7 Quick Takes {Take 44} Summer travel, heat and reading edition...

-1- Happy Friday everyone!

In the craziness that is this summer, our weekends are just packed every single week. This weekend is Father's Day, so no rest for the weary. We have breakfast AND dinner engagements to attend on Sunday. :) Not to be bad sports, but Mike and I agree that our current incarnation of Mother's and Father's Day is just absolutely exhausting. Are we grateful to have both sets of parents, plus a grandmother, still in good health and with us to celebrate on these days? Absolutely. But would we rather loaf around the house eating cheese and sipping cocktails on our big day? Yep, yep and yep. Alas.

-2- Tiffany has to travel next weekend. Prepare for the whining.

Anything out my normal routine is always hard for me to enjoy, and traveling definitely falls into this category. We're not going far, just driving south to Pittsburgh to visit with some family there, so no air travel involved (thank God for small favors :)). But the packing. And the car ride. And the children fighting in the backseat. And worrying whether Anne will actually sleep somewhere different (the child is so much like me in her routine-oriented ways. This is God having a good time at my expense, isn't it?) And the socializing. And all of that stuff. I'm certain that it will be fine, but traveling isn't my favorite thing to do.

-3- Summer is officially here. A/C units are installed. *circuit breaker shorts out*

You all know how I feel about summer (my least favorite season), but this year I'm making the best of it. Life is short, you know? You need to be able to enjoy everything, and not rush through it. To get to fall. The most glorious season in all the universe.

But I digress. The weather has really been very nice here, not too hot so far, but we had a few nights this week wherein sleeping was uncomfortable. We do have fans, and put those to use, and Mike and I do pretty well with sleeping even while warm. The children however seem to generate body heat at a rate of 50x the average adult human, and their rooms get SO much warmer than ours when it's humid outside. And when they don't sleep well, we don't sleep well.

4:15am:

"MOMMY! I NEED YOU!"

We want to keep those occasions to an absolute minimum. But our house is old, and whoever originally wired it thought that it was a fine idea to have the entire upstairs, plus the downstairs bathroom, all on one circuit. This means that we cannot run an a/c unit in all 3 bedrooms without tripping our circuit breaker. And on extremely humid and uncomfortable nights, this is a problem. Thankfully, an electrician is coming to give us an estimate on Monday. Here's hoping the bill isn't too painful.

-4- Nothing says "summer!" like sweating in a dance costume while dancing in the road...

 Summer is also festival season for my dance troupe, and we're gearing up. We're learning a new drum choreography, and adapting our Arabic pop piece so that we can use canes as a prop. We have a big event in July, and then several in August. Given the way the schedule is set up, it looks like we'll be dancing all group numbers, no time for solos this year, which is kind of a relief. You remember last year, right? I swear I still have Dance Costume PTSD as a result of that festival. But this is a new year, right?! Hoping for the best.

-5- Catholic Book Club, summer edition!

I've got a really awesome summer of Catholic books lined up, and I've been reading away like a busy bee. The spiritual memoirs I've selected to review this month and at the end of July are on my right sidebar list (Something Other Than God, and Pope Awesome and Other Stories). August will be unveiled soon, and let me say that I'm *super* excited about this! It will be a little different from the books I've selected previously. Stay tuned!

-6- Dreaming of Montana...

I've gotten back into my Harlequin roots, so if you enjoy romance fiction, the next 2 takes are for you. ;) I've been reading on my precious little Kindle like crazy this past month, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading romantic suspense that just whisk you away in time and place. I started a series by a Harlequin author I really like, BJ Daniels, called Whitehorse Montana. I'm reading the first book in the series right now:

LOVING. I adore series with a common mystery and/or setting throughout, so this fits the bill perfectly. There are 6 books in the series, and I actually read one of the later books a few years ago, it was what got me turned on to this author. I'm looking forward to going through them in order now. Harlequin Intrigue is my favorite of their secular romantic suspense lines.

-7- This one involves Montana too. How strange.

I see a theme here. :0 But yesterday I discovered a brand new series from my very favorite Harlequin line, Love Inspired, which is their Christian imprint. There is a series beginning in July called Big Sky Centennial, and will feature a new book each month by a different author, all relating to the small town of Jasper Gulch, Montana celebrating it's 100th anniversary. The first book centers around the 4th of July celebrations, and there will be a book a month through December. SO EXCITED. I already have the first four books preordered to download to my Kindle on the release day. This is the first book, due out July 1st:

I plan to do lots of light reading this summer. :)

Ok everyone, have a beautiful weekend! 7 Quick Takes is being hosted over at Team Whitaker this week, go have a look!