Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I don’t even feel bad about missing Friday, folks. I spent half of Thursday updating our PTA’s checkbook register, filling out my treasurer’s report, and making two tres leches cakes; on Friday we had a PTA meeting at 9, and while it didn’t actually GO until 11, that’s about when I left the school. I had an hour to whip cream and do whatever else needed doing before heading back at noon (with the cakes) to help set up for the teachers’ luncheon, and I probably didn’t get home from that until close to 3. I put what was left of the cake away, did dishes, took care of small details, and exercised before leaving with my girlies a bit before 5 to head up to Northridge High School to see my niece (their cousin) in “Hairspray.” I was going to have my neighbor fill up my low tire but I didn’t get to it; on the other hand, traffic was unexpectedly fine and weather wasn’t an issue, so we drove around the high school until we found a gas station with air, and my 17-year-old filled up the tire while her sister used the gas station bathroom. Good times! The show was impressive, with a boy playing Motormouth Maybelle and ROCKING it, but reality hit afterwards–the weather had become an issue. As I told my girls on the long and tense-ish drive home, I’m actually not bad at driving in snow, but nobody LIKES driving under those conditions. Thankfully, we made it home without incident, but it was a late night.

As for the rest of the weekend–Saturday we all slept in, making the day seem oddly short, but we did fit in my oldest’s birthday breakfast (finally!), and yesterday my hubby and I said the prayers in church and taught Sunday School, making it a perfect day for a nap after church. And for a bonus–my nephew’s in town for a couple of days and ate and watched the Church’s Christmas Devotional with us. Yay for family!

On the book front, I’ve been frantically trying to find the right graphic novels to gift my children for Christmas, and I’ve got at least two waiting to review, so here’s the first–The BIG Adventures of Babymouse: Once Upon a Messy Whisker, which I scored for $3 at Britt’s kids’ elementary school’s fall book fair. My youngest is definitely going to be getting this one, which is classic Babymouse–humor, pitfalls, friends, an aggressive locker–but it may be for her birthday, since by then she’ll have finished the 20 regular Babymouse books. This first BIG one (it’s listed in all caps on the book itself) deals with possibly the most prevalent issue facing girls today–body image. (Whiskers are part of a mouse’s body, right?) I love the Holm siblings’ ability to balance positive messages with humorously realistic outcomes, and while the last handball game might have been pushing it, I’ll let it slide, because the Babymouse books are just plain good. If you’ve got older elementary or middle grade kiddos, you can’t get much better than Babymouse in the graphic novel department. The books are short and doable for reluctant or struggling readers, but my youngest is a fantastic reader, and she devours them. Try putting Babymouse under your Christmas tree!