Ugh....Holiday Weekends

Oh, the joys of long holiday weekends in America.  Don't try to tell A Reader's Respite that our economy is in the toilet....every family in America apparently has enough disposable income to buy a plane ticket this Memorial Day weekend, so that disproves all that bad-economy crap.

So if America is flying, A Reader's Respite is working.  But if you travel often enough, you'll know that air travel in our country is not exactly a well-oiled machine.  Things go bump.  And not just in the night.  And if you think your air travel plans tend to go awry, step into the shoes of a crewmember if you really want to experience a donkey ride to hell.

Take our last trip, for example.  Things started off so promising.  It was a rare, nice-weather day in Chicago and we were all set to take a plane load of corn-fed Iowans back to Des Moines.  The airplane was on time and nothing on it required immediate maintenance attention, so things were looking good.  Our flight attendants were in a marginally good mood and we managed to fill up every seat without any your-bag-is-too-big-to-fit-in-a-bin incidents.  But fifteen minutes prior to our scheduled departure time, the proverbial other shoe dropped......we had no co-pilot.

This necessitated a phone call on my part to that most dreaded group of airline employees:  the crew scheduling department.  These paroled psychopaths live in a dark and heavily-guarded concrete bunker deep in the bowels of the airline headquarters building (wherever that might be....they don't tell us for obvious security reasons).  Crew scheduling's one and only job is to make sure that every plane has a crew.  They have invented about a billion devious and mean-spirited ways to accomplish that, which means that crewmembers spend the vast majority of our time inventing new and creative ways to avoid those people.

Crew Scheduling, how may I assist you?

After dialing their super-secret phone number, negotiating a phone-tree that makes AT&T look simple by comparison ("dial 1 for English"....WTF?  All crewmembers are required by law to read, speak, and understand the English language.  Is the phone tree some kind of test?), and then waiting on hold for 20 minutes, we finally reached a crew scheduler.

"Hey, I'm missing my first officer.  Know where he's at?"

Sound of fingers flying across a keyboard.  Then silence.

"Uhhhhhhhhh......hmmmmmm.....looks like we missed that.  We'll call one from home and he'll be there in five minutes."

Yeah.  Sure.  That sounds realistic.

So we wait.  And wait some more.  To make this a book-related post, we'll tell you that A Reader's Respite passed the time with a copy of Nelson DeMille's The Lion's Game.  Good book, by the way.  Now we'd like to go on official record at this point noting that in an attempt to convey our empathy to all those passengers in back, we made a tremendous effort to keep them all in the loop with frequent announcements.  We didn't even lie about anything, which goes to show you how much we care.  We kept the air conditioning on full-blast and even kept the main cabin door open so that anyone could go on up into the airport and pass the time there if they wished.  See?  We're not heartless.

Suffice it to say that it took 2 hours before a co-pilot showed up.  Poor guy.  He was sitting at home on his day off, minding his own business and his only mistake was picking up the phone when crew scheduling called (although it's our considered opinion that if he was dumb enough to pick up the phone, he gets what he deserves...but we digress).  Once those little bastards have you on the phone, it's game over.  But 2 hours is 2 hours and by this time, the natives in back were getting more than a little restless and when this poor, unsuspecting co-pilot showed up on the plane and was stowing his flight bag, the demon-from-hell man in seat 2B chose that moment to accuse him of ruining everyone's holiday weekend because he was too lazy to show up.

Bad. Bad. Idea.

He might have gotten away with this little tirade had the cockpit door not been open and had his words not reached A Reader's Respite's ears.  We put down our book (which was just getting to a really good part, by the way), extracted ourselves from the captain's seat and made our way back into the cabin.  Dum-da-dum-dum.

Now some of you might know (hopefully not from personal experience) that when the Captain comes into the cabin due to a customer, nothing good is going to come of it.  A smart passenger realizes this and chooses to apologize or at least stop talking.  This was not a smart passenger.  He didn't shut up.  Worse yet, he made the very big mistake of confusing A Reader's Respite for a flight attendant.  Flight attendants are much more patient than A Reader's Respite.

Suffice it to say that Mr. 2B received a very painful lesson in what is known in commercial aviation as "Captain's Authority" by unexpectedly having to exit the aircraft.   We hope he spent the remainder of the day wisely, contemplating the fact that a $49 ticket to Des Moines does not, in fact, give him the right to verbally surmise that his Captain suffers from PMS.

Again:  Bad. Bad. Idea.

We eventually made it to Des Moines, by the way.  One leg down, four more to go.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

FREEEEEEDOM!

Freeeeeeeeeeeedom!!!!!!

Don't be jealous, but A Reader's Respite has spent the last two weeks doing something that we've been dreaming about for quite some time:

Reading whatever the hell we feel like reading!

That's right....no advance copies, no uncorrected proofs, no publisher copies waiting for reviews.  We just picked up whatever book we felt like and then we read it.

We're calling it liberation and the sheer joy of the feeling is simply indescribable.  No deadlines looming over your shoulder, no mentally re-arranging Mt. TBR to suit publisher's needs, no feeling of obligation whatsoever.

The effect is absolutely liberating.  A Reader's Respite now remembers why we love books so much.  A well-written book can transport the reader out of time and space and into another life, another world.  It exposes the reader to different ideas and different life experiences that make us all so diverse and unique.  But it seems worth noting that books can only do this if the reader is of the appropriate mind set at the time.  Reading a book because you have to can (and frequently does) take away the magic that resides within books.

Are we advocating that all book bloggers chuck their review copies?  Well, no.  But we are suggesting that taking a holiday from what you have to read and picking up books that you want to read can have an invigorating, liberating effect on the mind of a bibliophile.

It's okay.  You can be a teensy bit jealous.

If you've ever considered an e-Reader....

....well, now may well be the perfect time.  Hitting the shelves next month is Pandigital's new Pandigital Novel, the newest e-reader out there and at only $199.00 MSRP, it's affordable.

It will be integrated with Barnes & Nobel's ebookstore (kudos to B&N for making their ebooks available to so many platforms!), has a full color LCD touchscreen and is powered by Android, which means that users will have good internet capabilities with this baby.

As the not-so-proud owner of the Amazonian Devil Device (aka Kindle), A Reader's Respite highly recommends that folks interested in an e-reader do some serious comparison shopping before plopping down a bunch of money for the Kindle, which the retail giant Amazon has strangled with digital rights restrictions, a grey-scale, non-touch screen and no backlight.   About the only good thing we have to say about the Kindle is that it's easy on the eyes outside in natural sunlight and the battery lasts a few days, but that's only because there is no backlight to drain it.  Instead of recharging our Kindle, we're constantly replacing the batteries and itty-bitty lightbulbs in our Itty-Bitty Booklight.  Grrr.

So if you're in the market for an e-reader, check out Pandigital....then report back here and tell us how you like it.  If we hear enough good reports, A Reader's Respite may be offering a very, very cheap Kindle for sale on Ebay soon.

Who Won?

Who won the book?

Larissa of Larissa's Bookish Life

Zap us your far-away mailing address, Larissa, and we'll send this book off to you!

Pee Your Pants Funny

For those of you living in your pop-culture cave (like A Reader's Respite usually is), allow us to introduce you to Justin Halpern's book, Sh*t My Dad Says.

Justin is the twenty-something kid (we are showing our age here by referring to anyone in their twenties as a "kid") who moved back in with his parents last year.  He started posting the hysterical things his 74 year old father says on Twitter and before you know it, bam....he found himself with a book deal and development of a new sit-com.  Only in America, eh?

Justin's dad -- and his sayings -- are succinct, profane, and utterly funny.  Pee in your pants funny.  Our favorite so far?

A parent’s only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed. 

(from Shit My Dad Says)


Follow Justin on Twitter for a good laugh....

Finding Authors in Books.....

A Reader's Respite has recently become intrigued by the practice of famous authors appearing in recent works of fiction as protagonists.  We're not entirely sure why this practice is so appealing to us, but we've found ourselves drawn to these books.

By and large, most of these novels are of the mystery genre.  Take author Michael Atkinson's new mystery novel, Hemingway Deadlights.

A Reader's Respite was fascinated by the concept of author Ernest Hemingway as a drunk, Pulitzer-Prize winning author between books who becomes involved in a gritty murder mystery in Key West.  That the entire plot was glaringly improbable did not, to our amazement, disrupt our enjoyment of watching the grumpy, grizzled Hemingway take on the Mafia in Havana during it's heyday in order to solve the mystery of a friend's death.  In fact, we found ourselves amused at Hemingway's antics (and drinking habits) throughout the mystery.  Atkinson plans an entire series here.

We've previously mentioned our encounter with author Stephanie Barron's mystery series starring none other than Jane Austen.  This series of cozy mysteries finds Jane solving all sorts of local crimes and Barron does a respectable job in rendering the mysteries as Jane herself might have related them (complete with psudeo-scholarly footnotes smattered throughout).

None other than the famous playwright Oscar Wilde stars in Gyles Brandreth's new Victorian mystery series.  Delivered using Wilde's scathing wit, the rascally author has appeared in three of these novels thus far and his complicated private life is thoroughly incorporated into the pages, making for both a compelling plot and a fascinating insight into Wilde's private life.

Matthew Pearl struck publishing gold when his novel The Dante Club hit the shelves a few years back.  The novel features American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (and a few other famous Americans) solving a crime and finding a serial killer in 1865 Boston.  Like the previous novels mentioned, Pearl adapts the literary style of the author he features, a indispensable part of the novel's success.  Pearl has found success in this sub-genre (once called historical literary thriller by the Washington Post), also publishing The Last Dickens and The Poe Shadow.  We're assuming you can figure out who the subjects are by the title alone.

Another successful novel, short listed for the Booker Prize back in 2005, was the novel featuring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame) by Julian Barnes.  Doyle is found here investigating the conviction of  local lawyer under fishy circumstances.  Less "cozy" than the other mysteries featured here, Arthur and George is provocative character study.  Author Barnes has also written about other literary figures.  His novel Flaubert's Parrot is a fictional expose of the author, although Gustave Flaubert is not a character, per se, in the novel but rather the subject.

Not a mystery, but a novel featuring William Shakespeare as the protagonist, Nothing Like the Sun imagines Shakespeare's early life and loves in this story that preceded the more famous Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare's literary style is applied throughout and you'll find his sonnets liberally scattered throughout the novel, providing some insight into the playwright's famous words.

More recently, Kelly O'Connor McNees wrote a novelization of author Louisa May Alcott's mysterious love life in 1855 New Hampshire.  A lighter, more romantic novel, the story imagines Alcott's love of a local man...all the more intriguing because Alcott mysteriously never married.  The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott undeniably stirs interest in Alcott's works the most famous being Little Women.

There are numerous other novels featuring well known authors as protagonists, but we'll leave you with one last notable book: Little Fugue.  Author Robert Anderson doesn't place poet Sylvia Plath as a protagonist, per se, but this fictional work does feature Plath's poet husband Ted Hughes as he and others deal with the traumatic aftermath of Plath's suicide.  Critically well-received, Anderson tends to place Plath on a very high pedestal indeed.  But regardless of this (in our considered opinion) error, the novel offers fascinating insight into one of America's most tortured literary figures.

Know of any other novels featuring famous authors?  Tell us about them!

A Medieval Saga

Take a gander at the new face of Edith Pargeter's classic medieval saga, The Brothers of Gwynedd. Originally published as a series of four separate novels in the 1970's, the publisher Sourcebooks has gathered all four stories and bound them up in one giant, 800 page tome for your historical reading pleasure.

The original Book One of The Brothers of Gwynedd

A Reader's Respite first read The Brothers of Gwynedd many years back in one of it's previous incarnations and we can recall being quite smitten with this medieval tale of the first and last true Prince of Wales, a formidable Welshman named Llewelyn.

A precise and accurate author of historical fiction, Pargeter magically recreates Wales in 13th century, a region struggling to maintain it's own heritage and remain independent from England's Henry III and his son, Edward II.  This story quickly evolves into a rich saga full of love, loss, betrayal and triumph.

Sourcebooks is turning this re-release into quite a party this summer by sponsoring a Summer Reading Club featuring this historical fiction classic.  Throughout the summer, participants in the Reading Club will gather to talk about each successive book in the quartet.  This month, of course, will feature Book One:  Sunrise in the West, which sets the stage for us....

The tale of Llewelyn is narrated by his childhood companion and close confidant, the fictional Samson. Officially, Samson is Llewelyn's clerk, since he is skilled in writing and languages far and above the average Welshman of the time.  His narration is quite detailed and deliberate, almost formal in the telling, yet he is above all an honest storyteller and doesn't hesitate to present the players as they really are.

Samson recalls his boyhood and in doing so, introduces us to Llewelyn and his three brothers (yes, these are The Brothers of Gwynedd the title refers to) while skillfully weaving in the history of Wales as it pertains to this story.  The imprisonment of Llewelyn's entire family by Henry III of England, his father's death and the cruel separation of siblings are just a portion his formative years and go far in making him the man he will become.

After the death of Llewelyn's uncle, the kingdom of Wales is up for grabs, so to speak, and everyone wants a piece of the pie.  Henry III wants it for his eldest son, Edward; the marcher barons want it to enlarge their holdings and wealth; and of course, the brothers of Gwynedd feel entitled to it as well and prove willing to even betray each other in order to lay claim to Wales.

But carving up Wales only makes it weaker and it is Llewelyn who has the foresight to see that a kingdom divided cannot survive.  His mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and cunning battlefield skills will unite Wales as it had never been before and create a powerful kingdom that will unnerve that irritating neighbor called England.

Make no mistake:  this is a very complex novel filled with those convoluted Welsh surnames (evidently they didn't believe in the overuse of vowels) that requires concentration on the part of the reader.  But when read with the deliberation with which the story was written, we found it to be one of the most rewarding historical fiction novels we've ever read.  We felt that way the first time we read it and we were pleasantly surprised to find that we still feel that way even all these years later.  Perhaps that is why The Brothers of Gwynedd is considered by so many to be a classic example of the historical fiction genre.

On May 24, from 7-9 pm EST, Passages to the Past will be hosting the first Summer Reading Club discussion about this novel, so if you find yourself with nothing to do that evening, please do join in.
In June, we'll revisit The Brothers of Gwynedd with the second story in the quartet, The Dragon at Noonday and A Reader's Respite will fill you in on the rest of this compelling Welsh saga.







You didn't think we were going to keep this to ourselves, did you?  A Reader's Respite is very happy to give away a copy of Sourcebook's new publication of The Brothers of Gwynedd to one random commenter here on this post.  Just tell us you're in and on May 24th, we'll pick a winner at random and mail you a copy (even international peeps can enter!).  We'll keep our grubby old original copy and share the love with this new publication.

Just make sure you check back here on the morning of May 25th to see if you won and claim your book!

Cook the Books....

For this installment of Weekend Cooking (sponsored by the fabulous Beth Fish Reads), A Reader's Respite has only one question.....

How is it that we don't own a copy of this cookbook?

A cookbook featuring recipes from famous food passages found in classic novels and modern favorites, it seems inconceivable that A Reader's Respite doesn't have a copy of this stashed away somewhere.  (We double checked our shelves and it's shocking, but true.)

Recipes include Ichabod's slapjacks from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the orange-poppyseed tea cakes found in The Importance of Being Earnest, macaroni and cheese from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and even Sober Shepard's Pie from Bridget Jones's Diary.  How fun is that?  Perhaps not the most practical cookbook out there, but for a bibliophile it sounds like a little slice of heaven.


Must.have.this.book.NOW.

Crime in Scandinavia

Like many Americans, A Reader's Respite has been completely enthralled with now-deceased author Steig Larsson's Millennium Series.  We first read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on a trip to Brussels last summer and immediately became obsessed with protagonist Lisbeth Salander.  A perfect combination of mystery, thriller and family-saga, Larsson brought this little known sub-genre of Scandinavian crime novels to the forefront of world attention.

We are furiously gobbling up the second book in the series, The Girl Who Played With Fire in anticipation for the third (and final) book of the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, due for publication in the U.S. on May 25th.  (And yes, A Reader's Respite has this one on pre-order already!)  


If you haven't read the series, we highly recommend it even if you aren't normally a fan of the genre.


But Steig Larsson isn't the only Scandinavian mystery/crime writer with a big reputation.  On a recent 24-hour stay in Fargo, North Dakota, A Reader's Respite discovered that this sub-genre is chock-full of talented authors and riveting novels.  The bookstore we visited, as a matter of fact, had entire shelves dedicated to these books -- not surprising, given that the local population is largely of Scandinavian descent.


Among some of the gems we discovered (and consequently crammed in our suitcase and toted home):

This international political crime/thriller from Danish author Leif Davidsen features a middle-aged Danish college professor who gets caught up in international intrigue when his sister is accused of being a Stasi agent in Copenhagen.  Davidsen's novels often feature protagonists who are anonymous, every-day citizens who get caught up in international events beyond their control.  While not all of his novels are available translated into English, a good handful are and this talented writer is certainly worth a read.

Norwegian author Karin Fossum tends to write on a more local Scandinavian scale and her most successful books are the Inspector Sejer series.   Her novel Don't Look Back is the second in the series and it concerns a missing child from a small Scandinavian village and the improbable circumstances surrounding the child's murder that occurs in a small community where everyone knows everyone else.  Fossum began her career as a poet, but it's her crime/thriller novels that have won her numerous literary awards.

Swedish author Asa Larsson (no relation to Steig....it's a fairly common Scandinavian surname) writes a fabulous police-procedural-crime-thriller series featuring protagonist Rebecka Martinsson, a tax attorney who gets drawn into local crime cases.  Sun Storm (originally published in the UK under the title The Savage Alter) is the first in the series and introduces the reader to Martinsson, whose past is intertwined with a murder investigation and leads her down some unexpected and taut paths filled with intrigue and mystery.  It won the Swedish award for Best First Crime Novel and is well worth a read....translator Marlaine Delargy has been especially singled out for praise for her translation of this novel into English.


There are numerous other, talented Scandinavian crime writers out there....more and more of whom are being translated into English for us language-challenged readers.  Take advantage of it and enjoy some of them.  A Reader's Respite will definitely be picking up more new-to-us Scandinavian authors on our next trip to our favorite Fargo bookstore (which, coincidentally, will be next month!).

Historically speaking.....

Most fans of historical fiction novels are, by nature, lovers of history, too.  We love learning about different people from different time periods and often wonder why our favorite historical fiction novel couldn't have been substituted for our high school history textbook.

That love of history frequently drives historical fiction readers to Google characters and events in the novels we read and to search out the "real story" behind the novel.  Perhaps that's why A Reader's Respite is drawn to a handful of very, very good history podcasts.  Read on......

History According to Bob is one of the gold-standards in history podcasts.  A college history professor for 33 years in Kansas, Bob Packett produces (just about daily) 20-30 minute podcasts on a variety of history subjects.  His delivery is conversational, fun, and makes you wish you had a professor just like him when you were in college.  Many of his podcasts are archived on his website for download.  Or, because he produces entire series of podcasts about a single subject, you can also purchase CDs with his collections.  (One of the best birthday presents A Reader's Respite ever received was Bob's CD collection of WWI podcasts....we still listen to that thing!).

Another tried-and-true favorite for us is Things You Missed in History Class, hosted by Katie Lambert.  Katie tackles all sorts of intriguing historical subjects and people in her 20 minute-long podcasts and her voice is just fun and melodic.  Looking for the real scoop on Catherine d'Medici?  Yep, they've got that.  How about Blackbeard?  Or the eruption of Mt Vesuvius?  It's all covered here and is some of the best, quick info out there.  Oh, and Katie also has a very cool blog.

Last, but certainly not least, is the fabulous podcast put forth each month by the BBC History Magazine.  These podcasts are a tad longer, running about an hour, but feature some the of latest and greatest history discoveries.  March's edition featured a riveting story about how the exact site for The Battle of Bosworth had been discovered in England....all you Tudor-ites will know the significance of that find!  Also, check out their digital edition of the magazine for articles about Richard III and more....

Technological Trickery

We live in a gilded technological age.  Which is fabulous in many ways.....Google, blogs, iPhones, feed readers, e-readers, iKotex iPads, Facebook, Twitter, and of course, the legendary iPod.

If you're anything like A Reader's Respite, you are constantly discovering new ways to utilize all of your gadgets.  One of our favorite things is the PodCast.  Now some of you may think of these audio blogs as a chatty, hard-to-understand, bad-audio pain in the neck.  But there are some very, very well-done podcasts out there that are professional, well-organized and present very useful and thoughtful information.


Here are some of our favorites:

These podcasts are updated every Thursday and run about 20 minutes or so.  They include NPR's book picks, reviews, interviews and publishing news.  NPR also has a nice option that allows you to subscribe in a blog format in your feed reader if you don't want to subscribe to the podcast.

Librarian Nancy Pearl (of Book Lust fame) also a Book Lust Podcast here in Seattle that run about thirty minutes each. Very cool.  She used to have regular book review podcasts on NPR, but they seem to have stopped producing those last summer (boo hoo).

Of course the NYT Book Review offers a podcast....would you expect anything less?  'Nuff said.

The BBC's World Book Club is perhaps our favorite book related podcast.  It's a once-a-month production that runs just shy of an hour and always features a well-known author who discusses their books in front of an audience and takes questions.  It's fantastic!  And like NPR, the BBC offers you the option of subscribing to their RSS feed if you'd rather skip the audio and read it on your computer screen.

Also, don't forget your local library.  Hundreds of libraries, such as the Seattle Public Library, feature regular podcasts with book reviews and new releases that are very fun and informative.

When do we find time to listen to these?  We play them while we're making dinner, in the car, and we've even been known to fall asleep at night with our little iPod earphones plugged in.

Do you subscribe to any of these?  Have suggestions for other great book-related podcasts?  Tell us about them!

And for those of you who are history fanatics like A Reader's Respite, tune in tomorrow and we'll give you a list of all the history podcasts we are addicted to.

When is historical fiction historical enough?

We've been thinking about historical fiction characters lately.  Specifically, we've been wondering at what point a historical fiction subject is, well, historical enough for the novel to work well.

For example, we'd be willing to bet that if a historical novel were published tomorrow with a central protagonist of....

....that it would flop.

And yet if the 6,842,971st novel was published about another famous royal:

...well, we're pretty sure that novel would sell just dandy.

So what's the difference between these two scandalous, royal women?  Both are royal.  Both are dead.  Both are historical. 

Is there a cut-off date for historical fiction?  It seems to us there is, although we couldn't tell you what that nebulous date would be.  Perhaps the character shouldn't be anyone that exists as a real person in the reader's memory.  Perhaps a character needs to have lived so far in the distant past that they don't seem quite real to us, allowing the author to create their world for us.

What's your magical "cut-off" date?

Weekend Cooking for Mother's Day

Okay, we admit it.  A Reader's Respite hasn't been reading much this Mother's Day weekend.  Instead, we've been baking.  Now despite all you've heard about A Reader's Respite's sad, sad baking skills, we'd like to point out that just because we normally lack interest in it doesn't mean that we aren't capable when we put our mind to it.

With that in mind, we're happy to share our Mother's Day cupcake adventure with all of you....

Now in all seriousness, we're going to advise that you start this project with BOXED CAKE MIX.  Really.  By the time we get done with these babies, they're going to be so loaded down with frosting and decorations that you won't even be able to taste the cake part.  So do yourself a favor use the box mix, okay?

So we went ahead and baked up the cupcakes.  We made about 3 dozen using two different boxed mixes (we're feeding a crowd this weekend).  While those are baking up, grab your food coloring (admit it, it's been in your pantry for at least five years now....don't worry, it's still good) and tint up a few small bowls of plain white sugar.

After the cupcakes have cooled, go ahead and frost them with some pre-made frosting (again, make it easy on yourself).  Then grab yourself a bag of those tiny, colored marshmallows.  Cut the marshmallows in half diagonally and place them cut-side down into the sugar.

 Now we're going to take those marshmallows and start placing them in the frosting to make a Mother's Day flower....

Sound time consuming?  It is.  But it's so worth it when you end up with this:

Use different colors of marshmallows and sugars to make different colored flowers.  After about an hour or so, you'll end up with this:

Now we used green Twizzler licorice for the stems and also used a dab of frosting on the bottom of the cupcakes to anchor them to the platter so they don't slide around.

Frankly, A Reader's Respite only had the energy to make about a dozen of these today.  We decorated the rest of the cupcakes with various decorating tips:

And lest you think all of our cupcakes turned out this nice, we'll even let you take a sneak peak at our oopsie pile:

Y'all are welcome to stop buy and help us eat the oopsie pile.

Happy Mother's Day to each and every mom out there.  Your hard work is so very much appreciated, even if it takes twenty years for your kids to tell you!