Easter Weekend

Can I just say that I really dislike cleaning? BUT, it sure does make me feel better about being at home when my house is straightened up and smelling like orange or lemon. I suppose it's because of Easter, but I woke up this morning with a driving need to clean my house. Of course, it also helped that it was raining outside this morning. I don't know about you, but cleaning is harder to do on a sunny day than on a rainy day. I do have to vacuum still as well as scrub my bathroom and laundry room, but pretty much everything else is done. Yay!
To be completely honest with you, I haven't cleaned my house so thoroughly since last year. I have touched up here and there and Joseph has vacuumed more than I, but neither of us has really gotten everything. Anyway, all of that to say...I'm almost done with cleaning my house!

Tomorrow, I'd like to have my mother-in-law and father-in-law, husband, and brother all join me at church. I honestly don't believe that they all will, but I still want to ask.

Ar you doing anything special for Easter?

Book List (updated for March)

So, The Wednesday Letters squeaked into February at the last second to bring the total of my books read through Feb. to thirty, however, because I was busy with church functions, Facebook, dyeing my hair, playing Guitar Hero World Tour, work, and Mary Kay, March only added six books to my list. Of course, I was also trying to read through the HUGE stack of magazines that I still had unread (some from last year, even!) as well as attempt to clean up some of my VERY messy house. Anyway, enough excuses!

January

Sandry's Book ~ Tamora Pierce
Tris's Book ~ Tamora Pierce
The City of Ember ~ Jeanne DuPrau
The Mary Kay Way ~ Mary Kay Ash
Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg ~ Gail Carson Levine
Teddy Jo & the yellow room mystery ~ Hilda Stahl
Teddy Jo & the ragged beggars ~ Hilda Stahl
Teddy Jo & the magic quill ~ Hilda Stahl
Land of Hope ~ Joan Nixon Lowery
Land of Promise ~ Joan Nixon Lowery
Boxers for Dummies ~ Richard Beauchamp
Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand ~ Gail Carson Levine
Ellen Foster ~ Kaye Gibbons

February

Coffee with Plato ~ Donald R. Moor
A Time for Witches ~ Lynne Hansen
Reckless Revolution ~ Lynne Hansen
Gilded Delirium ~ Jordan Stokes & Mattew Belinkie
The Mark on the Mirror ~ Margaret Sutton
A Thousand Goodbyes ~ Jim Hube
Coffee with Mark Twain ~ Fred Kaplan
A Member of the Family ~ Cesar Millan
The People of Sparks ~ Jeann DuPrau
Tanglewreck ~ Jeanette Winterson
Alanna The First Adventure ~ Tamora Pierce
In the Hand of the Goddess ~ Tamora Pierce
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man ~ Tamora Pierce
Lioness Rampant ~ Tamora Pierce
Trickster's Choice ~ Tamora Pierce
Trickster's Queen ~ Tamora Pierce
The Wednesday Letters ~ Jason F. Wright

March

Coffee with Shakespeare ~ Stanley Wells
The Good Guy ~ Dean Koontz
Shadowfires ~ Dean Koontz
A Wife After God's Own Heart ~ Elizabeth George
The Fairy's Return & Other Princess Tales ~ Gail Carson Levine
The Princetta ~ Anne-Laure Bondoux

I have to say that since the last book list was posted, I found two new favorites...The Wednesday Letters and The Good Guy. The Wed. Letters was a Christian romance which is a genre I have not read in such a long time because they seem to be all the same storyline. BUT, my mother-in-law had lent it to me telling me that it was really good and that she thought I would enjoy it. Let me tell you, I tried to read that book for four months! I just couldn't get into it! So, finally, at the end of February I just decided that I couldn't leave a book unread so I would just have to grin and bear it. I'm so glad I did because the book was incredible!

As for The Good Guy, let me just start by saying, Dean Koontz is a very secular writer. As in...his books can get graphic. Blood, guts, gore, horror, suspense, and VERY occasionally...a rape scene. I tell you this because his books aren't pretty, but they are extremely well written. Dean Koontz certainly knows how to make you HATE the bad guy and how to sympathize with the good guy while still realizing that the good guy is only human himself. The Good Guy was no different. It was ALOT less horror and sci-fi (which still only happens rarely in Dean's books that I've read), but the gore and suspense was typical of Dean. A Christian author that writes in a VERY similar style is Ted Dekker. I have honestly found myself mixing the two authors up more than once. Of course, Ted Dekker leaves out the rape scene, and most of the time, the guts and gore, but the suspense level of Ted's books is the same as Dean's.

So, sorry I took so long telling you about my two favorites without really saying anything about them. I don't like to critique books. It takes the fun out of reading them. However, if I dislike a book, I usually have no problem critiquing.

Have I asked all of ya'll who YOUR favorite authors are? and what books you've read lately?

Blondie

That's my new nickname at work. Why? Because I dyed my hair Bleach Blonde. At first I wasn't sure what I thought of the color, but now I LOVE it. I don't think I could have pulled the color off without the cut, but it works and I have gotten so many compliments on the cut and the color!

Anyway, I needed a picture to send to my Mary Kay director so Joseph took the first three for that purpose. The last pic is just me goofing off. So, should I send Jeannie (my MK director) shot 1, shot 2, or shot 3?

Shot 1

Shot 2

Shot 3

Self portrait. LOL.

Let the voting begin!

Losing Myself in Wrestling

It's been 13 days since I last posted. Wow. I've been so busy playing FB wrestling when I've had any free moments that I had almost forgotten that I had a blog. So, let me tell you a little bit about what I've been up to.

To be honest with you, I don't really remember the 10th through the 13th. At all. The 14th found me in my morning room having a color "party" with Joanna and Hannah. Joanna and I were getting ready for the TLC Ladies Luncheon at church at noon. We were having so much fun talking and getting ready that we were both late to the luncheon, but it was still alot of fun. After the luncheon we all went home and I have no idea what I did for the rest of the day.

Oh wait! I forgot the biggest news. On the 10th... I signed up to be a Mary Kay consultant. Finally.

So, back to the breakdown. Missions Conference at CBC started on the 14th and continued through Wednesday, the 18th. However, instead of attending Missions Conference on Monday night, I joined Hannah at Susie's house for my very first Mary Kay business meeting as a consultant. It was there that I received my Mary Kay pin.

Monday through Wednesday found me out of my house until sometime after 9pm each night. Not much sleep at all was happening. This was amplified by the fact that Joseph and I were dog sitting Max and Bailey from the 14th until just yesterday. Then, on Thursday, Ace joined in the madness. (Ace is Tres and Somer's mixed breed puppy.) Ace and Rocky are great friends and they LOVE to play fight ALL day! Literally.

Anyway, if you made it through reading that whole jumble of thoughts, you're a better person than I. I was seriously just writing as I thought of everything.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm beginning to find humorous, the fact that I'm starting to be as busy as my friend Hannah. Hannah is a Mary Kay consultant and she is very involved in her church. We tend to email each other about 8-10 times each day while at work and at least once a week I'll ask Hannah what she has planned for the week and she'll answer back with the longest list in the world! I used to tell her that I had no idea how she managed it all. Then, this past weekend came along and I understand a little bit better. Let me explain.

My typical weekend consists of me going home after work Friday afternoon and either making something for dinner or (more likely) just sitting down on my laptop and unwinding from the long week. Saturday finds me cleaning my house up a little and doing laundry and Sunday is church, of course.

This weekend, however, was much different. After work on Friday I went home as quickly as possible to let Rocky out of his kennel for the time that it took me to get him his medicine and to let him outside to take care of business. Once Rocky was taken care of, I put him back in his kennel and headed up to Pennsylvania for a Tastefully Simple party at Heather's house. The party was starting at 6:30pm and I was leaving my house about 4:15pm. I honestly had no idea of exactly where I was headed. Sure, I had directions, but I've never been on 70W or 81 N by myself before. I did make it to Heather's in time. In fact, I was about 20 minutes early. Very nice. I had the backup plan of staying the night at Heather's, but didn't really want to leave Rocky home alone since Joseph was with his best friend Tres and Tres' family at Sakura (a Japanese steakhouse) for Tres birthday dinner and I didn't know what Titus was doing all night. I left for home about 8:30pm from Heather's and made it home in two hours. Got my dog from the basement where he was hanging out with Titus, took him outside, and after making to my bedroom with Rocky, promptly crashed on my bed and didn't wake up until 5am when Rocky needed to go outside. Took the pup out, and went back to bed. Thankfully, I slept until about 9:45am. Amazing! Then I kinda just did the laundry and hung out around the house. Tres and Somer came over around 4pm and we all did pretty much nothing until it was time to leave for dinner. (Joseph is exactly one day younger than Tres so their / our families always celebrate their birthdays together.) We had planned to go to Joe's Crab Shack but upon arriving there we learned that the wait time for four was one hour and twenty minutes. Instead we walked across the parking lot to Logan's. Much better choice. Within twenty minutes we were seated and being waited on. After dinner we stopped at Best Buy where Joseph purchased the entire Guitar Hero World Tour set. I actually got a new piano music book there too! yay!

We must have gotten home about 10pm but the boys still broke out the game and put it all together. Somer started off on the drums and Joseph was on the guitar while I started my HUGE pot of Can-Can Chicken for Sunday. Eventually, while my rice was cooking, I took a turn on the drums and did a lousy job of it too! Went back to my food, adding the chicken to the mix then headed back over to the game to sing along with Titus' guitar. yeah! That was much easier. Once my dish was finished cooking, I packed it all into the fridge and headed to bed. It was about 11:15pm. Didn't fall asleep until after midnight.

Woke up on Sunday at 7am to get ready for church. I had totally forgotten about the time change. That was a wicked morning! Got my food into a crockpot and loaded up my truck.

I made it to church quite early with enough time to make sure that the crockpot was plugged in and that there was enough water in there to make sure the rice didn't burn. Of course, Sunday school and the main service was on time. Then the Celebration banquet started. When all was said and done, I left church close to 2pm after having been there since 8:30am. It was a great time, but long. (most Sundays aren't even close to that long and we didn't have an evening service yesterday.)

I ended the day with a trip to Barnes & Noble with Titus where I picked up three new books. One book of retold fairy tales, one fantasy fiction, and the third a suspense thriller by my favorite author, Dean Koontz.

What a weekend! I don't know if I could handle being that busy all the time, but it sure was fun!