Is it Friday again?

How did the week go by again without an additional blog post? At least Lent will be here soon and I can get back to my (nearly) daily postings of things to be thankful for, which I did last year and it was such a wonderful exercise, I'm going to do it again. Maybe I'll just start early.

Anyway, here we go:

1. Finished Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games yesterday. Absorbing, yes, for a young adult dystopian novel. But I have a hard time with young adult fiction that has nothing about hope in it. No religion whatsoever, just survival. I have requested a copy of her second book, Catching Fire, from the library, but I haven't decided if it's worth reading yet. It made me long for my own copies of Percy Jackson & the Olympians, not just library ones, so I can reread them as often as I want. Now that is the mark of a good book series. And the film for The Lightning Thief is only 2 weeks away! If you haven't seen the trailer, here it is. Time to get a sitter arranged. And I checked Amazon this morning and a paperback set of the 5 Percy Jackson isn't available yet. Maybe it'll be a good birthday present to myself in July.

2. Miranda was sick again last weekend, starting her vomiting mid-afternoon on Sunday, right before I would have been getting ready to go to Youth Group. I'm getting a little tired of missing HS events because of a vomiting girl, but I don't have the heart to leave Marshall home alone when she might pop again at any moment. It's just not nice. Thankfully, she kicked it quickly and was back in school on Tuesday.

3. Because she's still not feeling perfect yet, Miranda has been whining all day every day, but has been going to bed without much complaint, which is a reversal. I'm not sure which I prefer.

4. It was warm enough yesterday afternoon that Miranda deigned to go in the backyard and play after school. For a little girl who's normal temperature seems to run hotter than anyone else in the house (she runs barefoot all winter, pesky girl) she doesn't like to go outside when it's freezing, like today. It was nice to play yesterday, though. Well, she played and I trimmed dead branches off the trees.

5. There was a special GoodLooking session at church Wednesday night as there was a parents' meeting, so Marshall took Alex to play and went to the meeting, which meant I had a quiet and pleasant evening. It was lovely. But I stayed up too late reading Hunger Games. Oh, well.

6. Am planning to run around and do errands with my mother-in-law tomorrow, which will probably include lunch. Sounds lovely! Yes, I am leaving Marshall home alone with the children. Poor boy. I do have the best mother-in-law in the world. No question.

7. Got a wonderful bag of hand-me-downs for Alex from a friend from church on Sunday and found another bag for Miranda in our attic. Free clothes are cool!

Special 8. We finally took our Christmas tree down on Saturday. You know it's bad when Alex has told us several time that it's time to take down the decorations. Of course, we did put the tree up December 2nd.

And here's Jen.