The Sunday Post: Birthday Month, The Bridge to Fall, and Back to School All Rolled Into One!

 

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly, or for a monthly wrap-up. you can write about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead. Join in weekly, bi-weekly, or for a monthly wrap-up. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

How do you feel about August?  It's my birthday month, so I'm a fan.  August has also always been bittersweet for me. As a kid, I loved summer and once my birthday rolled around, I couldn't ignore the fact that school was right around the corner. When I had kids, same feelings!  And now that I work at a school, I'm happy to go back and also I like sleeping in! 

Fall was a very busy month, the hubs and I went to Colorado. He had altitude sickness and that put quite the damper on the trip. On the way home, I googled the elevation of my dream vacations, Coastal Maine, Scotland, and South Korea. Thank goodness all of those locations are close to sea level!

Below is a picture from our trip. If you find yourself in Colorado make sure you drink loads of water that helps with the elevation and the fact that Colorado is more desert than you think! 

This is from the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. A free city park!

I also went to a concert at The Salt Shed with my middle kiddo and another concert with a friend. I'm having a real music-filled summer!

I love how our Chicago concert venues have views of the City!  This one is right on the Chicago River so people sit in their boats and see the show as well! I went to this concert with middle kiddo, we saw AWOLNATION and 311.

How was your July?  I also read some books worth talking about and released my own book! 

I'm currently reading this book. It's my first time reading a Regency male/male romance. I'm very curious how they will have a HEA!

The Eden Test- A Thriller and a Few Botanical Garden Pics

This is the second book I picked up so I would have a physical book to read while we traveled. It's an easy to read and I finished it faster than I thought I would and then I was really bummed I didn't have another physical book I could read and save my phone battery life. Lesson learned, if possible take one extra book when traveling. 

 The Eden Test is  a decent thriller, I guessed some of the plot points, but not everything. There are scenes of graphic domestic violence, so if that is something you'd like to avoid, now you know. This was my first book by Adam Sternbergh, I would read more of his books if I happen across them. 

My family was visiting and one activity we went on was to a local nature preserve and botanical garden. We had gorgeous weather and were well served by visiting early in the day before the temps and humidity rose too much!

 

#TheSundayPost #I'mBack!

 

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.  See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

Talk about making plans-ha!  We went on our vacation and I think I read about 5 pages. The husband was not feeling well, vertigo, nausea, headaches--daughter was not feeling well. My medication usually means I'm not up to par...I did most of the driving.  Husband and Daughter felt better when we got past the mountains on the way home. I think it was a case of altitude and maybe mold or other allergies.  It wasn't Covid, so I guess that is something since where we vacationed has a low vaccine rate, and only about 1 in 10 people we saw were wearing masks indoors. While we are all vaccinated, we wore masks when indoors in public places due to the spread of the Delta Variant. 

The house we rented was as nice as the pictures, to be honest, I felt like I did as much cooking and cleaning as if we were home.  My new goal is to vacation at an all-inclusive! The main purpose of this trip was to see my parents so that we were able to do and that's what counts. It had been years! 

We also got to see my brother from Canada and it had been four years since we had gotten to see him. One of our kids stayed home because he couldn't get off work, which was a bummer, he was missed!  My other brother and his family came down with Covid right after we arrived, so we did not see them at all. They are not vaccinated.  

It is a real disappointment to have done everything we can to not catch or spread Covid only to see far too many people choose not to do what they can do to stop the virus from infecting other people. If I had to describe our trip in a phrase, I would call it emotionally taxing. 

Since we got home, I've been noticeably fatigued--stupid medicine.  I hope I will figure out how to manage the fatigue--ie. how to feed myself more energy and how to manage my life so I'm not overpromising and underdelivering.  An example of that is I was going to have a garage sale this week, but by the time we were headed home last Sunday I knew I was not going to pull it off! 

What I can manage to do this week is share my thoughts on these three books--

Thanks for reading my blog.  Typing things out helped me feel better!  How was your week? 

#TheSundayPost! Bye July! Hello Air Fryer August!

 

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.  See rules here: Sunday Post Meme

Hi, Hi! I'm starting to feel much more like myself, I think it is the ton of water I am drinking and the adherence to small meals.  I am happy to report that even with the new medication, I managed to run 11 miles today! Thank goodness the weather was less humid, that helped so much.  I am hoping this month I will be up to speed with my reading.  We are going on vacation and I am thinking I should take like 5 books, just in case the WiFi is dicey, plus it's a long drive. 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I decided to start selling Tastefully Simple again; and since my favorite part of that is talking about making meals, so starting in August I'm going to do Zoom meal preps.  I'm looking forward to figuring out how to my own little cooking shows. This month I'm starting with meal prep with our Air Fryer 5-meal kit! We have a recipe for Air Fryer Buffalo Cauliflower I'm going to try!

How was your week?  We enjoyed watching Outer Banks Season 2 on Netflix. It's a great little escape. 

Books I'll be posting about this week:

And hopefully at least one more book TBD! 

Happy August!

#Romance Review and a Recommendation

 

This month's selection for a book club I belong to was  A Totally Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison. It's a story told from Hannah and Sam's point of view in which they have just finished secondary school.  It takes place over the summer while they are waiting for the results of their admissions tests for university.  In the book Hannah and Sam keep running into each other, being attracted to each other, and then something gets in the way, and they miss their opportunity.  The book has parties and trips and shopping and eating--honestly, reading about the vacations in France, Greece, and the group of friends going to a festival during COVID-19 made me a little jealous.  However, listening to the book definitely didn't make me miss being 18. The book is filled with many miscommunications and drunken decisions, which seem to be right on point for that time of life between the very end of childhood and the official start of adulthood.  

One line from the book that I really enjoyed is when Pax (a male character)  says: "Love her? Love her?  You don't love someone until you are like 23 or something."  That sounds like a solid life plan!

I listened to the audio version of this book at 1.8 speed. Both readers are excellent and make the book that much more engaging. 

3.5 Stars  - If you like first love romances with lots of missed connections, you'll love this book. 

***

And now the recommendation. I was looking for a way to use fewer giant plastic bottles of Laundry Soap and Dishwasher detergent. I decided it was worth it to give Dropps a try.   I've been super impressed.  The boxes the pods come in can be composted and the pods work as good as name brand stuff in the washing machine and the dishwasher pods are super good. I've stopped having to rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.  This link has a referral discount: Dropps if you want to check it out. It's a subscription service but it's very flexible on the timing of orders, and it's so nice to reduce some of the plastic bottles our house goes through each month.