The Irrepressible Samantha.....

How Many Have YOU Read?

I found this list on my friend Amy's blog (She's wonderful! Her blog is  called The English Geek, if you google the title, you'll find her.)  It's the Top 100 list of books from The Big Read, which averages that most people have read six or fewer books from the list. I've read more than 6 but not even  close to what Amy's read.  

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).

3) Underline the books you LOVE.

Ready? OK!

1. Pride and Prejudice - I owe Melissa and Maury for introducing me to Jane Austen.  First came the Colin Firth miniseries and then I had to read it.  I LOVE it and I also enjoy a series of 3 books by Pamela Aiden that tell the P&P story from Darcy's perspective.  I think they're called  (1) Darcy Fitzwilliam, Gentleman: An assembly such as this; (2)Darcy Fitzwilliam, Gentleman: Duty and Desire (I know sounds like a Harlequin, had to defend myself when Mark found me reading that one) & (3) Darcy Fitzwilliam, Gentleman; These three remain.

2.The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. I liked the movies but haven’t really been motivated to read them....

3.  Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte  MY FAVORITE BOOK!!!! I have read this more times than I can count. Love it!

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling. I love these books. They are such a transport to another world, and they teach such beautiful lessons about love and friendship.

 5.To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. My sister Maury’s favorite or close to favorite book. She turned me on to this one too! Really enjoyed the old B&W movie with Gregory Peck.

 6.The Bible. Not completely bolded because I haven’t read it cover to cover but I believe I have read most of it through seminary and scripture study.  I did underline it because I love what I read.  I’m sure I’m missing more old Testament than New.  Favorite verse  psalm 27:1

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte. Never wanted to read it because I’ve heard from more than one person that every character is unlikable.

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell. (can’t remember if I read this in high school or not....)

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. I even wrote a book note on it.

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11.Little Women - Louisa M Alcott. I did a Book report on this in 5th grade and fell in love with Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth.  I have read it many times and still love it.

12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy..

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. 

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare. 

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16.The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien. 

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks. 

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger. 

19. The Time Traveler’s's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. 

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot. 

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell  saw the movie first.  Then I read the book. I was shocked to find out how wicked Scarlett actually was.  She was bad to the bone.  one of the most selfish characters I’ve read.

22.The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald. College I think, can’t remember much about it.

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. I WANT to read this. I loved the miniseries.

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25.The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. 

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28.Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. I think my Dad really likes this book. Am I right dad?

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll. 

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ...as a kid, long time ago

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis. As a kid, want to reread them now. 

34. Emma - Jane Austen. 

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen   Again... Thanks Maury. 

36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini. 

37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden  started it but didn’t like it, didn’t finish

39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne. I have read many pooh stories but not the whole  thing...

40. Animal Farm - George Orwell

41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. I really didn’t like this book. I’m probably overthinking it but I felt like the author had an agenda besides writing a novel. 

42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving. 

44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery. All of them, several times.

46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

47.The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood. 

 48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

49. Atonement - Ian McEwan

50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

51. Dune - Frank Herbert

52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ... my next trip to the library

54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

57.Brave New World - Aldous Huxley. 

58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

60.Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck.

61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

63.The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold. I thought this book was interesting but I had a hard time being in the head of the killer so much. It was also just very very sad the way her family fell apart so much.  

64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas.

65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac. 

66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy. 

67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding. 

68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie. 

69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville. 

70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 

71. Dracula - Bram Stoker   

72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. My mom’s favorite. Saw the play in LA about 15 years ago with my mom and sisters. It was beautiful.

73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

74.Ulysses - James Joyce. 

75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. 

76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

77. Germinal - Emile Zola

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

79. Possession - AS Byatt. 

80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. 

81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker. 

83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 

85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

86. Charlotte's Web - EB White

87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. 

91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

93. Watership Down - Richard Adams. 

94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

98.Les Miserables - Victor Hugo. I also want to read this book. I loved the movie. Carly just got to see the musical done at Tuachan in St. George while she was at a leadership conference. I even checked it out from the library once but it overwhelmed me and I never started it......

I don’t know what happened to #99 and #100, they werent’ on Amy’s list and so aren’t on mine!  I read a comment on Amy’s that said this list was created by British readers who voted online re: their favorite books so it is what it is but it’s an interesting list and kind of fun to see some you will never read and some you might want to...                                                         I’m Curious to see how many you’ve read! I’m at 17 complete and a few partials.....

ps I can't underline anything in my posts. have you had this trouble Maury on blogspot? I had to work this up in a different program and cut and paste.  It still didn't' transfer right so that is why there is so much underlined and not just the titles... I couldn't' fix it. Let me know what works for you other bloggers on blogspot?

The chicken heart..... bump..bump..bump..bump...

Yesterday we took the whole family to Tucano's Brazilian Grill. Carly and Rachel had asked to go for their birthdays so we were going to take just them but that would have meant finding a babysitter and *gasp* paying one! We have been spoiled with free baby-sitting in the form of our lovely Carly (and now Rachel) for 2 years now. Also, I heard that young kids were free so I  called to get the details.  If we were seated before 4pm Rachel and Jacob would be $6 each (lunch price) and Samantha and Mason are free. Carly being a mature 14 would be the adult price but we had figured on that already.  Mark was a little wary but he was up for it since we were going mid-afternoon and it shouldn't be too busy.  The kids were so excited. None of them had ever been.  For those of you unfamiliar with Tucano's, let me 'esplain....  They have a great salad bar with pasta and sauces, mashed potatoes, gravies, green salad fixings, fruit, several prepared vegetable, pasta, seafood, veggie salads and some different items like quail eggs & hearts of palm.  Then these servers come around with all different kinds of grilled meats on skewers periodically and you take what you want. Some examples are bacon-wrapped turkey (mark's & My favorite), garlic sirloin, sausage, BBQ chicken thighs, pork, tri-tip sirloin and many more. They also have a couple ungrilled choices like battered, fried cod in mango sauce & shredded brisket. Oh and there's also grilled veggies (green peppers, onions, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow summer squash) and grilled pineapple.  Last night the pineapple was the best I've ever had there, juicy and hot. yum!  

Happily, we were seated right away and the experience began.  I had made the children dress up a bit, not church dress or anything but a nice casual.  We explained how it all worked and Samantha started bouncing crazily in her seat.  Mark made eye contact that said "Are you sure this is going to work?!" We pulled out the whole "would you like to leave now?" bit which thankfully worked and she settled down.  Jacob decided to follow his dad's course of action which is to leave the salad bar alone and wait for the meat and ONLY the meat.  The rest of the kids came with me to the salad bar and Mason and Samantha were thrilled to find large cubes of ham and CHEESE along with watermelon, strawberries, mandarin oranges (candy) and cantaloupe.  What could be better?!  When they returned to the table Jacob eyed their cheese cubes.  As I've said before we live by the motto "everything's better with cheese", even a big pile of grilled meat, and so Jake was up to the salad bar in a flash piling his plate with cheese cubes. 

All of the kids were so well behaved, Samantha contained her bouncing. It was a really fun watching them get the hang of using their tongs to receive meat from the servers.  Midway through the meal a skewer of chicken hearts came around.  We all looked at each other as the server waited to see if there were any takers.  I asked "who's gonna try a chicken heart?" I told them how Papa and Auntie Christy used to eat them...   Surprisingly, Samantha was the first to take one, then Rachel and Carly and finally with a little teasing from the server "Man, are you gonna let your sisters be braver than you?" Jacob took one too.  Rachel got hers down first with Jacob and Carly struggling to chew and swallow theirs.  With cloth napkins instead of paper ones, there was no where to spit it out discreetly and so they had to swallow.  Yikes.  Carly said her experience was worsened by her imagination as she imagined it pumping as she chewed. She was sure she wouldn't have enjoyed it anyway, too chewy, but the imagining made it much worse.  Sammy, the first to take, was the last to eat, which she did without much to say about it. All 4 brave souls agreed that they would never need to eat a chicken heart again.  

Samantha and Mason didn't eat much of the meat. They mostly enjoyed the fruit, cheese, ham and mashed potatoes of the salad bar.  Samantha insisted she needed to try a cheese cube and a strawberry together. Carly whispered to me "It's from Ratatouille"  She closed her eyes and "experienced" it very thoughtfully, chewing slowly.  She popped open her eyes and announced "very good, now I need to try cheese and watermelon together". Afer the same closed eye thoughtful chewing she opened her eyes to announce "that is not good!  I need more strawberies"  She was funny.  

All of the kids declared Tucano's their new favorite place to eat.  I guess we better go online and start filling out those free birthday meal questionnaires for all of them! 

A child's Prayer

Excerpts from a sweet Little Girl's prayer tonight:

Please bless Jacob to pick out books that he likes next time from the library because he doesn't like these ones and that's a bummer.

Thank you for medicine and tylenol because if we didn't have tylenol we would die and we would have a headache for a really really really long time.  Tylenol is really good and it makes the pain go away.  Thank you for the Tylenol.

Thank you for helping me be brave today when I got my teeth pulled because it really kind of hurt a lot. Thank you for helping me be brave.

Thank you for clothes because if we didn't' have clothes we would be naked and we wouldn't want that to happen. 

And thank you for animals because if we didn't' have animals we probably wouldn't' have clothes because some clothes are made out of fur. 

Wildflowers among the weeds.....

My neighbor lets us cut through her yard.  She has the most gorgeous yard, full of flowers of all kinds.  She kind of has a backlot though, that is full of weeds.  She used to have some garden boxes but I think it was all too much and she let it go for a while.  They've planted lots of fruit trees back there and I think it has become the orchard & not much else for now.. We can just make out the box borders with the overgrown foliage as we walk through foxtails and tall broad grass up to our knees in some places!  One box, this summer, has exploded in a mass of wildflowers.  I wonder if she experimented there and just scattered a packet of wildflower seeds to see if they could compete with the weeds.  They CAN!  Pink and purple and white; rising up from among the brown and Gold and green of the weeds. It made me think of the first wildflower bouquets I receive each spring.  Summer is in full swing now and there are no little purple and pink weed flowers or golden dandelions to pick but I receive bouquets every day during the blooming extravaganza of spring.  The wildflowers reminded me of some notes I had written down this spring....

April 13, 2008 we walked to church.  Samantha picked some tiny white flowers and a dandelion on our way.  She asked me to put them in her hair.  We slipped them into her barrettes holding back the top part of her hair.  We'd been sitting in our pew listening to the prelude music for a few moments when a sweet elderly sister leaned forward, teary-eyed, and whispered to Samantha "you look so lovely dear" Samantha smiled, enjoying the attention. The sister then turned her eyes to look into mine and said "They remind me of my little Jimmy who died when he was only 3 after an accident at a friends house.  He picked me a bouquet of dandelions just that day and I have saved them ever since to remember him by.  oh.. the yellow tufts have long since fallen off and all that is left are the greenish brown dried stems, but I keep them tucked into a vase of dried flowers to remember my little boy." Tears came to my eyes too and we maintained eye contact for some time crying together thinking of our children.  She, for the one she had lost so many years ago but can never forget and me for the blessing of having mine all around me in the house of God, knowing they are sealed to me always if I do my part and hoping, hoping, hoping that I never have to endure that pain.

                                                             

Rachel came in the house more than once this spring with a yellow nose and upper lip.  I would smile at her and say, "Been smelling dandelions?"  She would look a little "caught" lower her eyes and smile and mumble "yeah.." Since she was a wee thing she has loved dandelions. Every Dandelion season she has a perpetual yellow nose.  She has maintained for years she wants a Dandelion and weed wedding bouquet.  Can't you just see her? We would have to warn her to keep her nose out of the bouquet! She has always made such lovely bouquets for me out of interesting greenery, dandelions and the tiniest white and purple flowers. She really has an eye for wild beauty.  I wish dandelions didn't curl up and look ugly so quickly.  Anyone know a way of preserving them?  I dont' think she would look right holding lilies or roses or *gasp* the most unwildflower of all flowers.. the carnation.  Maybe she'll become a florist or a botanist and create a strain of dandelion that will last longer as a cut flower for bouquets.

One day in Early May I walked Mason over to his Friend Devan's house.  I sat down on the front step with Devan's mom, Margie and we visited while the boys played.  It had been such a cold spring and it was a rare sunny day and we were enjoying it.  Mason kept picking me dandelions and adding them to a bouquet in my hand.  He whispered in my ear after giving me a kiss, "these are true love mom".  Then he noticed some of the flowers with really short stems that I had discarded on the step next to me.  He was horrified.  "MOM!!!! what are you doing? These are true love too!!!! You have to keep them in your hand like this" and he smashed them in a pile into my palm, where they stayed until I was able to throw them away discreetly on our walk back.  It's true, I tossed "true love", without a second thought,  on my way home but  don't worry, I didnt' toss it all,  I held it's hand all the way home.

On another walk in the neighborhood in May with Mason we came upon a neighbors lawn completely infested with dandelions... and when I say infested... I mean more dandelion than lawn. Really. I found myself thinking "whoa.. maybe you need to get some weed killer friend!" and then I heard a hushed gasp at my side and my little man exclaimed "Look! Mom! This is GORGEOUS!  Look at all dese flowers" I wish you could have heard his voice. It expressed such wonder and awe. We stopped and looked & looked  and as I looked, my thoughts changed, I got out the squeeze cheese and put a smiley face on my plain ol' cracker. Seeing it through his eyes, it became beautiful to me.

                                             

April 23, 2008    One of my favorite spring sights in the plum tree outside my kitchen window.  When it blossoms out in it's springy white flowers it makes me happy while I wash dishes. I lOVE it!  When Mason looked out the window and first saw it blossoming all white and fluffy he said "Mom.... it's...it's....it's... I yooked out da window and whatuh I see... popcorn popping!!!!! It is mom, it is!!!! We talked about how it wasn't really popcorn but blossoms on a plum tree so we sang the song together & I changed the words to plum tree instead of apricot tree.  He looked at me sternly and said "mom you singing it wrong. It's apricot tree" I know Mason, but we're looking at a plum tree so that's why I sang it differently." to which he asked, unexpectedly, "so where do popcorn grow?"  "On a corncob" I said. "OOOhhhh!!! So dat's not really popcorn?" 

                                         

Later when the kids came home from school he took great pride in sharing his newfound knowledge.  "See dat?", pointing to the plum tree, "Dat is not really a popcorn tree, it is a plum tree, it just looks like a popcorn tree.  Popcorn really comes from the dirt."

May 1, 2008  This was a very cold spring and when that plum tree was in full bloom, we had a snowstorm.  I had a hard time reconciling those two events coexisting together. We were driving in the snowstorm out shopping and it was swirling around, making it hard to see the other cars on the road and Mason exclaimed happily "If it keeps snowing, it's TOTALLY gonna be Christmas!!!  

Well We didn't get cold enough for Christmas.. Summer finally came and we are living it now.  

Today We are going to 7 peaks water park to enjoy the sun and water slides and wave pool. It is Mason's first time.  I am also taking my neighbor, Donna's kids so she can stay home with her baby and tile her kitchen floor.  She's amazing.  She can tile a floor.  Wow! That's just about all I can say.  Wow!  Happy thought, however, she promised to come get Mason and take him to her house if he has had enough before the rest of us.  I think he'll do fine though, but it's nice to have a backup plan.

"How De Do Dat?"

Happy Independence Day!!!!!

We spent ours a little quieter than usual.  The last few years Mark has saved up and bought ALOT of fireworks.  And by "ALOT" I mean I don't even want to know how much he spent because I know it was an obscene amount.  We usually invite some friends over and have a big BBQ and then head out to the Culdesac at dusk to start the show.  Last years was the biggest ever and the most organized.  We made homemade root beer with dry ice. yumm!!! and Mark set the fireworks up in the culdesac in a spiraling pattern.  He had his propane tank on a little dolly with the torch attachment.  He started on the outside of the spiral and slowly made his spectacular, sparkly way to the center where, of course, the "BIG ONES" waited for the grand finale.  Even more neighbors came over for the fireworks and contributed some of their own.  Our friend, Darren, acted as pyrotechnic wingman, following Mark and kicking over the dead fireworks and even helping to clean up afterwards.  It was quite a show.  This year we didn't have the extra cash to put on quite the same show so we decided to forgo it altogether and try one of the local city shows.  We spent the day quietly as a family.  Mark wanted to try a new brisket recipe he's been salivating over for some time from his Texas cookbook (thanks mom and dad!) Did you know Brisket is kind of pricey? We paid about $18 for a 4.5lb slab but compared to what we spent on fireworks in years past... we figured we could handle that.  Do you know how long brisket cooks? The recipe called for 7 hours in the oven and an hour resting before you eat it so this was an all day thing.  Mark marinated it the night before and started it in the oven before I woke up.  This was not a tomato-based saucy recipe, it had some spices and liquid smoke and it was SOO good.  Here's how we filled the 8 hours of cooking/resting time....

The first item on the Day's agenda was to watch "Independence Day".  To get properly pumped up to appreciate our freedoms we need to imagine them being stolen by Aliens. We then played some board games and watched Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds".  Mark, feeling hot, asked the kids if they wanted to turn on the sprinklers.  What a silly question! They were off and running to get their swimsuits on before he finished his question.  Whilst outside enjoying the cool water, Mark and the kids invented a game, their own version of the "tough guy club" I suppose.  You sit in the chair while the rest of them advance on you with the hose on full blast with the fierce nozzle on. The test is to see how many seconds you last. 

Here's the final score: Carly 50 seconds; Rachel 63 seconds; Jacob 33 seconds, 

Samantha Grace 1 second; Mason 12 seconds.  Mark was the hose holder; his tough guy status apparently not in question.  

My score?  Oh, well, you see, I needed to remain dry so I could document the fun for posterity.  And as I remain the CEO of the "Smart woman Club" I am forbidden to participate in any "Tough Guy club" activities or forfeit my membership.  My contribution to the day was to give Patriotic Pedicures and Manicures for all the girls.  Mason felt left out so he got a clear coat and a star sticker on his big toe. I thought they turned out very cute.  Usually, my "just this side of OCD tendencies" would rule out an asymetrical pedicure like this but I got the idea off a FamilyFun email and I did just what they suggested. I kept my trusty bottle of remover close at hand.. .just in case! Surprisingly, I found it charming and kept it just as it was. The girls were very excited once they saw my toes and we had fun designing their own nails. 

We had the best dinner ever when Mark's brisket was done.  We served his masterpiece with Baked potatoes, Cucumbers, watermelon, corn on the cob. mmmmm... mmmmm... mmmmm. We all ate too much and then cleaned up and got ready to go to the fireworks.  We arrived about 7:30. We found a good spot close to the bathrooms, close to the exit. We played catchphrase and talked about past years. We remembered the story of When Rachel was visiting Yucca Valley over Independence day many years ago with her grandparents and her Aunties. After every firework she would ask the question... "How de do dat?" 

 The fireworks began promptly at 10pm. 10pm also being the exact moment Samantha and Mason HAD to go to the bathroom.  ARGHHH... we wait 2 1/2 hours for it to start and have to miss the beginning to go potty!!  Being there reminded me of going to Yucca Valley High school and laying on a blanket on the football field every 4th of July.  I haven't been to a fireworks show like that in a long time and I really enjoyed it.  Samantha kept exclaiming "It's Gorgeous Mommy" "did you see that? It's gorgeous mommy!" over and over.  Mason squealed like he was scared but he was grinning as he ran and crouched behind Mark's chair.  He needed a little reassurance so he sat with Rachel as Samantha was already on my lap. 

 I found myself saying "OOOOHH!" and "AAHHH!" without thinking.  There's something about the surprise of the fireworks, the anticipation when you see & hear the spark hurtling up, the exploding POP, the color.  The unexpected explosions that catch you off guard because they didn't ascend with any fanfare.  It's really entrancing and  I sat in the chair, straining my neck, wishing I was laying on my back on the blanket like I always did as a kid. I laughed at myself as I wondered along with the memory of a 3 yr old Rachel  "How de do dat?" How do they get the powder to explode in shapes or whiz about after the initial explosion like fireflys... How? I am in awe.

We saw people leaving halfway through the show and wondered.. It's only a 30 minute show!!! If you're going to drive here, find a parking spot, haul all your junk, find a spot, wait for the show to start... why leave after 15-20 minutes and miss the grand finale.  I mean, there's always a grand finale. A grand finale is just a given when fireworks are involved.  The show did end at 10:30 and we, feeling very smart for parking right by the gates to the field and getting a grassy spot on the field not far from the gate, grabbed our stuff and were in the car, belted in and in the queue to exit by 10:44.  We weren't very far from the exit but may I tell you that it took us 45 minutes to move one car length.  Once we moved that one car length it was only another 1o minutes or so to the freeway so we made it home before midnight. Just. That long wait kind of took the bloom off the rose.  We weren't expecting that! Would we do it again? I think so- but we may consider parking on the road and walking further in.... My only complaint about the program was I wish they had had someone sing The national Anthem or another patriotic song just to start us off with, to remind us what we were celebrating. Our country, Our freedoms.  I am grateful for these blessings.  Happy Independence day everyone! 

This Fort Ain't big enough for the both of us....

The superfort under construction.......
Last Night Samantha & Jacob had big plans to build a clubhouse and sleep in it...... This is the cranium superfort.  It's really cool with magnetic connector pieces and foam poles. Some bendy, some not, fabric panels and clips to hold them in place.  They can build it all by themselves but it's not the sturdiest thing in the world.  Obviously.......
 I stayed up til 2am figuring out how to be a blogger and when I went to bed, I found the 2 little cheeseballs fast asleep amidst the wreckage .  Mason woke up when he saw me coming with the camera and he giggled as I climbed up on Jacob's bunk bed and snapped a few shots.  He climbed up too and pointed out where I should take the pictures. I thought it was pretty funny that they slept through the whole thing.