My favorite traveling companions

 It is not lost on me how lucky I am that I can spend four full days in a minivan with my people and end the trip liking them even more. We went to Colorado/New Mexico in order to see family (and for Eli to wrestle, never miss a tournament!), but the getting there and back ended up being an awesome bonus vacation. Pro tip: Once your people are big, rent a van and commit to getting two rooms.  Game. Changer. 

The pictures are all out of order, so just know that I tried to load them chronologically. 

Going home means that suddenly we're related to EVERYONE. One of C's cousins happened to be on the floor at the tournament so Eli ended up with TWO enthusiastic supporters in his corner. He said, "It's interesting to get coached by someone who's never seen you wrestle before"

Averson and I at the Grand Canyon. I just love her little soul. 

Awe :) 

Petrified Forest National Park

Weigh ins. Eli JUST made it (OMG). Also, I took him to the gym to run on the treadmill and someone thought I was his pregnant girlfriend. So that was mortifying for all of us.

C's all time favorite restaurant. He was SO excited. And it was after weigh ins (hence the smile on Eli's face)

Gramma! I love that they all matched

Grandparents, Parents, and Grandkids. Herding cats. 

Cousins 

We stopped at the Four Corners on the way home. I hadn't been in probably 30 years. The kids loved it!

They kept saying, "It's so much bigger than I imagined!"

The lady who took this kept yelling at her dad (in the red) "DAD! You're in their picture!" I love it so much. Reminds me of my own dad and how he would be so 100% in his own world

Can you even?

Eli was so excited when we stayed at a hotel on Route 66. AND THEN! We woke up in the morning and discovered that next door was a Route 66 museum with a Cars car outside! 

They took so many of these as the sun set. I just love them an awful lot. 

Kitchen Ennui

 I don't know that I've ever had a better reason to use the word "ennui" than I do now. I believe that maybe we each have a certain number of meals we are capable of spontaneously planning and creating and if so, that perhaps I have reached my limit. I just CANNOT with any of it. I don't have any inspiration to plan meals, shop for meals, cook meals, eat the meals. Thank God C hasn't expended all of his allotted meals or my kids would absolutely be subsisting on air fried chicken nuggets, apples, and crystal lite drink mix. 

But seriously. How are we supposed to keep doing this? Do I just stick to the "spaghetti, tacos, grilled cheese, chicken wrap" rotation for the rest of my f-ing life? I feel like this might be indicative of something deeper because I literally cannot muster even the energy to consider meals. I even thought about going back on the HelloFresh/Every Plate thing but... eh. I'm doing this nutrition challenge at my gym, so maybe that will help? I mean, Averson's 11. I still have at least 7 more years of social responsibility and a need to ensure she doesn't get scurvy. 

Am I alone in this or is this one of those "Everyone has it and no one talks about it" things? 

Here's what I've planned this week:

Chicken wraps (with the above mentioned chicken nuggets). That's it. We had them yesterday. Tomorrow's a mystery. Today is (shrug)

My little artist

 It is just so fun to see my kids be good at the things they love. And it's so fun to see them finding the things that they love. Averson has been sketching for a while, but her skill has grown SO MUCH lately. She just popped this one out while she was trying to avoid going to bed

I exist!

 OH EM GEE. This whole time I thought I'd posted at the beginning of the month, only to look and see that I have been MIA since the end of January! I'm here. We're all good. Everyone's busy but in really fun ways. I'm going to update a bunch of posts (like Averson's birthday, SMH) but in the meantime, here's some pictures of the gallon of paint I spilled in the garage at 10:00 at night (but that miraculously did not hit a single vehicle). Then, because it was past my bedtime, I thought I'd use cat litter to clean it up. Chaos ensued. 

This is the after :/

Eleven

I'm sneakily late posting Averson's birthday, but my awesome, odd little duck turned eleven and it was such a fun day! She recently got a Greenlight debit card so for her birthday, we let her do a "shopping spree" at the mall. She flipped a coin for her spending limit, and then she and a friend spent the morning running amok. I love this age because she was equally excited about t-shirts at Hot Topic and building a Taylor Swift Build-A-Bear. 

Apparently she's eaten the same donut every birthday? I love that an awful lot.

This girl is so fun and we're loving to get to know who she is. Her art is remarkable and she's a voracious reader. She recently did an Improv class and I think that acting might be her "thing." She's got such a fun, quirky vibe and it's been a blast to see her come into her own

 

monday doesn't deserve proper punctuation

 This is going to be whiny. Which feels kind of shitty because I haven't posted in a while, but rest assured that I have a very sappy post about Eli and wrestling and another about how fun my kids are and another about this cold plunging bug I've got in my butt now. But today? Today can fucking suck it. It actually didn't start SUPER terrible, except that my damn period started a stupid week early and I'm pretty over the "Is it hormones? Is it perimenopause? Is it Cushings?" game. But then!

I have a kid, who shall remain nameless, but who I am working actively to move from a manager to a consultant role. Said kid has a 0 hour class as a result of some previously questionable (they're not questionable and this was not unforeseen. Back in my manager days, I think I very clearly outlined this possibility) life decisions. Whatevs. Except now said kid has determined that he they don't actually have to attend that class and can do the work independently. I remain dubious. Except that said kid blocks C's car in the morning and requires waking so half of the family can leave on time. And now since they're not leaving early, are in the shower during the same time I'm trying to usher another kid, another very ADHD kid, through their morning routine. Which led to me cop-knocking on the bathroom door this morning and arguing about how 7:30-8:00 actually is NOT 10 minutes. 

THEN, I rallied and Averson and I were headed out almost nearly on time. My last chore of the morning (after laundry and litter boxes and dishes and kid herding) is to put the dogs in their crates. This has become a huge PITA because both dogs want the big crate, but the big dog with bad hips is the one that actually needs to be in there. So I have to remove the small smelly one, usher in the big one, and then get the smelly one into his own. Where this morning I discovered that he had SHIT in the crate. So on my way out the door, I'm trying to clean up dog shit and rearrange blankets for these geriatric Hell Beasts who are quite honestly, not bringing a lot to the table these days. 

Guys? This was 8:30 this morning. 

And then work is just exceptionally work like. And I'm just over it. I'm over getting yelled at by people. Over spending my morning locating, and then cleaning, body fluids. I was so over it I couldn't even sing along to Jolene with Averson. Over over over. It's the most stupid monday. So stupid I'm not even going to capitalize it. 

What I Read: 2023

 You can see my previous wrap-ups here: 2022 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017

My goal for this year was 70 books, and as of this writing I'm sitting at 73 with just a couple hours left on my audiobook and about half of my physical book to go. So between now and New Years I may make it to 75 which would tie for my highest volume year since I started logging them!

Best Non-Fiction: 

My love of an audiobook commute continued. My top picks for memoirs, (a phrase I never thought I'd say) were Greenlight by Matthew McConaughey and Storyteller by Dave Grohl. I would listen to Matthew McConaughey read IKEA manuals, so this probably would've made the list even if the writing was bad. Thankfully it wasn't. He's an odd duck with an artist's perspective, but he's so authentically, unapologetically himself that it didn't feel obnoxious. Storyteller just made me feel glad that this person exists in the world. I'm not a music person, much to my husband's horror, so it was really interesting to hear/read some of the backstories behind really powerful cultural phenomena. Dave Grohl is a truly decent and good human and it comes through in his book. And while I wouldn't put it in my top reads, I think an honorable mention needs to go to Brittany Spears' The Woman in Me. Because patriarchy. This book was really polarizing when I started to talk about it with people and I think that warrants thinking about. 

This year I really loved the dystopian fantasies and the "WTF is happening?" genre, so you'll see those well represented. 

Books I gifted to others or obnoxiously demanded that people read: 

Fourth Wing: I found this one late in the year but I flew through it, then the sequal, and now I'm anxiously awaiting the next book. If you love dragons and books like Divergent/Maze Runner/etc. read this one ASAP. Also, the author did a really lovely job of writing about Ehler-Danlos while still keeping with the setting. 

Remarkably Bright Creatures: I would love to tell you that this book and my tattoo are unrelated, but I think this one cinched my love of octopuses. It's not non-fiction (obviously) and it goes beyond a "story about an octopus." It's just lovely. 

Books I loved about witches: 

It was a sleeper category but one that did not disappoint. 

Thistlefoot. Apparently 2023 was the year of Baba Yaga because the myth was featured in a lot of different things I read. This one sat on my TBR shelf for a while but when I picked it up, I devoured it. Two siblings with magical powers inherit a house on legs. I loved it a lot

Weyward. I love stories about female relatives. I love stories with multiple narrators. I love multiple timelines. This one hit all of those for me and was just delightful.

The Once and Future Witches. OMG. I wanted to take up arms. Sisters fighting the patriarchy with magical powers. It was amazing. 

I'm including Tress of the Emerald Sea here too, even though she's technically not a witch. But she is magic so it counts. I'd love to read this one with one of my kids. 

Books that lived up to the hype: 

Demon Copperhead. Just read it. It's amazing. I read David Copperfield a million years ago, probably drudged through it because I remember nothing. But this was phenomenal. 

Hang the Moon. Not my absolute favorite Jeanette Walls, but she knows how to tell a story. 

My favorite "WTF is happening?" books:

Sharkheart: OMG. I think my favorite part of this book is how smoothly she introduces a concept and we all just went with it like, "Oh sure. There could totally be a genetic predisposition to turning into animals and this is what that world would look like." It's very much in the vein of Nothing to See Here. 

How to Sell a Haunted House. This was the year of Grady Hendrix and while they can't all be My Best Friends Exorcism, this one was super weird and included a lot of creepy puppets. Honorable mention goes to Horrorstor. Or if you need to be a little more connected to reality, The Final Girl Support Group. 

Cutting Teeth. Sarah told me this was weird but for some reason I wasn't fully prepared for just how weird it was going to get. I've always lamented the lack of child zombies and this is what I get. 

Audiobook series that were absolutely worth it: 

The Nevernight Chronicles. Dystopian magical fantasy. Loved it a lot. Only a few spicy scenes but some very graphic war battles if you're listening in the family car. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses: I couldn't get through these fast enough! The narrator changed midway, which was disorienting, but I muscled through it. LOTS of spicy scenes if you happen to accidentally be listening with a fifth grader. My friend calls it "fairy porn"

I'd love to hear any recommendations for 2024. I've set my goal at 75, which is a teeny bit of a stretch but also I finished one on the 1st and my arbitrary ethics wouldn't let me count it for 2023, so I'm hoping I'm giving myself a headstart. And I just downloaded "Of Time and Turtles," which I've been waiting MONTHS for. Also if you did a wrap up, put your link in the comments!