Book review, folks are (finally) home, and whats's with the weather?!

For half and hour now I've been trying to write a little summary/update of my week, but the words just aren't flowing this evening. Oh, it figures. I tried to write a bulleted list and now things seem to be flowing, albeit randomly. Sorry :o)

I read Stephanie Meyer's "The Host" this week. Liked it. The book is good but not amazing. I checked out several reviews on Amazon before I started reading and that prepared me for some of the possible shortcomings of the story. As a writer, Meyer is wordy and doesn't skip on the details. Her work is exceptionally dialog heavy, which it tedious at times, but overall not too bad because she writes dialog exceptionally well. (I consider this to be one of my weaker areas as an author, so I admire those who do it well.) I also happen to very much enjoy long stories; I like being able to get to known my characters and then being able to spend some time with them.

Last night I downloaded The Help. I'm about halfway through. I like it, although it's slow sometimes.

My parents are back from vacation, and after quite a bit of craziness, are settling in at home. I went to see them today and took baby girl. (Nate stayed home because he wasn't feeling well; he slept all morning. Seems to be doing much better now.) She played with a couple of toys for most of the ride to grandma's house, but slept the final 15-20 minutes. On the way home she was awake for 15-20 minutes, then zonked out for an hour, until we got to the house. Awesome. My mom loaded us up with a big bag of food -- bread, applesauce, peanut butter, tuna, avocados, strawberries (for Nate), meats, and more. Yum. As they usually do on this annual snowbird vacation, my folks popped over the border to Mexico for a little while. My mom picked up a beautiful, blue dress with hand-embroidered flowers for Darling. Nate said it's a very traditional dress, usually done on a white fabric, and it has a special name... though he couldn't recall the word or the special occasion for which it's typically worn. No worries, it's still cute!

Next week is spring break, so Nate is off work. Monday is also my mother's birthday and she wants to spend the better part of the day with Darling, woot woot! She might come down twice next week to watch the baby. I think it will be a very nice break for Nate -- give him a chance to run some errands or what-have-you.

I had a furlough yesterday (Friday) and though I never thought I would have a reason to be grateful for furloughs, I loved it. Darling and I had the whole day to ourselves, and oh boy, we soaked it up! Lots of playing and cuddles, a little bit of time outside, a couple of errands.... It was a very easy, love-filled day.

Speaking of being outside: The weather this week was NUTS. Today and yesterday, it was lovely, sunny, and it even got warm. Earlier this week, it snowed. In fact, it snowed all day on Wednesday. Late in the day it started to stick, and Thursday morning there was at least three inches on the ground. (I thought there was five or six inches, Nate said just three or four. Whatever... it was a lot!) On Wednesday evening at about 8pm, after Darling went to bed, I threw on my snow gear and went to play in the front yard. I made a little snow family, including a pair of snow cats. It was cute. I hurt my arms rolling and lifting the bottom and middle parts of the snow bodies. Somehow I even managed to bruise my bicep. Ha! Ridic!

Nate was home on Thursday morning for a couple of hours, so we trekked out to the front yard as a family and used our ice-blocker to build a snow fort. The kids next door (ages 4 and 6) were extremely excited -- they thought we were going to build a whole igloo. If we had more time, yes, that would have been awesome. I'll have to post pictures when I'm on my regular computer.

I did not have time this week to finish the new window. (It still needs to be caulked, trimmed, and painted.) Darling has not been sleeping well; she's spend a lot of time in our bed. (Something I swore wouldn't become a habit, yet I feel like I'm losing the battle with myself.)

And.... that's all I have time to write. Now to eat some Greek yogurt with granola, read a bit more of The Help, and go to bed. Tschues!