Happy 4th!

 We had a really great time on the 4th of July. We did some yardwork in the morning and met some neighbors we hadn't met yet! Dan and Adam showed us the sweet spot behind our houses in the hills where we could see all the fireworks across the valley. It was a beautiful sight and we didn't have to spend a dime!

I convinced G to go on a little walk behind our house and up the hills! It gets steep fairly quickly but we got some fantastic views.

Our weekend was spent on the yard and planning ways to flip our parking strip, getting the sprinkler system figured out, and relaxing with a drink or two. The sun dips behind the mountain a little after 7 PM and that means we can have a little time in the backyard just relaxing without a hot sun on us. After all the craziness of moving in and unpacking, it's been nice enjoying a bit of having our own backyard and relaxing in the evenings.

Books

I've been reading The Lockwood & Co. by Jonathan Stroud series with G. I'm two books behind but am catching up quickly. I read The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull, and The Hollow Boy. I'm almost done with The Creeping Shadow and then on to final book. Netflix made a series out of it and combined the first two books in one season. I think they did a really good job but unfortunately they canceled it after one season.

Stroud is a British author and the series does read quite a bit different from an American one. Lockwood, Lucy, and George are teens who live in a world where ghosts have broken free and basically terrorize the world at night. The Problem, as it's called, has been around for at least 50 years or so. And only kids and teens can see the ghosts so it's up to them to take care of them. Lockwood is good at Sight, Lucy at Touch and Listening, and George is mediocre in all of them but exceptional at research. They are the only independent agency in London. The other agencies are all run by adults and supervise the children on all jobs.

It's a very strange world and the first book to a minute to grasp the world and the people in it but it picks up halfway through and we're hooked. We see the world through Lucy but she's a very unreliable narrator since she's a kid and doesn't know how to process the world quite yet. How did the Problem begin, how to reverse it? Who's conspiring with whom? Lots of pieces to the overall mystery get solved through the books and we see the rag-tag team grow with each book.

Stroud writes a fine line between actually writing a world with kids acting like adults and having the adults feel put upon for having to rely on kids to keep them safe. It almost reminds be a bit of Roald Dahl where the adults are useless and it's up to the kids to get it right!

Also, there are some genuinely creep parts in the books. So if you're up for some mild horror and mystery this is a great series.

I also started John Adams by David McCullough. I am surprised at how readable it is. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm hoping to finish it by the end of summer.

I also finished of Graceling by Kristin Cashore with G. It's my third read with this book. Still holds up. Now we're reading Fire together. It doesn't quite flow as well as Graceling but it's still interesting.

TV and Movies

I've been catching up on Yellowjackets on Paramount+. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back on for its second season. And I finally caught up on the latest Mandalorian season on Disney+. DH and I are slowly catching up with the final season of Ted Lasso as well.

Movies have been a bit slower. We haven't seen anything in the theaters for a bit. We watched Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Last Ark with G. That movie is still pretty good even after all these years.

We're heading down to a Shakespearian Festival at the end of the month to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. We've been wanting to go down every year for awhile now but we're actually doing it this summer. Wahoo! G did a shortened version of it for drama class in April so he is excited to see the full version and in the proper Shakespearean English. It'll probably be the only big thing we do this summer so I'm pretty excited.

I'm linking up with Deb from Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.