Weekend Links – Travel and Reading

Reading, Quitting and Sticking with It

Last week, I admitted that I have a habit of ditching books that I’m not enjoying.  I’ve been wondering if that’s always a good idea.  I’ve decided it’s a mixed bag.

On the one hand, it’s good to quit some books.  Just because others love them, doesn’t mean you will share the love.  Last week I determined that I would finish Gone Girl.  I wasn’t liking it, but I just kept thinking it would get better.  I slogged my way through 90% of it and couldn’t take any more.  Finally, I did something I’ve never done before – I googled to find out the ending.  Good grief!  I’m so glad I decided not to read through to the ending.  Those were some seriously messed up characters with little to no redeeming qualities.

This has taught me that I only enjoy reading books where I can have some sympathy for the characters.  And that if I really want to quit a book, I will put it down.

On the other hand, on the advice of several people, I picked up The Language of Flowers again.  I started this book a few months ago, but didn’t get far into it before quitting.  It seemed like it was going to be very sad.  But now that I’ve started reading it again, I’m really liking it.  I’m not very far into it, but I predict that I’m going to like this one through to the very end.

Travel

I haven’t put much time into planning our Disney trip lately.  I’m just try to keep up with the latest Fastpass+ info, so I’ll be in the know.  But once I put together our planning booklets, I will share those with you.  Until then, here is a photo of two from past trips.  I know these seem like planning gone crazy, but when you travel with a group of 13 people, it’s very nice to have everyone know what we’re doing.  I really hate standing around trying to figure it out with that many people.

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I must have a little spring fever, because in addition to our upcoming Disney trip I’ve been thinking about other trips as well.  So far, we don’t have any actual plans for other trips, but I’ve been doing a lot of dreaming.

I listened to this podcast from The Art of Simple.  In this episode, Tsh talks with Stephanie Langford about the year long, round the world trip her family has been experiencing.  For a variety of reasons, this is not something that my family will ever do, but it is something that we’ve had fun dreaming about over the years.  And I love hearing stories of people who have taken off on long adventures together.

We’re getting near the end of our homeschool year and we’re all getting tired.  The idea of making next year full of field trips is enticing.  Especially when I read these 12 Things Children Learn While World Schooling.  It has me thinking about how we can incorporate some of that adventurous spirit in our school, while sticking much closer to home.  If you’ve got thoughts on that, I’d love to hear them!

I pray you have a lovely Easter weekend!