Leisure Time

Although Stephanie are kept quite busy by the girls (and we love it), I have found some time for some lazy summer activities in between feeding, diaper blow-outs, bottle washings, and general household chores. The time is in 20-60 minutes increments, and can be interrupted at any point. So far I have:

- Beat the new Ghost Busters video game for wii. Talk about a good implementation of the wii-mote and game play! It was really entertaining blasting ghosts with the proton beam and reliving the humor of Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray.

- Read The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. It won deservingly won the Newbury award last year. Nobody Owens is the main character who is the sole survivor of his family, all of whom are murdered in the first chapter. Nobody toddles into a graveyard and is adopted by the ghosts. The story is a great variation of Kipling's Jungle Books.

- Read Life as We Knew It. In this story an asteroid knocks the Moon into a closer orbit. Tides are disrupted, weather patterns screwed up, coastal areas are swept away by Tsunamies, and volcanos cause climatic upheaval. It is the story of a high school girl and her family's struggle for survival after all infrastructure is destroyed. A good but scary read. It makes me want to make sure we have supplies in case of an earthquake, especially with the girls.

- Maintained the flower bed I put in right before Elise and Charlotte were born. I buried a "soaker hose" to keep the plants irrigated and it has worked very well.

From New Flower Bed

- Tiger Woods Golf 10 for Wii with the motion-plus controller. This game is tough! The motion + controller makes it very sensitive to your swing motion. One fun aspect is that it has a disc-golf game built in. It is amazing how well the game reflects your real hand motions. It is very fun.

From Pete Darragh

There are several house projects I need to do before summer is over. I would like to re-read Love and Logic for the classroom (I need to refresh my classroom management skills), and I need to journal for Charlotte and Elise. I started a journal to give to them on their birth day, but haven't picked it back up. There is so much to write and I am overwhelmed by it for some reason. The weather is so gorgeous outside I wish I could take more advantage of it, but nothing is as great as the time I am privileged to have at home with my daughters.