Manly, Girly, and Nerdy

 Fab 5 on Friday

 January 18th Edition

1.  (This is the Girly part) New Organizational Item: THE SPICE STACK.  Rated 5 stars by me.  If you don't have one, get one.  It's amazing how much space it opened up in my cupboard AND how I can find things so much easier now.

2.  This is the "nerdy" part.  I will leave it up to you to decide who is the bigger nerd of the family.  We both definitely have different nerd-styles. 
Books we've been reading:   
Mark just finished the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.  It's a book made up of excerpts from his journals.  Mark learned a lot from the book and has given me the reader's digest version each day when he gets home from work, which I'm grateful for...both the shortened version part and the learning cool things about Dr. Franklin part--he really is an interesting and brilliant guy!  Mark has enjoyed listening to that on  his commute.   
Lacey--I just finished listening to Harry Potter 4 the other day.  So intense.  It makes me want to get #5 right now and start on it.   It somehow makes me feel a little bit better to listen and do my chores at the same time rather than sit and read but I do find myself just standing there not really doing much but listening at the intense times. :) I'm also in the middle of The Great and the Terrible, a series by Chris Stewart.  I read the first book and now I'm dying to read the second!  This is one of the negatives of living outside of Utah where the Mormon books are not so so abundant.  Our local library is working on getting it for me through Inter-library loan....but the first book took them a good two months.  We'll see if I can wait that long. 
Jax has really taken a liking to the Farm Animals pop up book that Aunt Anneleise gave him for Christmas.  He requests that one almost every time now (even above Freight Train). :)  I should probably find him more pop up books. 

Mark and I hope to read a few books together this year.  We started on Seven Tipping Points That Saved the World on our drive to Arizona but we haven't managed to finish it together yet.   Now that you know both of our nerd styles, any suggestions would be appreciated.  Is there a way to combine Harry and Ben Franklin?  :/  I'm thinking Historical Fiction might be our best route. 

3.  "Quack, Quack" the ducky towel has brought on new sounds from the little guy!  "Cua, cua, cua" is what we hear from him when he's ready to get out of the tubber.  He loves that specific towel.  It both makes me laugh and wonder.  He's catching on to more than I realize.  I better watch myself! 

4.  We (by we, I mean Mark) are doing some yard work around here.  It's typical yard cleanup...raking leaves, trimming trees, and composting in the garden box.  We now are proud owners of a real chainsaw.  It reminds me of Mulan [in her 'man' voice] "Uhh... I mean, uh, sorry you had to see that, but you know how it is when you get those, uh, manly urges, and you just gotta kill somethin'... fix things, uh, cook outdoors.."

Chainsawing definitely qualifies as one of those manly urge things, right?    

 

Disclaimer: This pic isn't of the new grande chainsaw.  It's the daintier one we already had for smaller branches. Just FYI.

P.S.  Doesn't Jax look like a little man in this picture??  He's growing up so fast.  He really enjoys being with Mark when he's doing his outdoor projects. Father-son bonding time :)

5.  We love FRIDAYS!!!!  Don't you?  Mark has every other Friday off because he's working a flex-schedule where he works an hour extra on the other days.  We have really enjoyed it.  Today is one of those off-Fridays!  YAY!  More chainsawing! :)