Procrastinating with Birthday Pigs and Books

I'm prepping for testimony tomorrow, feeling lonely because no one is on our work IM chat (because it's 10:45 at night) and James is working with his headphones on (as he's been doing every night for the last 10 days; spring swim lesson registration is no joke) and I can't turn on the Great British Baking Show to comfort me because I'm reviewing documents and prepping for testimony tomorrow.

So I'm blogging. Because that is way less distracting to my exhibit review than people in British accents baking pies with strange flavor combinations and saying delightful things like, I'm a bit chuffed, to be honest. I'm surrounded by post-it flags, post-it notes, pens, highlighters, a few paper clips, a beautifully organized binder, and a half-drafted outline. We go on the record at 9 a.m.

So let's dive right in.

First, and most importantly, a blog reader left me a comment with a link to companions for the birthday pig and birthday dino candle holders that are a sacred part of our Lag Liv family birthday tradition.

I held back from using allcaps, but you CANNOT IMAGINE my excitement over this discovery. I first bought our little birthday animals at a little antique mall store in Siren, Wisconsin in 2010. Claire was a newborn and Cora was not yet even imagined. Since then I have googled and searched for more candle holders for YEARS. Years! And on ebay! They were just never available when I happened to look. My box arrived today and I'm in love. I can't wait to show the kids. I can't wait to select one myself for my next birthday. The birthday big and birthday dino have mates now! And friends! Seriously you guys, this is a big moment. Claire has the next birthday and we're going to surprise her with a whole bevy of birthday candle animals in the morning and it's going to be the best.

She'll be turning 8! In a major break with tradition, maybe we'll use ALL eight variety of birthday animals. I don't even know. There's just so many to choose from and I don't want to hurt any of their feelings.

Almost as exciting as multiple birthday pigs - Voting! I got up early to vote in the Texas primary at 7:30 a.m. on my way in to work. I had picked out one of my very favorite shirts to hold my voting sticker.

James stopped in after dropping the kids off at school. We're all in for all the elections all the time. Our front yard is too.

As are those of MANY of our neighbors. Brings me a little drop of joy every time I drive by one and two greet me on each side every time I pull onto our street. Democratic turnout was up 84% which is exciting and the highest in 16 years. With new embarrassments and ethical lows and rules being ignored and broken daily in the White House, it's nice to feel hopeful about something.

Cora colored that rainbow. It felt appropriate there. She continues to take her schoolwork VERY SERIOUSLY and we continue to hope she gets into our elementary school's pre-K program next fall. She'd love it, we'd love having all the kids in school for one year, and we'd particularly love the end of paying full-time daycare tuition after ELEVEN YEARS of it. Fingers crossed.

More Cora work. Her handwriting is better than Landon's. (Though not Claire's, but Claire's is better than mine.)

Landon has been training Cora in the fine art of fort building. She was pretty proud of this effort.

Landon continues to be a tween. Delightful and hilarious, sweet and thoughtful, innocent and inquisitive, emotional and frustrating as all fucking hell. Frequently all in the space of the same few hours. Luckily we've been spending most of our time on the front half of that sentence lately and it's been nice for all of us, including him.

Reading Robinson Crusoe before bed

Which brings me to my request- I need book recommendations for him for our 8-day Spring Break road trip. He reads voraciously and very very quickly. He LOVES true story adventure books: mountain climbing, animal anything, hiking, exploring, travel- he loves it when it's "real" (or could be real, or is based on real, or is just generally grounded in reality; obviously I don't understand this). But while he has a high school reading level, he nowhere near high school, so I struggle to keep him in age-appropriate books. For example, I just ordered a book about a famous free climber only to skim through it up on arrival and discover a whole chapter about all the action he got in Vegas on a break between climbs. So that's a hard no on that one, but I don't want to have to read every book I give him (true stories totally NOT being my genre and my genre absolutely NOT being Landon-appropriate).

So, if you have any authors, series, or titles to recommend for a 10-year-old non-fiction loving kid, I'd love to hear them! And he really does love ANY non-fiction. He devours fun fact books (and then reads them to us, by the hour... I'm not packing any of those on the trip) and biographies, and he still loves fictional stories, funny stories, comic-based stories, and really anything any 10-year-old does, but his truest love would be for the true ones. (This one was a big hit... but it's been hard to find others in the same age-appropriate genre.) He can handle intensity, scariness, and darkness in the plot (he read Into Thin Air after I did and he loved it), I'd just like to stay away from stories of elevator hookups in Vegas hotels. (And the longer the book the better! I can only check out 10 on his kindle at a time before we go.)

I'll stick with my urban fantasy paranormal romances and am currently trying to keep myself from devouring Karen Marie Moning's latest in the Fever series (High Voltage, came out Tuesday and I'm showing SUCH RESTRAINT by going to sleep each night without having finished it). But after that, I'm going to need new book recommendations too. Maybe in another post.

Speaking of restraint, I suppose I should stop blogging and finish my work. It is nearly midnight and I didn't forgo The Great British Baking Show AND my new book to go to bed after 1 a.m. (Except I probably did.)