book review: A Draw of Kings

PG - a little more violence in this book.

I have mixed feelings about this review because I have loved this series and was uber excited to get the third and final book. And for free nonetheless (I received a copy from Bethany Publishers)! See my review of Book 1 here and my review of Book 2 here. I am pregnant and had a lot of down time (I'm getting huge in my 3rd trimester) so I was able to quickly read this book.

Of course, our hero has to go on ANOTHER quest to save the people who have detested him this entire time. I'm getting to the juicy part where I find out who is going to be crowned king and sacrifice himself for the kingdom when PLOT TWIST and things change and there is hope. At page 431 I'm thinking I'm gonna like this ending when I turn the page and ....

nothing.

The book ended at page 432 when there are 464 pages! Are you kidding me?! I felt like the characters in "Monty Python's: The Search for the Holy Grail" when they're in the caves and reading from the walls:

MAYNARD:  It reads, 'Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Arimathea.
    He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castle
    of uuggggggh'.
ARTHUR:  What?
MAYNARD: '... the Castle of uuggggggh'.
BEDEVERE:  What is that?
MAYNARD:  He must have died while carving it.

I'm hoping that Mr. Carr did not, in fact, die before writing this ending because that would be awful. I do, however, hope that you read this trilogy because it is fantastic! Just make sure your copy isn't missing the last 32 pages.

activity cubes

I saw this idea from a child blog I follow and they are also all over Pinterst, of course. I have very active kids. They are constantly moving, playing, teasing each other, and being kids. They are also really good at pushing each other's buttons, including my own. This art of button-pushing would usually end up with one or both crying and one or both in their rooms for a time-out. But timeouts weren't working. I saw these activity cubes and inspiration struck! 

What if these helped my kids get a long better? What if I could use these instead of timeouts? Doesn't that sound wonderful? 

Epic fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. 

My kids love these dice so much that they love playing with them, but they cannot seem to grasp the concept of sharing and end up fighting over the dice. I tried to referee and got smacked in the head with a corner of one of the die.

My version of this activity cube is as follows:

I used two dice instead of just one. This way the number dice tells how many of the activity they need to do. My activities included:

Flap like a bird.

Spin in a circle.

Run from the front door to the back door.

P.E. (This one has more detail to it that I'll explain in a bit).

Dance Party!

Hop on one foot.

There were so many activities that sounded fun to me, so I cheated and made the P.E. have 6 additional activities. They include:

1. wall sit

2. somersaults

3. jump

4. sit ups

5. push ups

6. jumping jacks

So, the number dice tells the kids which sub-activity they do and how many/long they do that activity. It has been so much fun watching my 5 year-old do these activities. The jumping jacks and push ups are my favorite to watch! 

So, this obviously isn't taking the place of timeouts but this is a fun thing that my kids like doing. What do you do for those "timeout" times?