I can say that with no uncertainty that July was a busy month for me. It wasn't exactly busy month of reading, in fact it probably was one of my worst reading months in a number of months. There were some very valid reasons as to why to was not exactly great reading wise. The main reason was that I was really busy with family and friends.
It was a month that was busy from the start. A friend invited me to a BBQ she and her parents were hosting and it was excellent. My friend is trained as a chef and loves to cook just as much as she loves to read. Once for a book club meeting she was hosting, she made lamb shanks and the meat just fell off the bone; it was so good. Anyways for the BBQ, she had created three different sliders, each representing three different provinces. The first was a salmon slider with some sort of tarter sauce. I liked it (she grilled salmon fillets instead of making a salmon patty). Then there was a whisky BBQ with some fried onions on top. By the time that I ate that one, I was stuffed and it was a bit cold so it was a bit meh. The third one was one made with a cheese from Quebec and I enjoyed that one the most. Salads were brought by various individuals, one of them was an amazing potato salad. For desert, she made a berry creme fraiche and a Nanaimo bar ice cream, both of which were lovely.
I had a few days to recover and clean before my mom came down, not before I managed to tear out a set of pot rack that were attached to my kitchen wall while cleaning them, as I was cleaning the tops of my cupboards. Don't worry, I had taken my pots down the night before I wiped them down and nothing other than the wall was damaged. My mom came down on the 7th and she made a lovely dinner of corn on the cob and watermelon and went to see a production of Bard on the Beach (its a Shakespeare company in Vancouver that puts on performances in a local park and no they aren't free and yes you have to buy tickets) with my mom and a former colleague of hers (we saw Love's Labours Lost), after spending some time in Granville Island having dinner at a restaurant and wandering around the Public Market on Granville Island.
The next night, the 9th, I went out with friends to a local seafood place before family started to arrive in town on the 10th to celebrate my grandpa's 90th birthday. On the 11th, about 17 of us had pizza and had a little family time before the celebration on the 12th. Either on the 13th or 14th, a number of us went to the nearby town of Harrison Hot Springs and did a few things on the way there, including a small hike up to Cascade Falls. The next few days were fairly restful and relaxing and filled with me getting reading to go to Sun Peaks, to spend sometime with my parents.
After my dad went to a concert with his brother, he and I headed up on the 18th and had nice relaxing drive, which included a stop in Kamloops to get some things that were needed (okay, the shopping trip was about a couple of hours, as it included being in a Costco on a Saturday). Dad and I had a few days to catch our breath, before my parents and I headed for a small family trip to see family in Alberta and Saskatchewan on the 24th. There was a purpose to the trip, but first we stopped at my dad's eldest sister's place in Vulcan, Alberta for about a day and a half before heading out to Outlook, Saskatchewan on early Sunday morning for a 50th wedding anniversary that was held for my dad's Uncle Al and Aunt Kay. As somebody mentioned, it was sort of a mini-reunion for Uncle Paul's family (Uncle Paul was my paternal grandfather, who passed away about 9 years ago), as we were the largest contingent of the Wiebe nieces and nephews that were there. It was great to see relatives that I had barely met, even if it was only for an afternoon. On Monday morning, we were headed out of town to met up with my sister who lives in Edmonton. But on our way to Edmonton, we stopped in the four communities in northern Saskatchewan that my dad had grown up in before he and his parents and younger brother moved to BC in 1967. After taking our final photos in Lashburn, Saskatchewan, we headed to the Alberta capital.
Tuesday we spent the day with my sister Deanna, as she drove us to various stores, including the largest Canadian Tire known to man kind. It has two levels and it even has an escalator for your buggy! It was insane! I also managed to spend quite a bit of money at a nearby Indigo bookstore, before we met my mom's brother and family (what was there) for dinner at Louisana Purchase (its a southern comfort food restaurant and the Banana's Foster was really good). And the next day, the three of us were up early, making the 10+ hour drive back to Sun Peaks.
When we got here, my dad's youngest brother and his wife were already here at Sun Peaks and met with them at various points over the last three days (Thurs., Fri., Sat.), before they left to go back to Whitehorse, where they live.
If you are thinking that I am exhausted, I am. But it is a good kind of exhausted and I am looking forward to more relaxing August, before both my jobs start up again in the fall and the planning for my trip to Europe next summer starts in earnest. And this why I didn't really read that much.
What my reading plans for the coming month are to complete Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking, The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness, and The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot and I hope to start reading The Odyessey by Home for my book club read. I also hope to continue work on my copy of Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book, but I think I will slow down on that as I did quite a bit during the month of July.
Hope you have a relaxing Sunday and whatever remains of your summer.
First off, the Bout of Books Readathon isn't going so well for me. I finished To Kill A Mockingbird and that was all about I really read for the week, even though I have a quite a bit to read. But I know that there are going to be other readathons coming up and I will be able to get books done and that this is a stress-free readathon. I did start reading Go Set A Watchman and so far the book is okay (I'm only 2 chapters in and every now and then you can hear Reese Witherspoon's southern accent come through, although you really heard Sissy Spacek's more clearly during To Kill). I don't know why I didn't read as much as I had hoped to, but I think it just amounted to the fact that I was concentrating on one book and I felt really tired at times during the readathon).
