Drawings

 I've had a little extra time this week so I got to do one of my favorite things: art. I love drawing and painting. This time I drew some pictures inspired from photographs I took back in Xi'an, China.

Painting Rocks

 The library had an event where you could paint rocks. The kids and I really enjoyed it. 

Back to school sale for our newspaper and magazine

The Illustrated Newspaper for Kids (INK), the newspaper I edit, is having a big sale here:

INK Newspaper is having a Back to School Sale. If you type on the code: School2024 for our PDF books, you can get 15% off until August 20. Our subscriptions are also on sale until August 20 (use the code GET15 for the online subscription and PRINT15 for the printed subscription). 

The publisher that prints the magazine I started writing (and many of my books that are printed up) is also having a sale here (look for Rachel Bubb and printed book). You can 15% off there until Friday, August 9, by using the code WRITERBIZ15. 

Chocolate Taste Testing

Sometime last year I saw a video about chocolate. It was posted by one of my favorite people that post videos on YouTube. I don't know this person, but she seems amazing. She (Anne) has a channel called How To Cook That. I've
watched her channel for several years and last year she had a video about chocolate and single origin chocolate. I knew about single origin coffee from my husband roasting coffee, but didn't know that there was also single origin chocolate. So, I decided to try it out as an experiment. We bought coffee from 3 places: Ethiopia, Brazil, and Belize. They all tasted different; Brazil in particular had a fruity flavor. The kids loved this science experiment. 

The County Fair

 We went to the county fair two days ago: the first time Charlie or the kids have ever gone to a fair. The youngest two loved the rides but my oldest son, Jeremiah, didn't. He gets car sick sometimes and one of the rides really did him in. So I walked around the fair with him, seeing all of the exhibits (which is the part I wanted to see anyway). He loved seeing the animals, especially the rabbits and some of the birds they had. I loved seeing some of the arts, crafts, and photography people had done. I told the kids that the rides go from place to place- could they imagine such big things getting packed up onto trucks to travel?