It was a COVID week for me. My son tested positive last Sunday and had to stay home all week from school. He is doing much better today, thank goodness – he had a fever the first 2 days and then the coughing. He’s coughing less now. It was a 4 day weekend for the kiddos anyway. My daughter also had to stay home from school because she’s a close contact – so she was bored and missed school a lot. I had to put on my nursing hat this week, one of many that moms wear lol…😅. It was a long week.
My son’s birthday is this Saturday so we’ll have a small celebration here at home with just our immediate family. I didn’t plan anything just in case my daughter caught Covid and had to quarantine for longer but so far she’s been negative. We’ll do something more fun for him labor day weekend probably.
Nothing this week, but you know I’m about to watch House of Dragons!!
Games I Played:
My Singing Monsters
Cooking Dash – still grinding!
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
I don’t know how I feel more tired with my kids in school?! I think because drop off and pick up is me leaving the house early in the morning and then waiting awhile in the car in the afternoon – why is school pick up always chaos?! My daughter loves school so much! So her sunburn on her nose is peeling – I’m curious to see how school pictures look – they were taken on Tuesday and I tried my hardest to cover it up with concealer and powder lol. Oh well, it is what it is! At least we’ll look at the picture and remember the weekend before picture taking and her skin is peeling now so it’s healing at least.
Our dog Atlas, has been getting more cuddle times with me and walks too. But he misses the kids, at night he plops right on top of my daughter’s legs to go to sleep.
Today we have another birthday party at an outdoor location – and I’m making her wear a hat! It is just too hot to be outside right now, and I need her skin to heal. Other than that, I’m just trying my best to keep chugging along. 😩 Our fridge stopped cooling down so I had to buy a mini fridge and I turned it off to defrost the whole thing (you know a restart lol) so let’s hope that works because it’s hard trying to find a repairman lately. Other things happened but I’m tired of the negative, so I’ll end it here.
Never Have I Ever (Season 3/Netflix) – I wish the episodes weren’t so short!!! 😭 I love this show and it made me laugh a lot – I needed laughs this week. And Devi has another hot boy to crush on? I don’t blame her, Des is a cutie!😍 I found myself saying omg…why is he so handsome?! lol…but okay how about that cliffhanger?!!!
Games I Played:
My Singing Monsters
Cooking Dash – still grinding!
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
What a week…it was bonkers. I did manage to complete a few books, which is good since I do have arcs to get through and library books too. This week was all about back to school for my kids and dealing with mornings, packing lunches, and busy school pick-up traffic 😣 (oh the usual!!). My daughter did get her kindergarten orientation and half day, I’m so proud of her! She’s officially in Kindergarten and I now have both kids in school. I hope they have an amazing year!
My family and I also had a pool party for a cousin who is here visiting from Ohio. I thought we were having blessed summer weather here in Hawaii, it’s been perfect and then August hit…and the wind has stopped, the humidity has kicked up. Yesterday at the pool my weather app said it was 87 degrees but felt like 95 degrees. And my daughter, who takes my husband’s side and has fair skin spent 4 hours in the pool because she didn’t want to leave her cousins. The max I usually stay at the pool with her is 1 hour. So yes her face today is sunburned! She even had a fever last night. And then…as if I had any energy to spare after the pool party, I had a concert to go to! 😣 I almost backed out but my friend offer to pick me up (which is out of her way). The humidity didn’t disappear and we walked from the venue to look for food…so by the time we were in the show my feet were killing me and I felt sticky. I This may show my age, but I went to the New Kids on the Block concert. Oh yes…I am a child of the 80’s and this was THE boy band that was popular. 😅 I loved New Edition too, another boy band from Boston. Boston was hot in the 80’s huh? 🤷🏻♀️
Obviously they don’t look like this anymore! LOL…and I don’t look I’m 10 years old so that’s fair! 🤣 I cannot believe this song came out in 1988. They are much older and Joey doesn’t have the high pitched boy voice anymore. You can tell it was a strain to perform lol, like Donnie Wahlberg was out of breath but hey…it was fun and they even played some 80’s and 90’s music to pump of the crowd. All their slow ballads reminded me of elementary school dances and crushing on boys!🥰
Now the opening act was TLC!!! And I was such a big fan because I was starting high school and these 3 ladies were all about woman empowerment, talking truthfully about sex, beauty standards, and even AIDS. Their music really made an impression on me and it was so sad Left-Eye is gone (she died in a plane crash years ago). Their songs really got me through high school. ❤️
Got home late because the traffic getting out of the venue so mid you I was exhausted and my daughter’s sunburn gave her a fever. My hubby said she was crying for me while I was at the concert 😭 so I gave her Tylenol and knocked out next to her. I woke up all achy so TODAY I get to rest and catch up on things.
So many things happened last week, I hope this week will be much more chill.
**I barely got this post ready for today lol…** so busy.😅
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
This is it – the last day of July! 😩 Back to school for my son tomorrow and orientation week for my daughter so…here we go….
But this does mean, I finally get a few hours away from my kids FINALLY starting the second week of August. I don’t know how to act. 😅
Oh another thing I did the past few days was make an effort to update the graphics on my blog. I think I got it to where I will be happy with it for some time. (I hope.)
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
I feel like this past week was the last one of summer for me! This week starts a very busy week – my hubby is getting hernia surgery, my daughter goes for her Kindergarten placement test, and we got school t-shirt uniform pick and teacher meet and greet for my son on Friday! Gonna try and haul all his supplies on that day too. And that’s it, school starts for my kids on August 1st (for my 4th grader), my daughter will get a tour and orientation and a half day of school and then she starts full on August 8th.
Where has the summer gone? 😢 I’m mentally preparing myself for…everything! How was your week? Can you believe July is coming to an end soon?
Persuasion (Netflix) – a very cheeky, modern-ish version of Persuasion. It’s not going to please anyone who wants the movie to be exactly like the book but I think Dakota Johnson is funny and beautiful. Also Henry Golding is gorgeous! I kept an open mind and enjoyed it enough. My favorite Persuasion is still the one that was made in 1995. Now if they remade that one exactly I would be so happy.
Mystic Pizza (cable tv) – I have loved the movie Mystic Pizza since I was a teenager! I’ll never get tired of watching it.
Games I Played:
My Singing Monsters
Just Dance – doing my cardio again
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
Today is my 11th wedding anniversary and my hubby, kids and I are going to do a buffet brunch together. Now we had a lovely week that started off with A Peanuts Adventure event at the Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu. Now Charlie Brown and Snoopy is what my hubby and I grew up with as kids. Our kids know Snoopy since he’s iconic but never had the patience to sit down and watch any Charlie Brown specials. But we had SO much fun. The goal was to download and app and find clues around the event. We found all the clues and they really did a great job inside the event!
Here are some pics from the event:
There were about 8 rooms to explore and there were some characters in some rooms that you could take photos with like Snoopy, Lucy and Charlie Brown! There was a Winter Dance room with a lit up dance floor – too much fun! We found all the clues and yes the staff helps you out lol.
The classroom was fun, they had an old microphone stand and if you speak in it – it had that iconic “whaawhaawhaa” kinda sound. Of course my hubby had to try it out 😅. I loved Schroeder’s piano room and the Great Pumpkin scene was done really well. We got to take a family photo with Charlie Brown in his room and then we went into the “scream” room. That was cool – you could scream into a microphone and watch the scream-meter move lol. The prices for the tickets were a bit high BUT I do think it was well worth it – there were so many things for the kids to do and it was colorful and come one…it’s Snoopy. How do you not love Snoopy?
How was your week? Did you get a lot done? Watch anything good? Read any amazing books or books you didn’t finish? What are you reading?…Leave me a comment below!
Hi everyone! I haven’t written an Outside of Books post in a long time because the holidays caught up to me. 😑 I’m still working on things for my Etsy shop, but very sparingly. I have no motivation! Also still helping my son with his youtube channel – I try to motivate him but sometimes that’s hard too. He’s finding out that content creators put it a lot of work to make good content.
But the thing that has taken over our life the past two weeks is the movie Encanto! We are obsessed.😅
I didn’t have any interest in seeing the movie only because I didn’t know or hear much about it. But then I was on TikTok scrolling and this one song kept popping up…“We Don’t Talk About Bruno”! I heard a snippet of it and was intrigued, plus I love latin music – it’s my favorite kind of music to work out to. I asked my kids if they wanted to watch the movie with me but they seemed lukewarm to the idea. So I started watching it by myself but when the house, Casita, was showing it’s magical powers I called my kids to watch with me, I knew my daughter would love it. My son came in when “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” started and stayed til the end.
We love the story and the soundtrack, it gave me opportunities to talk to my kids, mostly my son about adults and how we have pasts too. Every time I watch the movie, I learn something new, but I just really love how I can relate to a bunch of the family members.
I won’t rank the songs because I love them all. But let’s talk about a few of them:
Surface Pressure | Songwriter: Lin-manuel Miranda | Artist: Jessica Darrow
I love this song, even though I’m not the oldest sibling in my family. I’m the youngest but I was the only one I out my first generation American cousins and my sister to go to a four year college and get a degree. The fact that I wanted to do that, was a big fight. It didn’t help that the college was out of state. I got lecture by my uncles of how wrong it was for me to leave the family! Yet they also pressured me about becoming a doctor (which was not in my plans AT ALL…they just didn’t know that). Here are some lyrics from the song:
“Pressure like a grip, grip, grip and it won’t let go, whoa Pressure like a tick, tick, tick ’til it’s ready to blow, whoa Give it to your sister, your sister’s stronger See if she can hang on a little longer Who am I if I can’t carry it all? If I falter
Under the surface I hide my nerves, and it worsens, I worry something is gonna hurt us Under the surface The ship doesn’t swerve as it heard how big the iceberg is Under the surface I think about my purpose, can I somehow preserve this?”
These lyrics really hit me now as a mom. I feel the pressure on me at times, pressure I put on myself!🤦🏻♀️
I love this song! My kids love it because Bruno is so awkward and funny. He is their favorite character. I love the whole ensemble singing, it reminds me of a musical. But the beat is awesome and I can’t help dance to it. It’s so catchy. Bruno gets a bad rep in the movie but Mirabel finds out he was just misunderstood because of his gift!
I felt like Isabela as a child, my parents and uncles and aunts wanted me to be so perfect. Mostly my parents though , my dad wouldn’t even let me cut my long hair (it was “feminine”) until he gave up the battle in my freshman year of high school! I chopped my hair off so short the moment he said I could. 😅 It was the combination of perfection and pressures though that made me leave Hawaii to go to college. I needed a break. I love this song – here are some lyrics from it:
“I just made something unexpected Something sharp Something new It’s not symmetrical or perfect But it’s beautiful And it’s mine What else can I do?”
Dos Oruguitas | Songwriter: Lin-manuel Miranda | Artist: Sebastián Yatra
The song that makes me cry even though I can’t understand Spanish, I had to look up the english translation and ugh…it’s so good. The lyrics are just so beautiful. This song is all emotion. It’s like a lullaby, my daughter loves it so much, I can hear her singing it even though she doesn’t know Spanish either, I hear her try and it’s so sweet. In this part of the movie, she likes to climb into my lap – she’s 5 and I tell her she and her brother are my oruguitas (little caterpillar). 🥺🐛 But this is the moment in the movie where Mirabel understands and acknowledges what her grandmother went through when she was younger. There is such trauma her grandma lived through, she never got to face it, she kept on going because she was a single mother of three kids and needed to survive for them. 😢 I like to tell my son that adults were young once too and things happen in life to change them sometimes. Hurt people hurt people. I love that Mirabel becomes the catalyst for change in the family…broken but put back together, even better and stronger.❤️
” Two oruguitas Cocooned and waiting Each in their own world Anticipating What happens after The rearranging?
And so afraid of change In a world that never stops changing So let the walls come down The world will never stop changing (Never stop changing) (Never stop changing) (Never stop changing)
Ay, mariposas Don’t you hold on too tight Both of you know It’s your time to go To fly apart, to reunite Wonders surround you Just let the walls come down Don’t look behind you Fly till you find Your way toward tomorrow”
Abuela gets acknowledge in Dos Oruguitas and in All of You, Mirabel gets acknowledge. Ugh…my heart! Apologies, acknowledgements…all we want sometimes is just to be seen. Even in a family. I come from a big family of aunts, uncles, cousins…and we lived all together for all of my childhood until I went to middle school. So I didn’t only live in my own little 4 person dysfunctional family…I got to witness all the other dysfunctional families in the house so that we were one huge dysfunctional family! lol…I can laugh now but wow…this movie brought some crazy emotions in me and memories.
“Look at this home We need a new foundation It may seem hopeless but we’ll get by just fine Look at this family, a glowing constellation So full of stars and everybody wants to shine
But the stars don’t shine, they burn And the constellations shift I think it’s time you learn You’re more than just your gift
And I’m sorry I held on too tight Just so afraid I’d lose you too The miracle is not some magic that you’ve got The miracle is you, not some gift, just you The miracle is you All of you, all of you”
I read a comment somewhere said the movie was about generational trauma and healing. And this is it, 100% and as a first-generation American from a family of immigrants, this movie hit me hard. I love how in the end it was about love, hope and repairing something to make it better. I’m so glad my kids love it too – even though I swear this movie is more for adults than children lol.
Have you watched this movie? What did you think of the story and music?
Hi everyone! I’ve had a lot of things happening outside of books. For awhile my Etsy shop has been slow – it’s been slow since the pandemic began but that’s okay. When I started my Etsy shop 9 years ago I started with selling macrame bracelets and then I got into hand stamping metal. The five years I did hand stamping metal was really good to me and it really became a busy part-time job for me. Then I had my second child and I decided hammering metal was not the best idea with a newborn around. So I closed my shop for 2 1/2 years and only came back last year because I started doing resin.
Resin is so much fun but wow…it really can depend on weather since you are relying on a chemical to create your products. I live in Hawaii and I need to work outside because the fumes from the resin. I did it indoor, in my laundry room for like 2 months but honestly…the smell of fumes lingered. So, back outside I went – but if the weather is too hot, my resin hardened too fast. If I didn’t cover things well, bugs got stuck in the resin and lint. A lot of my items selling on Etsy are B grades because of all the ways it didn’t turn out good. But it’s so pretty when the final product is cured…you get to play with color and glitter and I just love it. I wish I had the space to do it indoors. 😔
Right now a hand-stamping customer of mine, bless her heart, just ordered 265 keychains from me. So I have ordered the material and will be doing that in the next 2 weeks. With the holidays coming, I’ll be adding more hand-stamped items to my shop, including ornaments. And with that said, I have a Labor Day sale happening this weekend at my Etsy shop! 😬
Here are some things I still have in my shop:
Click on the photo to go to my shopping site!Click on the photo to go to my shopping site!Click on photo to go to my shopping site!
There are a few bigger pieces too but these are some of the cute keychains that I have in my shop right now. I’m going to do some resin next week, as long as the weather cooperates with me and try to add more phone grips.
I’ll be adding more hand stamped keychains as well and hopefully bookmarks soon!
Thanks for reading and let me know what you like to do outside of reading and obsessing over books. 😀 ~ Yolanda
I let my son have a gaming youtube channel this summer. He’s been asking for five years now and he’s been learning the ins and outs of screen recording on his ipad or using a capture card for his nintendo switch – but he hates editing. So he is doing the editing? Me. 😂 And I haven’t used iMovie (I have a MacBook) in forever. It’s been a learning experience for me and I’m finally getting the hang of it…sort of. Also I’ve learned to use youtube for their audio library and uploading, etc…see I learn so much being a stay at home mom!
Outside of his gaming videos he and his sister have started making Pikmin videos. What are Pikmin you ask? It’s these creatures:
My kids collection of Pikmin
They are from a Nintendo game called PIKMIN and from what I learned from my son (since I only played the game with him a handful of times)…they are flower creatures. They come from the ground, which is kind of cute but they all have a different elemental power. Now as you can see from this collection, some are store bough plushies (those are the more durable looking ones) and the rest – well…I sewed them 🤣 with left over fabric (old tshirts) or felt. It was a lot of work…and now that we have a puppy – he loves them too. As you can see, Pink Pikmin has not faired well at all…and some eyes have gone missing even. 😭
They use my cell phone to film the videos. I did the first couple “takes” and taught them how to prop the phone etc…so at least now they can set it up and shoot a video without me directing them. Oh yes…I’m director, co-producer, tantrum calmer (for his sister who wants to be included), brainstormer mediator and editor….oh and social media coordinator or whatever title that is – I post the videos to Facebook so Nana in Philadelphia can watch them and whoever else. It’s exhausting but my kids and I feel so accomplished when we actually finish an “episode”.
According to my son, there are 2 series he’s making – 1st one is called The Pikmin Quests ~ where there is some storyline in my son’s head (yeah there is NO scriptwriting in this process lol)…there is danger, there is drama, there are plushy fights…you get it.
Here are the first two episodes:
And then he wanted a 2nd series where the Pikmin just go around our house and neighborhood and have fun. 🤷🏻♀️ Here is the first video for that series:
So obviously, I can’t already see things on here that bug me – like the first 2 videos I saved at different sizes I think. I couldn’t remember what settings I used for the first video like fonts for the title etc…so now I’m writing notes down in a notebook when I create these things – like song titles, fonts, and to remember to film in landscape mode instead of using my phone upright! 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
Anyway that was my life outside of books this past weekend! The videos were filmed weeks ago…but I finally sat my booty down to edit all the clips and make into a “video”. It’s just been so busy with my son back in school, entertaining my daughter who is not in school and a puppy who wants to be outside all the time and it’s so HOT. 🥵
Leave me any tips below if you are a youtuber and make videos! Stay safe and thanks for reading!
Hi friends! So outside of books I’m not only a mom of humans, I’m a mommy of an almost 9 month old puppy named Atlas. I feel like we’ve had him forever. We’ve had dogs before but my kids were really young when we had them and they had passed away. I feel like Atlas is the dog that will be remembered during their childhood and watching them bond is the sweetest thing ever.
Atlas is a mixed breed, supposedly a dachsund mix…but he is all terrier! He looks like the twin of a dog I had in my 20’s. So definitely a terrier, not sure what kind though. He is the cuddliest boy.
The first day we got him 🥰 He was 2 months old!
There was a moment when I thought the kids wouldn’t bond with him because he had razor sharp puppy teeth. My son was afraid of his teeth and puppy energy (he had the zoomies for a good 2 months!!). My daughter didn’t care if his teeth got her but I minded a lot so I had to train my kids and Atlas at the same time, one not to bite and the others to pick up his signals and to train him! It was a challenge…I almost regretted having a puppy. 😫😭 I had raised two puppies but that was before I had children so it was a new venture for me for sure.
With a lot of consistency in keeping his schedule, training, playing and more training…he is pretty much potty trained (if we leave the house sometimes he can’t hold it when he hears our car pull up in the garage). He is so cuddly and always wants affection. He is sort of obsessed with my parents, his grandparents who come over once a week to my house – oh his excitement when he sees them. It’s a little bit uncontrollable lol…but we are working on that. I’d say neutering him and his adult teeth finally coming in really calmed his energy down.
He has a favorite pair of fuzzy socks that belonged to my son – but he carries them in his mouth and whines every morning and drops them in the lap of my kids. It’s so sweet and they thank him for the socks. He also has one favorite squeaky bone toy he plays fetch with outside. I’ve tried different toys but the bone is his favorite, so yes I had to hunt for a pack of it on Amazon!
Atlas and my daughter are like puppies together! They are the youngest in our family and have quite a bond. She never feared him even in his wild early puppy stage when he was learning. Now she can’t even pick him up (we had him when he was 3 lbs haha…he’s now much heaver) but that’s okay, he flops down into her lap constantly.
As for my son, I had my son start doing his lunch and dinner feedings and taking him outside to potty. I told him when he stays consistent with his routine they will bond and sure enough – now he isn’t afraid of his teeth. Now I catch the two of them playing fetch outside together without adult supervision. I’ve found Atlas in his bed a couple times cuddled up next to my son and it makes me so happy.
Atlas was the perfect fit for our family and he has really grown into a loving, affectionate dog. We are still working on socializing him (he gets afraid of other dogs – especially big ones) but he’s much more curious on his walks so that’s good. I can’t believe he’s not even a year old yet, it feels like we’ve had him forever!
Do you have any pets? Let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading. 😘 ~ Yolanda
