either you had to pre-register or they only took a certain number total or something because she didn't get to enter. She was bummed. At 11:30pm they had the people in the first group (7 groups each with a different colored wristband) line up. At 11:55pm we knew we weren't going to be doing anything until after 1am, if that early. It was so disorganized and getting more & more crowded. We decided that Morgan had enough of the book release party experience (and so had we) and we headed out after telling our friends we were leaving. We went 3 blocks away to the 24 hour Kroger (grocery store) and got in a line of 25-30 people. LOL! At midnight the books were handed out and we were out of the store by 12:20am. We stopped & picked up Alex and got home about 1:15am...definitely before we would have received our book at Borders. Can you believe that I didn't have my camera for any of it?!? No costume pics, no nothing. Hopefully the HP Club will have some from that party and I can get a copy.

The kids and I slept late on Saturday and Morgan started reading the book as soon as she got up. We were all wiped out from the day before so had a very slow day. We played a game of Life, read a lot and then had waffles for dinner. Yum. :-) My brother finished the book by noon on Saturday. Dedicated dude. Morgan is about 1/3 of the way through it and I'm about 2/3 of the way through book 6. Michael has already told me to hurry up so I can read book 7. LOL! I think he wants someone to talk to about it. I'll be waiting until Morgan is finished and I'm sure I won't be reading it before the weekend or Monday. But Mom's surgery will give me time to read at the hospital.

Today wasn't so much about Harry Potter. Morgan & I went over to GC's house to help her clean and get the house ready. Her back surgery is next Monday and she's in overdrive to be all prepared. Next weekend we will give everything a once over and that will be that.

Preparing for release parties - HP & DH

The library and HP Club are putting on a pre-release party for HP & DH tomorrow evening from 7-9pm. We have all decided to dress up at the last minute and the rush has been on. LOL! Alex will be a little wizard and I made him a cape/robe out of an electric blue material with gold glitter stars on it. Morgan will be Nymphadora Tonks ("Tonks") and will be wearing jeans, a t-shirt with "Weird Sisters" on it and pink hair (temp spray). I will be Molly Weasley and have made myself an outfit. I had a patchwork apron top that wasn't complete so I added to it with some various color & size blocks and I made a skirt out of some very bright print. I also made a little drawstring-type bag to carry around. We are going to put some glitter in a small container and label it as floo powder. :-) Corey is going to be.... well, HE hasn't decided yet! ROFL Most likely Sirius Black. I've been sewing all afternoon & evening and managed to get all finished. Yea!

I figure we will stay dressed up for the release party at Borders. Continue the fun, ya know.

Now that the sewing is done I just have to make snackies for the HP Club party. We are making magic wands and cockroach clusters. ;-) Sounds delish, huh? You know you want some!

MIA?

Sorry to go MIA on everyone. :-) I have recovered very well from my surgery on 7/3. I had just one bad day (7/4) and it has gone smoothly since then. Each day has been better than the previous one....well, okay, in terms of recovering it has been. My upper 3 incisions are almost completely healed and the 4th incision (site of the hernia repair also) is doing well. I visit the surgeon tomorrow morning for my post-op visit.

Saturday we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with the HP Club. The movie was great. I know a lot was left out, but gawd, a lot was left out of number 4 and this book was longer & the movie shorter. I think they got the main points of the story. We all enjoyed it. This coming Friday we are helping out & attending a pre-release party for the book at the library with the HP Club. THEN we are going with my brother to a release party at Borders. Morgan is very excited...yes, yes, I am too! :-) Alex will either be with my mom or at home with Corey, just depending on what the evening brings.

Alex has an appointment with Dr. W. (child psychiatrist) on Tuesday so we can discuss how he's doing on his medication. Corey and I don't think this dosage is doing him any good. We think he actually did better on the lower dosage. So we will see how the appointment goes.

On July 30th my mom will be having her back surgery. I'm taking her to the hospital that morning and will be there during her surgery. I'll be staying with her at home once she is released as well. She's going to need quite a bit of help at first. She's getting very nervous but we are all ready for her to have the surgery and move on to what life brings afterwards. Being able to move around, walk and live her life without constant pain would be excellent.

Recovery & HP stuff

Recovery from my surgery hasn't been too bad all-in-all. Wednesday was by far the worst day. I did try taking 2 pain pills before bed and boy o boy do they work on me. LOL! I don't move in my sleep and I wake up still lightheaded & dizzy. However, Thursday was pretty good and today has been better. I felt ready so took the kids out to the library. It went okay although I was ready to come home and felt a little lightheaded. Weird. While at the library we talked to the HP Club advisor about the upcoming pre-release book party and the private showing of HP 5 that the club is doing. We can't wait! I was telling Mecca that we have come recipes for HP type of snacks for the pre-release party. We are going to help out as much as possible. If anyone has any cool ideas for decorations or snacks let us know. :-)

4th of July

Happy Fourth of July to everyone out there. We hope you had a good one. Our's was pretty subdued but that is okay with us. The day after surgery isn't what I thought. I'm having quite a bit of pain & discomfort today. I'm guessing all the good stuff from anesthesia is out of my system so I'm feeling all the work they did. The pain is pretty much localized around my belly button which is where the hernia repair was done. Corey has been wonderful and is doing a good job at taking care of me, the kids, the animals & the house. I'm hoping tomorrow is a better day as far as post-op pain is concerned.

After dinner he took the kids outside and set off some of the fireworks that we had leftover from last year. Some neighbors were doing some on the cul-de-sac so they walked over to enjoy those. I chatted with our corner neighbors and we all got together and set off their fireworks. Just as we finished the official fireworks started in the county park (which is very close to us) and we got to watch them from our front yard.

The Night Before....

Kelly's surgery. I'm heading off to bed so I'll be rested tomorrow when they put me to sleep for surgery. LOL! Actually I want to make sure I get up at 5am to be at the hospital at 6am. Egads! I'm crazy. For those that I usually email with...Corey or I will send out an email letting everyone know how it went. We are expecting everything to go smoothly. My mom will have the kids until after dinner tomorrow night.

Please think good thoughts for me tomorrow morning. :-)

Our weekend and eating veggies

Our Saturday girls lunch ended up being family lunch. LOL! We ran late going to pick up our CSA share this week and it just didn't make sense to split up and do more driving. Corey and Alex stayed and we wandered The Factory while waiting for everyone else. What was cool is that there was a gathering or reunion of sorts of people that had adopted Retired Greyhounds so we got to see (and pet) a bunch of Greyhound dogs. They were so sweet and so well behaved! It was also adoption day for the shelter at The Factory and so we got to spend some time visiting cats, kittens, dogs and puppies. I saw a couple I liked but since our fence isn't complete yet we aren't quite ready to bring one home. Our CSA share was full of fabulous yummies... collard greens, red leaf lettuce, red & yellow tomatoes, beets, summer squash, patty pan squash, zucchini, cucumbers, yukon gold potatoes, okra and a purple pepper (looks exactly like a bell pepper). We split it up with mom, Tish & Michael, my aunt & cousin and us. Seriously, there was plenty to share. For dinner Corey and I sauteed some summer squash and smashed some of the potatoes...delish!! A fresher potato neither of us have had. LOL! We've been incorporating more meatless dishes into our menus and feeling really good about it. I'm currently reading a book that I'm really getting into. I feel like it is speaking to me in a way. It is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. It is about her family's adventure to eat only food that they grew or knew who grew it (or raised it). Corey has been working a lot...change windows & monitoring shifts so Saturday afternoon was pretty much his weekend. Thank goodness I'm having surgery the day before a holiday to give him 2 days off together. ;-) Isn't that nice of me? My mom had Saturday & Sunday off also...a rare complete weekend off for her and she's getting 2 days off for the holiday too because of my surgery. Because you just KNOW that taking care of Morgan & Alex for the day can't be work, right?? ;-) My favorite part is that she thinks she's going to sleep late on Tuesday. Oh my...my sides hurt from laughing about that one.