The Reading Hour

Twenty minutes into our "reading hour" today...

Cokes consumed: 3

Nutella toasts made: 4

Arguments begun: 6

Belches heard: 3

Books lost: 4

Accusations flung: 2

Bags of popcorn popped and eaten: 1

Pets played with: 2

Words read: ZERO.

 Painting by Julian Merrow Smith, www.shiftinglight.com

The Trifecta

Around our house during football season, The Trifecta is when Ole Miss wins and State and Southern lose. But here...here is the true trifecta of my dreams.

All three of my children reading. That's good...that's very good. (And tragically rare.)

But, even better, they're reading in Oxford. Which is, well, no matter how you feel about Ole Miss...Oxford is a great place. I'm not saying it's actually Heaven, but I have heard it called "heavenly."

And then, to make it perfect...they are reading at Square Books Jr.

We went to Oxford while we were in Thaxton visiting Goober the day after Father's Day. He may be having aneurysm repair surgery soon and we wanted to get to see him before all of that. Since I was late mailing his gift, we got to be there when it arrived. Old Guys Rule, with a quote from John Wayne on the back, "You never see a cowboy on a psychiatrist's couch." It was a very fast, but good trip.

If I put a picture on my blog, maybe I won't have to buy them for myself...

How cute are these? I've never seen anything like this in my life, but suddenly I really don't know how I've lived without them until now. Cupcake stands from Olive & Cocoa, my newest favorite catalog full of all kinds of stuff.

Mulling over Multitude Monday

Well, I said that I was no longer going to comment on how quickly Mondays come around or on the fact that I am so late posting, so I won't. (See how I did that...mentioning it by saying I wasn't going to mention it? There must be a literary term for that.) I will count this, however...Number 82. I do not blog for a living.

This past month has been full of excitement. School is out (Number 83). We went to Dollywood. We came home from Dollywood (Number 84). We got a new kitten, Lucy, who is such a joy (Number 85). We went to a couple of soccer tournaments. Soccer ended for us (Number 86). The boys went to Twin Lakes (87). We had Ella's birthday/slumber/swimming party at Mom L's. We went to Flora to celebrate Mama's birthday (88). Kiper and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary (89) and got to go to New Orleans for the weekend (90), because Haley and Will (91 and 92) came to keep the children (94, 95, 96) for us. We got upgraded (97) to the Teddy Roosevelt Suite at The Roosevelt, which was Amazing. A piano in our suite! All we needed was to have a party and invite Harry Connick, Jr. to play it for us. Kiper is determined to learn to play so we can go back next year.

I want to make it to One Hundred this week so I'm going to also mention, specifically...

98. Clancy's Restaurant
99. New Orleans French Bread
100. Beignets (Yay! One-tenth of the way to A Thousand Thanks!)
101. Jazz music
102. Doctors
103. The ability to go see Goober last week on the spur of the moment.
104. An important negotiation that has worked out for Kiper's business.
105. Getting to spend time with Heather and the Starnses today.

My camera has been lost for a couple of weeks. It needs to turn up before we go to the beach on Saturday. I wish I had some photos to liven up this post.