What I'm Into: April 2013

I decided to join up with the What I'm Into link up over at HopefulLeigh this month for the first time. I love the life recap format of these posts and I think they're a great way to capture a snapshot of what we were up to in the past month.

On my nightstand:
I'm still in the middle of reading Sarah Mae and Sally Clarkson's book Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs To Breathe. This book is a must read for moms of tinies and moms who are now past these trenches. It's such an encouraging book for me right now. Just knowing that these years are beyond hard for everyone is encouraging! The book also encourages the moms who are past these years to remember how hard life is with tinies and step up to help young mamas out. Along the same lines, I'm also reading What It Is Is Beautiful, by Sarah Dunning Park. It's a lovely collection of her poetry about mothering tinies. I love that her poems are raw, real emotion. She beautifully captures both the highs and lows of motherhood in this book.

Want to read:
Oh goodness, so many. I just bought Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts for my Kindle app and am hoping to start that one soon. I am literally years behind on reading Ted Dekker's books, though I have most of them on my shelf, so those are next on my list too. I also have a stack of gentle parenting books that I need to start soon to get some new ideas for dealing with Ava's temper tantrums. First on that list is Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making a Heart-To-Heart Connection by Danny Silk.

Tv worth watching:
Our favorite right now is The Americans on FX. This show has moved up to my top five favorites along with Justified and Sons of Anarchy. I've been feeling kind of meh about a lot of our old favorites: Modern Family just isn't as funny as it used to be; we are only watching the Office because it's the last season; Community is terrible with the new director/writer. I do still love New Girl though. I'm slowly getting caught up on Call The Midwife, which is the only show aside from Downton Abbey that can make me ugly cry almost every episode. Call the Midwife is one of those shows that I will probably end up buying and re-watching often. It's that good. I still keep up with Once Upon a Time, though it has had some lame episodes this season. The episode from last week, Lacey, was SO depressing that I almost don't want to watch any more. I haven't even watched the one from this past Sunday yet because I just don't want to see any more Lacey/Gold interactions.

Movies I've seen (in or out of theaters):
We watched Snow White and the Huntsman recently when it showed up on tv. I am so not a Kristen Stewart fan that she kind of wrecked the movie for me. Charlize Theron was rather terrifying though, which redeemed it somewhat. We watched A Good Year, an older Russell Crowe movie, a couple weeks ago. Oh my goodness, I loved that movie. Pro tip? Make sure you have a bottle of good wine when watching a movie about a vineyard. (We didn't and it was sad.)

In my kitchen:
I've been making a lot of old favorites recently, things that are easy and don't take a lot of time like chicken salad, burgers, hot dogs, pasta, etc. I've been feeling rather uninspired with meal planning recently, which I'm chalking up to this in between seasons time right now. I'm craving fresh veg and summery dishes, but nothing is in season yet. I made an awesome mini meatloaf recipe from Aimee of SimpleBites last week that we just loved though! I also discovered a new crock pot curry recipe that the whole family loved, which is awesome since up until now we hadn't found a really good one.

In my ears:
I'm so boring with music. I get stuck in a musical rut very easily and then don't change it up for months! The last four months I've had The Lumineers' cd on repeat in my car, although I do mix it up occasionally with She and Him or Fun. Now that its warm out I am busting out some country music again for car rides. When driving home down a dirt road on a hot day you just have to have Jason Aldean's 'Dirt Road Anthem' playing.

What I'm looking forward to next month:
Eggs! I am so excited to get the first eggs from my chickens. Around Memorial Day is about the earliest we will see any eggs, and some of the breeds could even take until July to lay their first eggs. I am also looking forward to having fresh veggies from our garden again. We are planting seeds this week and then the waiting and watching begin!