Jenuine Cupcakes

As we were leaving the parking lot of Ikea today, a woman sporting a tattoo sleeve & her little boys crossed in front of us & I said to my boys, "Hey that kids mom has a sleeve. What if YOUR Mom had one?" Silence. Then my 11, (going on 18yr old) said, "Um, that would be gross."  Me: "Why?  The 6yr old offered:  "You're not the kind of girl who has tattoos." (I LOVE that he still calls me a "girl"!) Me: "Really?! And what  kind is that?"  6yr old: "Idk...other girls." 11yr old: "He means like other women. Who wear different clothes."  (I think he meant "Other women who are cool and can actually pull off a visible tattoo, unlike you, Mom" but just didn't know how to verbalize it correctly.) 6yr old: "Like girls with blonde and brown hair and stuff." Me: "I have blonde and brown hair." 6yr old: "No, like at the same time." Me: "...

  I enjoyed this book. It started out a little slow for me in the beginning and I found it difficult to keep track of the different characters due to the two different life stories being told but after the first few chapters I was fine.   "The Beach Trees" is a story that takes place along the Katrina ravaged gulf coast of Biloxi, MS and New Orleans, LA, focusing on the lives of two women Julie Holt and the aging Aimee Guidry. Neither have met before but they are brought together by the death of Monica Guidry, Julie's friend and Aimee's estranged granddaughter. Monica left Julie with the responsibility of raising her 5yr old son Beau, (whom the family had no knowledge of) and left her a beach house along the coast in Biloxi, MS in which to raise him in, as well as an old family heirloom that holds clues that may provide some answers not just for Aimee but for Julie as well. Both women have suffered tragic loss in their lives and may discover that they are more con...

  Pretty cover but I did not love this book.  I'm also beginning to feel like Nephilim are the new Vampires in YA Lit these days.  Author Hand's inclusion of the Genesis 6:4 reference was nice for anyone not familiar with the Nephilim or where they were ever real or not but I found the story to be slow, awkward in places and cliche.   Clara wasn't all that impressive to me as a main character.  In fact, when she was around Christian she seemed creepy, stalkerish and not at all believable, almost making me want to put the book down .  When she was with Tucker, however, she was much more engaging.  As far as plot goes, I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of mystery there. I had figured out that Christian was most likely "different" not too far into the book and wasn't surprised at all by the ending. I felt like there should have been more interaction between he and Clara while he was away to make the "choice" at the end much more difficul...

  I have to admit that I'm sorry to say to goodbye to Mercy Falls and to Sam, Grace, Isabel & Cole, especially since I felt like "Forever" was anticlimactic.   The book is well written and flowed more smoothly than Linger did.  It allows for some of the less endearing characters from the previous books to redeem themselves and some of the story's questions get answered but not all.  I still have a few. Grace is a wolf at the opening of this book and Sam is still a boy.  She shifts sporadically but not for very long and narrowly misses Sam each time she does.  He's at a loss for how to keep her safe. (We are heartbroken for the both of them.)  Everyone in town blames him for her disappearance, assumes she's dead at his expense, including Grace's parents.  When another body of a missing girl shows up, the livelihood of the entire pack hangs in the balance as the massive hunt to kill them all gets under way. Sam and Grace as well as Isa...

How do you know that someone loves you?  For me, it's when I receive a gift.  It doesn't need to be big or expensive, it just has to be something that made the giver think of me.  I came home today hot (not the good kind of "hawt") tired, hungry, with an armful of groceries with two mirror images in tow but when I opened my screen door, this is what was waiting for me... Cupcake earrings!!!  Totally made my day!  

I had the chance to go see a special advanced screening of "The Help" tonight.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  I read the book a few months ago and absolutely loved it.  I won the pass through my local library's facebook page contest.  I never win anything, until last week. Then I won three things thus putting an end to my "loser" status. You should definitely go see this movie but read the book first.  The book is always better.

  You know how a song that you haven't heard in forever or the hint of a certain smell can instantly conjure up a memory?  Remind you of a certain person, place and make you feel like you've been instantly transported back in time?  Yeah?  Well, that's what this book did for me. I sat down at lunch and figured I'd skim through the first couple of pages just to check it out and was immediately back in High School. I had to stop by page 3 because I could no longer see through my tears...of laughter! (Btw, it's my bedtime now and I am finished with it.) Even my kids, who were sitting at the table with me kept asking what was so funny but I couldn't begin to explain it to them with out it opening up an entirely different conversation I am not ready to have with a 6 & 11 year old.  I initially wanted to read this book because the title piqued my interest, "Ten Things We Did (and probably shouldn't have)".  Even if you grew up in a convent, you...

So here I am again - SMM (aka Single Mom Mode) for the next 2 weeks.  No big deal, it's part of the hubs job.  A storm hits, he gets a call, he goes, we adjust.  This week, we've combined VBS and swim lessons which means by 7pm we're all in zombie mode.   We did have some fun getting ready for VBS this morning because it was "Crazy Hair Day!" & my youngest happens to be blessed with a head full of "totally cool hair".  My youngest also happens to be a BOY and the extent of my playtime with said hair is limited to running my fingers through it - when - he bestows the privilege upon me.  I've tried telling him that in a few years (he's still in the single digits) the girls are going to be tripping over themselves to run their fingers through it.  He just looks at me.  Here's the result... I've been awaiting the arrival of mac, as in macbook - my new computer which I thought was supposed to be here today b/c the hubs told it ...

I just checked my bookshelf at Goodreads and my "read" shelf says 64...as in I've read 64 books in the past 14 months!  That's INSANE for me.  I never used to be a reader.  (People Magazine doesn't count.)  I guess the "reader gene" that my Mom and my oldest son have, the one I always thought got left out of my DNA somehow, was just lying dormant.  I now average 3-4 books a week and these are anywhere between 200-400 page books.  Granted, the majority are YA but I do like to mix it up with some "growed up" books too.  I even get to review them and have had the privilege to review several ARC's in the past month.  The coolest part for me is being able to interact with the authors.  It makes me feel special for like 5 minutes.  Life is full of irony sometimes...a word my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs. Bennett told me I would never understand.  I struggled in her class - a lot. (I had her for 2 fun filled years - yay ...