July 23- August 5:
With no more summer camps left, we spent a solid week trying to pack in as many fun outings around St. Louis as we could. This included a factory tour at a local chocolate manufacturer, Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate, Gus' Pretzels, The Magic House, and Andy's for some ice cream on a super hot day.
In the second week of this span we dropped the boys off at my parents house for a few nights, and Sean and I went to Kansas City for a quick weekend getaway! We stayed near the Streetcar and checked out a ton of new to us restaurants. The best part though was the Unfiltered Tour at Boulevard Brewing. We had a great time, the tour guides were excellent, and it was well worth the higher price ($40 vs $10 for the basic tour) especially because of all the samples they offered throughout the 2 hour tour. (Enough to need an Uber after!) We try to do a trip of some sort just the two of us every 1-2 years. Last year we went to Arizona for a week, so it was nice to still be able to do something, just a little more simple and closer to home this time.
The boys had fun at Grammy and Grampa's playing in the pool and seeing a magic show. And then later that same week they were off to Grandma and Grandpa's (Sean's parents) house for a few nights of science experiments and sleepover fun with them! I had not originally intended for all of our grandparent visits to be lumped so close together this summer but it ended up working out well.
Once they got back from the end of grandparent week some friends of ours hosted us at their house for some pool fun and dinner which was really nice. And then we prepped and packed for our trip to Wisconsin!
Books read during this time:
Fly Away- this is the sequel to Firefly Lane. I listened to the audiobook... I don't know if it was the voice reading it or if I was just past being interested in the story but I didn't love this as much as I did Firefly Lane.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue- also listened to audiobook on this one. It was such an interesting concept! I had a hard time following it at times and it was long. I think I would have liked it more if I'd read it.
Forever, Interrupted- Another great Taylor Jenkins Reid book. Very sad, but her stories often are. I'd recommend it for sure!
November 9- I am not really the biggest Colleen Hoover fan; I think someone recommended this and it came up as available on my Libby app when I didn't have a current read so I tried it. It was an interesting idea, just not an overall ideal read for me.
Watching:
Just remembering that we started to watch Avatar one night and Sean fell asleep so we never finished it... I had never seen the original before and would like to come back to watch the last half! I switched over to watching Age of Adaline once he fell asleep... it was alright. Something about the narrator cutting in as often as he did made me feel like this was probably a book before it was a movie? And it just wasn't adapted super well for the screen. But apparently it started as a screenplay! I guess I'd just rather see the story acted out vs there being quite so much narration.
I also watched the short series "A Small Light" on Hulu about Miep Gies, the woman who aided the Frank family in hiding for two years during the Holocaust. I first read Anne Frank's diary when I was in 4th grade and I was enthralled by it. But while watching this show I realized how much I'd forgotten about what I'd learned from her diary... enough that I decided to request it from the library to read again! I'm not usually one to read too many books more than once (there's too many others I want to get to!) but I know Anne Frank's diary definitely was a book that meant a lot to me back then. I'd like to try to understand it more now as an adult.