Book club, Carnival, and Movie night.

On Thursday, we had book club. This month's book was "The Pearl That Broke Its Shell," and it has the distinction of possibly being the first book we've done that everyone has finished AND really liked.

The funny thing is, i was totally dreading reading it. I knew it was coming up, and i just thought, "Bleh!!! It's going to be all depressing and slow to read!" Except that it wasn't! I read it fairly quickly, and although it WAS fairly devastating at times, it had just enough hope to keep me from being completely depressed.

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On Friday, the kids' school had their yearly carnival, which we ... hate. It's just loud and crowded and the games are lame and it's just the worst. Several years ago, in a desperate move, i said, "What if we have our own carnival!? At our house! Just for us!" And the kids loved it. So now, when the school has their carnival, we have our own carnival.

We made our own pizzas and played silly little games (Hit the ping pong ball with a nerf gun! Roll the marble onto the target! Stack dinosaurs into the tallest tower!) for tickets. And then they can use their tickets to get prizes that i've picked out - things that they'd actually probably like and use, like post-it notes and that cord that they use to make bracelets. They're happy. We don't have to go to the carnival. It's all good.

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Tonight was movie night. It was Juanito's turn to choose, and he chose "The Room."

I think this movie actually just beat out "Luggage of the gods" as the worst movie i've ever seen. It was cringe-worthy at times, and completely hilarious (unintentionally), but just so awful that it almost defies description. We all laughed and laughed and also had to look around awkwardly because.... It was So! Wrong!

Even taking the movie out of the equation, though, it was a fun night. We grilled using the grill that i dragged home from someone's trash last fall. Juanito fixed it up, and it works great. We have a propane grill! One that's big enough to do more than a teensy bit of stuff on! YAY!

Linda and Andrew and their kids and Stephanie and Beth all came over, and i really love my friends. I love that my kids love their kids. I even love that they all like Emma, which means that she's so much calmer than when people try to keep her away from them.