Wednesday, July 10, 2024

July 4th Fun

We had a great time celebrating July 4 with 4/5 of our family. {Trent is a vampire and stays up all night and sleeps all day. Enjoy it while you can, I guess ha.}

We started our day riding in our neighborhood golf cart parade. It's such a small event, but we love it so much! The girls still really enjoy decorating our cart and driving around. We had to go to Target on July 3 to get new t-shirts as the girls had nothing festive, and we got some new decor from Wal-Mart.


Ready to roll out!

Love this view!

Love these peeps...just wish we could get our boy awake, ha.

You can see Paige's new hardware!

We had a little break after the parade and before we went to the pool. Brent played in a golf tournament, and the Gurley gurls came home and one of our neighbors came over for a little bit with her boys.

Drew's attempt at a flag made of fruit!


These girls have him wrapped!

After a few hours at the pool and a pizza dinner, we were all pooped! We have never made it to watch fireworks, and this year was no different - the girls were asleep by 9:30 and Brent and I weren't much further behind, ha.


Monday, July 8, 2024

Movie Review: Inside Out

We might be the last people on the planet to see Inside Out 2, but I finally took the girls over the July 4 weekend. My company gave us a 5-day weekend {GLORIOUS}, and we took full advantage!


Plot
: A sequel that features Riley entering puberty and experiencing brand new, more complex emotions as a result. As Riley tries to adapt to her teenage years, her old emotions try to adapt to the possibility of being replaced.

Review: Oh my gosh, we LOVED this! It was very funny {I laughed out loud so many times} but also so real with how our emotions change. I teared up numerous times thinking about my kids going through these changes - especially as 2/3 {so far} have some amount of anxiety. I just thought this was just about a perfect movie! And make sure to stay after the credits for a little secret scene!


Tuesday, July 2, 2024

June 2024 Book Review

We just got back from our 2nd Annual Swope Family Vacation in Port Aransas, but before I can share about our trip {including Trent's 15 birthday!!}, I have to start the month off with my book review!


This month I read 12 books - a definite rebound after my Anxiety-fueled May. Very happy to be feeling better and back to my normal reading habits. Lots of rom-coms from my favorite authors came out in May/June, so they dominated my reading this month - oh darn. {grin}


All Good People Here by Ashley Flowers - If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time you know I have mixed feelings about thrillers. I don't like unreliable narrators, I don't like ambiguous endings, etc. So some thrillers I love and some...not so much. This falls into the latter category because it has 1 of my pet peeves. The story was really good EXCEPT for that pet peeve {don't want to say what it is in case someone wants to read it}, but that one thing kind of ruined it for me. A reporter moves home to take care of her uncle with dementia but also gets looped back into the unsolved murder of her childhood best friend when another girl goes missing. I liked the plot and alternating timelines, I just couldn't get past that one point that will always bug me in a thriller. 


Lamb by Christopher Moore [audiobook] - Blog Friend Book Club selection! This book is exactly what the title says - the gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal. This is Dumb & Dumber/Monty Python humor...which is not my humor. Would not recommend to anyone, unless that brand of humor is your jam.


The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner [audiobook] - This was a re-read for my in-person book club, and I think I enjoyed it more in my first read. It should be right up my alley - historical fiction with alternating timelines about a woman in present day England who finds an apothecary bottle and the apothecary from hundreds of years ago helped women kill their husbands - sounds good, right? It is good, just not quite great.


We Were Dreamers by Simu Liu [audiobook] - I haven't seen anything Simu has been in, but I love a good celebrity memoir, and this was excellent! I can forget that celebrities are real people with real problems and troublesome pasts. Simu shared his story with such heart and compassion, gosh, he's got a big fan in me now! It doesn't hurt that his first job was at Deloitte too - I cracked up when he described going to work as a 'death march' every day haha.


A Kingdom This Cursed & Empty by Stacia Stark [audiobook] - Book 2 in a fun romantacy series! I'm enjoying this - it isn't ACOTAR or Fourth Wing, but it's keeping me entertained, and I'm excited to see where it goes.


None of This is True by Lisa Jewell - And now a thriller by an author who understands what I don't like and never lets me down! 2 women born on the same day/year in the same hospital meet by chance while out celebrating their birthdays and some Single White Female sh*t starts happening. But who is telling the truth about the insanity that happens next?!? So good!!!


Inheritance by Nora Roberts - Y'all. I was really on the verge of quitting Nora. It was like she ran out of original plot lines, characters, conversations. I actually DNF'd her last trilogy {and I usually LOVE her trilogies!} but decided to give her one more try, and I loved this Book 1 in a new trilogy. A woman inherits a hundred-year-old mansion {perfect timing as her fiancĂ© just cheated on her and she dumped him} and moves into it BUT it's haunted!!! I thoroughly enjoyed this and can't wait for the rest of the trilogy!


Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood - I have thoroughly enjoyed everything Ali Hazelwood has written - strong STEM women are a trope I can get behind. Yes, they are a bit formulaic and very trope-y, but I enjoy them. This one I definitely enjoyed but maybe not quite as much as some others. It had all the right elements, I just didn't find myself EAGER to pick it up as I usually am with her books.


The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren - I really enjoy Christina Lauren's books - I think there's only been one I didn't enjoy - and this goes right in the list as a fun rom-com/chick lit read! Anna and Liam got married for housing reasons in college and years later, Liam needs Anna's help...and you can guess what happens. I thought this was highly enjoyable and I struggled to put it down!


The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center - I just adore Katherine Center, and this book was reason 1,298 why I adore her. Just the cream of the crop for a chick-lit, romance novel. Loved it! A very successful screenplay writer writes a flop and doesn't want help rewriting it but ends up getting help from an unknown writer and sparks fly. So, so fun! BUT one thing I love about Katherine's characters is the heart they have - there is usually something of meat in her stories that makes you feel a little something more, and this had that too. Really good.


This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune - I was really hesitant to read another Carley Fortune book - I loved Every Summer After but thought Meet Me at the Lake was just ok. Well, this was more on-par with Ever Summer After, yay! Bee hooks up with her best friend's brother before she knows who he is and knows her BFF will NOT be happy, so they agree to pretend it never happened. Except it keeps happening! Alternating timelines and characters you want to meet? A delight of a book!


The Nazi Officer's Wife by Edith Hahn Beer - This was FASCINATING! It really makes you think about what you would be willing to do to survive a horrific life-or-death situation. Edith's story was tragic and very upsetting, but I was in awe of her strength and fortitude. This was just really, really good.

My total for the year is 64, ahead of my goal of 100 by 14 books. I had a lot of 4-star books, and my average for the month was 3.75!