A few things reached, or are close to reaching, a satisfying conclusion this weekend.
First, this 1000-piece hot air balloon puzzle from White Mountain. I put the last pieces in on Friday night. Now to figure out my next puzzle…
I also finished Donald Hall’s memoir, String Too Short to be Saved. This was about his summers on his grandparents’ New England farm. I generally enjoyed it, though parts were a bit darker than I thought they would be — nostalgia with a fair amount of foreboding.
Perhaps what I enjoyed most was the “how” of reading it. I read about 60 pages in Hall’s book on Saturday afternoon sitting on my bed next to my 6-year-old. He was reading his first chapter book, one from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. He and I have had some rough showdowns lately, but this was so sweet, and he mostly kept to his promise that he wouldn’t interrupt my reading.
I have also now completed three out of four Mommy Days. I went to Hershey on Friday with the 11-year-old. Unfortunately, his stomach started hurting while we were there, so we wound up leaving early, which I know was disappointing to him. He did power through the line for the Reese’s Cup Challenge and easily won our two car competition, despite his ailment, but when he didn’t want to try any of the bigger roller coasters I knew he was not feeling well. We’ll try to hit the lobster roll truck this week to make up for the shortened experience. The 14-year-old and I went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore on Sunday. We really enjoyed seeing the sharks in particular. He wanted to go out for steak afterwards, so I talked him into trying the Brazilian steakhouse across the street. He was a little wary of this new cuisine, but then saw the upside of getting all kinds of steak cuts sliced on to your plate. They don’t stop coming with the steak until you tell them to! So that was a big hit, even if the drive was long. I-95 in the rain and traffic is…fun.
Now I just need to do the 6-year-old’s Mommy Day. I gave him a list of options, since I figured he wouldn’t know how to do research, but true to form, he was already thinking of ideas that weren’t on the list. We’ll see what he comes up with!
Very beautiful looking puzzle.
How do you store your puzzles in progress?
@Abby – they just sit on the dining room table. We tend to eat in the kitchen, and haven’t hosted any big dinner parties in the last 16 months so this hasn’t been a problem yet.
I took my son to a Brazilian steakhouse for a birthday during his teen years when the appetite was huge. At one point he looked at me wide-eyed and said “this is my new favorite restaurant!”. It was priceless!