The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I chose to read this book after seeing a blog on Stepehnie Meyers page saying that she loved this book. I figured if I love to read a certain authors books then the books she reads have to be good too. And this one was.

I had a tough time at the beginning as I thought it moved a little slow. But was extremly pleased at how easy a read it was. I had no expectations going into this read having no idea what the book was about. I got a little hesitant when I realized it was a book about fights to the death among young children. I felt Suzanne did a great job of handling the "games" not bringing in too much violence and gore.

I will definitely be picking up the next book when it comes out.


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My First Vinyl Letters

While this may seem like not a big deal to a lot of my friends out there, I am very proud of the fact that I was able to get some vinyl lettering up in my house. Thanks to Jane's friend I was able to get a great deal on all of the phrasing that I got done, which makes it even better. I did our family name and President Hinckley's Be's to put up in Brooklyn's room. I actually have to finish painting her room before I can do that, but when I do get it done it will look totally awesome. So here are some pictures of my little handy work.

Brooklyn's First Day of School

Brooklyn started her first day of school yesterday. She was so excited. We began to prepare Sunday night by getting her bathed, doing her hair all pretty so that when she woke up it would not be too difficult to make it look like she had done it. We then tried to get her in bed, which at that time it was 8:15. She fought it like it was the horrible monster that she claims is in her bedroom. Finally at 10:00 she fell asleep.


Brooklyn's school begins at 7:30. When I first saw that I thought, "Are you kidding me? I can't remember the last time I got up that early, let alone my 5 year old." So I set my alarm for 6:30. When I went to get Brooklyn up, she sat right up said, "Mommy I am not tired." Laid back down, looked at me and said, "Well, maybe a little." She was really good though, she started getting ready right away and was so excited.
We decided to walk to school since it is right outside our neighborhood and there would probably be lots of cars there with no parking spaces. It took us 10 minutes to walk there and then we had to wait in an unmovable line for 25 minutes to just sign her in. Brooklyn was all chatty with her friends that she new from church, from preschool, and from the neighborhood. (I think we have a Chatty-Kathy in our family.) Once we reached the front of the line she was ready to go. Didn't even want to say goodbye. She just held her teachers hand and walked right off. This was nothing new for her since her preschool class was just down the hall from her kindergarten class.
Now the worse part of this whole thing is that she doesn't go back to school now until next Tuesday. For some reason our county has started a new thing where the kindergartners do staggered days the first four days. They then meet their teacher after the staggered days and then officially start school after Labor Day. So now she is just bored because all of her friends are older than her and they are already in school. Hopefully this week will go by fast.

Our Princess' Birthday Party

Our Beautiful Little Princess has turned five!! We decided to have a Princess/Prince Birthday Party for her. I put so much work into this party, although you wouldn't have been able to tell if you attended the party. I was constantly on eBay searching for party favors, looking at different websites for different ideas on party games. It all turned out wonderful, and if we had all the money in the world to spend, our house would have actually looked like a castle to make it even more authentic. Of course that wouldn't have made a bit of difference to the kids as the still had fun.

The ivitation for the party went as follows:
Announcing a royal celebration

As a royal subject, your presence is requested by the King and Queen of the Kingdom Hullinger to attend an enchanted Princess Birthday Party for her Highness, Princess Brooklyn Hullinger on the magical occasion of her 5th birthday.

This royal celebration will be a Prince and Princess costume party where all are invited to dress in their royal wardrobe. Our enchanted birthday party will take place on Saturday, August 2nd and will begin at 11 o’clock with our celebration concluding at precisely 1 o’clock.

The King and Queen request that all royal subjects planning to be in attendance please RSVP by Thursday, July 31st.

Her Royal Highness, Princess Brooklyn, looks forward to your attendance at her princess birthday party which promises to be an enchanting time for all.

Our party will take place at the Castle Hullinger.

We started off with the kids coming in and making crowns. We then went and played hot potato with a "poisonous apple." They all enjoyed that since they each got a turn to stop the music for someone to get out. After that we sat down for a royal lunch. We then went on a magical dragon egg hunt. The eggs were filled with magical jewels. We then cam back inside and opened presents and had birthday cake. While waiting for one of our princes to come back from karate class, we went back outside and played freeze tag and red light/green light. Once our prince came back we went on a dragon slaying adventure. The kids all took turns at slaying the dragon.










So our next adventure of kindergarten begins in only three weeks. While I am very excited for her to go, it so hard to believe that she is already five years old. I know she is going to love going to school especially after she attended preschool at the elementary school. She is definitely ready, just not ready to wake up at 6:30 to get their on time.

Splish Splash Just Takin' a Bath

I don't think that Broooklyn would forgive me if I didn't put a post up about her taking a bubble bath with her cousins. She waited the entire trip to be able to take a bath with them. They had all taken a bath when they were in California at my granfather's funeral and she has been so excited to get back together with them so it could happen again. She had a blast in the tub and then all the girls stayed over at grandpa's house for a slumber party. So here we go...

July 4th

Here it is July 21st and I am just now posting my July 4th happenings. Things seem to be so incredibly crazy for me. Really they are not, but nothing seems to go right or maybe I am just so completely out of things right now that nothing seems to get done. I think John would probably agree with the second - sorry babe!

So for the 4th of July we went down to Texas to visit my family. All of my mom's family also came down - sort of a family reunion I guess. Of course from my previous post you can tell that we did a little Roller Derby. We of course had to go and eat at Spring Creek Barbeque. There is nothing like some real barbeque...and no you don't get the real thing here in North Carolina. Sorry all of you Carolina people, but this is not real barbeque and if you want the real thing you need to head to Texas, now that is some good stuff right there. We actually ate there twice on our trip, as soon as we got off the airplane and then when all of the family arrived.

One of our normal family traditions is to go to Grapevine Lake for the 4th. We usually ski, tube, picnic, lay out on the beach, and whatever we can think to take up time until the fireworks start. Well this year, we ended up going on the 3rd so we could avoid all the busy crowds of people that would be there. We had my dad's boat and then we rented 2 jet skis and a party boat. The best part of the lake for me was riding on the jet ski. We had rented jet skis before, but I was pregnant the last time we did it and therefore unable to ride on it. Oh my gosh, what a blast!! The first time I went out on it I went with my cousin Erika. She was as scared as I was, but I let my inhibitions go a lot quicker than she did. I don't think anyone got picture of us, but it was a ton of fun. I did manage to get John to go out with me, of course I had to nag him to get him to go, but I know he would have to admit that he had a lot of fun. He was making us fly out of our seats, jumping wakes, and just having a blast. Thanks for going with me John, it was fun!!

For the actual 4th of July, we all participated in another family tradition that we have, well we have had it for 2 years now, but oh what fun! ROCKET LAUNCHING!! We all have to build a model rocket and then we go to a park and launch them. We are then awarded prizes based on or rockets, launch, style, flight, landing, etc. So we all did our rockets launches and they were a lot of fun to watch. I must tell you about my rocket however. Well, my rocket actually did well. It was me that did not do well. So I go to the launch pad to set off my rocket. It takes off into the air and does not go very far because I had a larger rocket. I start chasing after my rocket to catch it before it lands on the ground (I was trying to be as cool as my older brother). My rocket is starting to heads toward the parking lot, so I do a "graceful" leap off the curb and fall flat on my face, into the asphalt. It was not a pretty sight. My hands got scratched up majorly (full of dirt and rocks), luckily I had longer shorts on, so my knees were ok. My insulin pump got damaged, thank goodness it still works though because it was not cheap. So anyway, after the launching we headed back to my dad's house and then got ready for fireworks. We went to one of his friends house and set off a ton of fireworks in front of her house. The kids enjoyed it a lot.

Roller Derby

We just came back from visiting my family out in Texas. Our second day there we went to my Father's volleyball gym which he rents out for different events. This particular night was Roller Derby - Dallas Derby Devils vs Angel City Derby Girls. This was our first experience at anything like this, and we were confused most of the time with everything that was going on. I guess the funnest part was watching the wicked spills that some of these ladies would take - now is ladies an appropriate word for an event like this...I don't know?

My sister-in-law Cheryl tried out for a team but shortly became pregnant so she is unable to skate right now. Therefore she helps out at the events and whatever else she can do.

At the starting line

Around they go...

and go

John, my sister-in-law Cheryl (dressed up like a Dallas Derby Devil), and myself.

Brooklyn, Austin (nephew), Cheryl (sister-in-law), Charlotte (niece, Cheryl's daughter), one of the volleyball coach's daughters, and Chase (nephew).