1. It’s been a week since I was able to head to a sneak peek of the movie Despicable Me and I was SWORN TO SECRECY (til now) and couldn’t tell you about it.  My family goes to see quite a few kid oriented movies and it’s been a LONG time since I’ve enjoyed one as much as I enjoyed this one. I loved the story line, the voice cast is incredible (Steve Carrell, Julie Andrews – like, whoa). And usually 3-D is hard for me to watch – it gets too overwhelming. Not this time. I really loved it, as did my kids. Bonus: The music was done by Pharrell Williams – and I’ll be picking up the soundtrack when it becomes available on the 6th. Despicable Me is in theaters JULY 9.*

2. During the summer, guitar lessons are temporarily NOT on Thursdays, a change that somewhat throws me off. My lesson this week went well though. Next week, I take a break from telling my teacher what I want to learn and letting her pick something for me. I’m kind of excited to not know what comes next.

3. Speaking of guitar lessons and my guitar teacher… when I was in class, she mentioned her sister recommended a group to her and they reminded her of the folks from Once who sing “Falling Slowly”. She’s well aware that I love that song, so I asked her for the name of the group. They are The Civil Wars, and you can download their album free from their site (it redirects to their MySpace page). Lovely acoustic-y singer/songwriterly people. Love this song, “Poison And Wine” which was played on an ep of Grey’s Anatomy.

4. Puppy comes home tonight. We purchased his crate last night, and I’m in the process of researching everything I can about crate training and house training a puppy dog. Pumpkin got quite upset with me when I said that we’d be keeping DoggyDogg (no, not his name!) in the crate quite a bit initially — but, I think we’re all on the same page now. And if not, the crate is such a pain in the heinie to open that I know she won’t be able to sneak the puppy out.

5. Eclipse -did you see it? Are you going to? It’s funny when I think of how much I was looking forward to the original Twilight movie coming out… and then I didn’t love it. I’ve been kind of “over” it all since then. I’ll be sitting this one out.

6. Fourth of July weekend is coming up and I have no plans but house training a puppy. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I’ve never been one to make big July 4th plans though. I don’t even remember the last time I went out for fireworks – though, I’d kind of like to try to take some pictures of the fireworks this year.

7. Yesterday the Mother’s Helper was at our house to help me out while I was doing some work (and running Stepson from A to B back to A again – this ferrying around a teenager nonsense is tiring!), and she let The Princess use the Easy Bake oven. With my love of baking, I don’t know why I hate the Easy Bake as I do, but I really really don’t like the Easy Bake. Seems an awful lot of work for little scraps of cookies. It’s not even enough to knock the edge off a cookie craving. But she made a cookie for me to eat while I was working.

8. Yep, it was the Greek yogurt somehow making me sick. The thing is? Regular yogurt seems too sweet now (and I don’t love the texture). I will just take my chances. That’s some yogurt love, there.

9. I bought myself a new lens yesterday. It was not the priciest lens on my list (by far. Unfortunately I picked a really pricey hobby), but I’m hoping that it gives me a versatility I’m not currently getting with my 50 mm. I sure do love my 50, but I needed a little more flexibility in composing shots.

10. Reality TV Nit Picking: I really don’t like the way “So You Think You Can Dance” is set up this season. I think I was sleeping when they explained WHY they were doing this all-star version this way, but I kinda preferred when it was two contestants dancing versus a contestant and an all-star. And clearly I’ve already devoted too much time to thinking about it.

*Full disclosure: My family was given complimentary passes to the movie but the opinions are my own, as always.