F is for...

It's been a holiday weekend full of fun, friends, food, fireworks, Rock Band frenzy and film! A much needed break from the chaos of working life, to be sure.

Friday afternoon just before we headed across the street to our friends' for a BBQ, I asked the little man if he wanted to bring his new Guitar Hero III with us. It was one of the games he got for his birthday and hadn't tried out yet, so we scooped up the unopened box, our food, bevvies, camera and whatever else we needed and headed across. After some yummy snacks (while the ribs, yum, were cooking) the kids went and set up the game.



While having fun, it's kinda hard to play Guitar Hero III with only one guitar and three kids. I headed back to the house to retrieve the guitar from Rock Band in hopes it would be compatible. Not. So. Much. After dinner, diappointed that the guitars weren't working together, I asked the son to help me grab the remainder of Rock Band. (I'd been told the guitar from Guitar Hero worked with Rock Band - still not sure why it doesn't work in the reverse?).

Even the adults got in on it!

(You'll have to pretend there's a video here since Blogger was being a beeyotch and wouldn't load it.)

We finally found the perfect mix of talents for our band - friends' son on lead guitar, little man on bass, me on the drums, and friends' daughter singing. We played and played for hours until it finally got dark enough to head outside for the fire works (if you could really call them that considering our city banned all fireworks a few years ago). Sorry for the crappy pics but my camera was out of battery so I had to use my Blackberry.

Saturday afternoon the little man and I finally went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I have to say though it wasn't one of my favorite of the bunch, it was still good and I'm happy we saw it on the big screen rather than waiting for the DVD.

When we got home there was a voicemail from our friends inviting us over for pie. We'd discovered the pie we tried to eat the night before was still raw in the middle despite it supposedly being a fully cooked, ready to eat pie from Safeway. But in true Safeway fashion, when they returned the pie yesterday, they were given a new one (with apologies) and this time it was fully cooked and yummo! After pie and ice cream I asked if anyone was up for another round "road trip" (aka round of Rock Band) and we headed back to our house for more frenzy.

Our band name... The Goofballs!

Hope you've all had a safe and fun holiday weekend!

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!

Props to whoever knows the quote in the title.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy reading? Finding a nice, quiet spot and getting lost in the words is so relaxing and reenergizing. And now that the little man has 30 minutes of reading homework every day for school, I get to have 30 minutes a day of reading time for me too. It's awesome!

Of course I can't usually stop at 30 minutes when I truly get into a book. I've been known to polish off some books in just a few short hours and go right on to the next one. But I haven't had that luxury recently, and when the weather is nice out I tend to put reading to the bottom of the list in favor of doing other outdoor activities (read as yard work - ugh!).

Take the last book I read, Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich. Normally I would have sat down and read it within a few hours. Not this one, though. It took about a week of reading snippets here and there when I could. Now I'm on to Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes (one of the many books someone sent me that I'm now getting around to enjoying). And then I always have a couple more going at the same time, cuz that's just the way I am. Right now I'm into my 3rd reading of Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield and my first reading of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. If you ever want to see what I'm reading, you can check out my Goodreads profile.

And now it's time for my 30 minutes of solitude. Aaah!