insurgent

insurgent
divergent series #2
veronica roth
ya/dystopian/suspense
harper collins
published 2012

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grow. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable — and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

There was just so much death in this book.  While reading I realized how many of these YA books center around dying and war.  It's depressing really.

Tris is different now, changed. Frantic and somewhat lost after the death of her parents.  She clings to her brother and at the same time clings to Tobias while pushing him away.  She's constantly wounded in this book.  I don't even know how she continues to go on.

There are so many characters, so many people to keep track of that at times it's difficult to follow along.  Off the top of my head, Tris, Caleb, Tobias, Marcus, Lynne, Shauna, Hector, Uriah, Zeke, Christina, Tori, Joanna, Jeanine, Fernando, Cara, Marlene, Peter....it's exhausting.  But each character does bring something important to the story so it works. 

We're left with another cliff hanger type ending, but this time everything has been completely destroyed so I can't even begin to guess at where the beginning of book 3 will take us.  And it's not scheduled to come out until Fall of next year. 

Whaaaaaaaat??

lights, lights and more lights

A couple of weeks ago we went to Global Wonderland.  It was held in the parking lot of the local amusement park and it was giant lit lanterns shaped into things like the Taj Mahal, forests, Native American villages, etc.  It was pretty cool.  But cold.  Verrrrry cold.

Waiting for light rail with Ji-Chan.

Everyone made it and now we're on our way.  And I got a picture of my sister smiling!!

Chloe is saying 'cheese' too.

The entrance.  There were a lot of people waiting to buy tickets.  Luckily, we got ours online.

Russian Castle.

This was one of my favorite things.  I was a giant vase made up of beads.

 I got a close up of it here.

The kids posing in front of a lotus flower.

 This was a peacock or phoenix, I'm not sure.

 But it was made out of Chinese soup spoons, tea cups, saucers and plates.  It was so cool!

Emma waited forever at this one because every once in awhile the doors opened and some people marched out and then back in.

Olivia was pretty toasty, unlike the rest of us.

 The Eiffel Tower.

 Emma in front of the giant pink castle.

And a picture of the giant pink castle by itself.

All in all it was pretty cool, but now that we've seen it I'm pretty sure we don't have to go again next year!  The kids had fun because they could run around and see all the lights, but we were super cold and the food was just okay.  Gotta have good food to bring us back again!

labor day busy-ness

We had quite a busy weekend this first weekend in September!  We started with Emma getting to get a hot lunch at school on Friday.  She was so excited and wanted to me to take a picture of her with her envelope of money.

Look at how tan she is!

Of course, she forgot to take her money to the cafeteria with her.

Then Ray and I went on a search for a new bike.  First he was going to refurbish his dad's old bike, but after talking to one of the guys at Sunshine Bike's here in Morgan Hill he realized it would cost as much to fix this bike up as it would to buy a new one.  So we went to just about every bike place we could get to before Emma got out of school.

We didn't find anything.  So we picked up Emma and headed out to Los Gatos and decided to take Emma to La Fondue in Saratoga.  This is probably my favorite restaurant ever.  Emma was excited to try the cheese fondue and steak off the grill, but mostly it was just a stop gap to the chocolate.

She was so excited!  She barely got any cheese on the bread, but she said it was so delicious.  I was too busy eating chocolate to take pictures of her during the dessert course!

Afterwards we headed over to Sports Chalet and Ray found the style of bike he wanted on sale.  The only problem was the color.  It was blood orange with black accents and it mostly just looked red, but in certain light it did look orange.  He bought it, but I could tell he wasn't really super happy about it.

Saturday we headed out to DeAnza College where on the first Saturday of every month they hold a huge flea market in the parking lots.  Lots of fun stuff to look at, though we didn't buy too much.

As with all the school around the Bay Area DeAnza's adding the solar parking lot panels which will be awesome next year in adding some shade on the hot days!

I love these china plate wind chimes so much I took two pictures of them.

This would make the cutest cake topper!

After the flea market we headed out to look for some accessories for Ray's bike and then headed out to my parents' house to celebrate my Auntie Marilyn & Auntie Terrie's birthdays.

You can't see it so well but my mom made the candles from a 'M' and a 'T'.

Course all the kids had to run over to help blow out the candles.

My cousin Austin got some new glasses and I wish I had his dad's senior picture so I could show you how identical their glasses are.  I took a picture of him and he said I had to take one of him not smiling because he's pretty sure his dad didn't smile in his picture.

My Mom & Dad went to the Longworth family reunion down in Southern California a couple of weekends ago and our cousin Wally gave me his old Canon Rebel 2000 film SLR.  I took a few pictures and I can't wait to finish the roll so I can see how I did!

Wally had a 28-300mm lens and a standard lens.  When I was looking at lenses online I discovered that the 50mm lens I've been coveting is much cheaper for this one...*hint, hint* :)

On Sunday we headed over to Sunshine Bikes in Gilroy to see what kind of accessories they had.  While there Ray found a bike closer to the one he really wanted.  

It's the same bike I have except it's the men's version and matte black.  We like Electra bikes.

They're so preeeety.

So now he's a little happier about his bike and we can go on family rides now!

Today we headed over to Valley Fair to use up gift cards that we've had forever.  I got these fancy little beauties!

Sally

Jack

And now they're ready for my Jack & Sally shelf!  So cute!  I love them so!

It was quite the busy weekend, but we survived!  This upcoming week is a whole bunch of doctor appointments and all kids of fun stuff.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!!

thought summer was supposed to be about relaxing??

Have I already told you how crazy this past week was for us?  My friend’s daughter was over Monday and Tuesday, I went to Los Banos on Wednesday, Prunedale & Salinas on Thursday and then we had a big playdate with some of Emma’s preschool friends on Friday.  Then we had my nephew’s 4th birthday party in San Jose (or as we like to say ‘up north’).

It was fun, especially for Emma (she loved having so many playdates), but so exhausting.  Plus, I was having an awful time trying to sleep so that didn’t add to my cheery disposition.  Oh wait, I don’t have a cheery disposition to begin with.

I didn’t bring the camera out very much this week and when I did I generally forgot to take pictures, but here’s a few I did take to sum up our week!

Emma & Autumn showing off their crowns they made.

 

Flower’s at my friend’s in-law’s house.

Time for a playdate fashion show!

Birthday Boy!!

Enjoying her brother’s birthday.

Emma made me a special meal.  There was noodles, bread, cake, orange juice & a lemon cookie.

Ready for bed after a loooooong day.

And that was our week.  How was yours?

I Really Do Have Friends ... I Swear

I think I mentioned before that I do not make friends easily.  I'm standoffish and constantly afraid of whatever vitriol will spew forth from my mouth at any given time.  Somehow I have accrued friends who are sweet and nice.  I have no idea why they are friends with me.  A few of them are religious.  I wonder if maybe they think they can covert me.  Maybe I'm a project?

Well, better if I don't question it, right?

Anyhoo ... since Emma started preschool I have actually made friends.  They are these hilarious women whose kids play with my kid and now we all go play together.  Over the winter break we thought we'd take the kids to Pump-It-Up, but having no foresight whatsoever we didn't think about it being the last day of vacation and rainy and completely full.  The best thing about Morgan Hill is the Centennial Recreation Center or the CRC.  It has everything, including an indoor pool with a shallow play area.  The kids love it.  So we took them all there since we're members and JeNae decided (as the last holdout) to give in and get a membership.  (The best perk is the discount we get at the preschool for being CRC members)

Of course, I thought, this is awesome!  Work out buddies!  But really, I just figured it would be great to sit and gab with some friends while the kids swim.

JeNae has had other ideas.  We took a step class on Tuesday.  It was not fun.  Apparently, they don't need to advertise in the class schedule that something is an intermediate/advance class.  So there we were.  And at first I thought, well really, how difficult can stepping be?  Oh, I found out it can be extremely difficult.  Extremely.  This wasn't stepping!  This was dancing around and on a platform that constantly wanted to move out of my way.  Like I am so scary it did not want me to step on it.  I swear I almost fell 176 times.  And once, my shoe scraped so loudly off the side that everyone in the class turned around thinking someone had died.  And I pretty much was.  Dead, I mean.

Today we decided to workout on the machines since there weren't any 'fun' classes.  JeNae seems to have much more coordination than I do.  She thinks Zumba might be fun.  Julie & Kim say it is and it kicks your butt, which I'm okay with.  But fun?  If my coordination efforts in step class are any indication I don't think Zumba is going to be fun for me.  But I'll try it out.  Give everyone a good laugh. 

So anyway, my legs are like rubber from jogging for a half hour on the treadmill wondering how in the hell the couple next to me are sprinting whilst discussing how so-and-sos from their wedding are going through financial difficulties.  Sprinting.  And discussing.  Freaks.

But really, it's nice to get out of the house in the evening and do something.  Emma and Autumn get to go do fun crafts and play around at the Kid's Zone and I get to sweat and maybe lose some of this baby fat I've been carrying around for 5 years.  I'm sure Ray appreciates having the house to himself for an hour or so too.  So I guess I'll keep going.  If anything it's fun to watch the elderly run laps around me.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention.  The woman who was the star of the step class and was much easier to watch and follow than the instructor?  She was about eleventy-hundred years old.  Pretty much everyone in the class had about 30 years on JeNae and I.  I want to be them when I grow up.  Which means I'm going to have to do more step.  Ugh.

Beauty in Morgan Hill

Finally .....
getting these pictures up! Awhile ago my sister, b-i-l, Ray and I took the kids out to hike at Uvas Canyon Park. Uvas has a very kid-doable hike that takes you around to all the little waterfalls around the camping area. Nothing huge, but all very beautiful. The kids loved running around, although the trail does run for a bit along a cliff so heart attacks were abound.

Nonetheless, it was wonderful to be surround by the smell of outdoors and the green everywhere! The best thing about our hike was seeing all the ladybugs! Ladybugs go into hibernation until about February. All along the creek, up along the cliff side there were ladybugs clustered together on branches and sign posts. Fascinating!

Uvas actually has camping spaces! I think maybe sometime this summer we'll try them out, let the kids run around in the creek like we did when we were kids at Alum Rock Park. Can't wait for the summer!