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Whenever my kids see a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, they get so excited. Well, Jeff Kinney is back with book #14, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball, and we have the scoop! Greg Heffley is our hero and his life gets complicated when his parents use an inheritance to spruce up their house. Having been through renovations ourselves and knowing how crazy ours was, we had a great time reading this book. What zany antics will Greg get up to? Read on for a review from my kids!
As with the past Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, it’s written in diary style and my kids always love how Greg talks to them and shares his life through his entries and pictures. My almost 12-year-old daughter as well as my 9-year-old son are both very into the Wimpy Kid series and I think your child is going to like it also!
In the beginning, Greg’s family is preparing for a yard sale and Greg comes up with a great (but crazy) way to promote it, until his mother shuts that idea right down.
Then Greg’s aunt passes away and leaves the family some money. His mom decides to use it for home improvements. Greg’s a little annoyed that his mother won’t consider his 2nd floor ice skating rink idea, I mean, it made sense to my kids. My son loved that idea and he was giggling at it.
Greg’s mother didn’t like his couch/built-in toilet idea either. She decided to fix up the kitchen instead. When I asked my son if he had any home improvement ideas like Greg’s, he said he would make a slide from the top of his bunk bed to the kitchen table so he could eat breakfast immediately when he woke up. While I agreed that this was a good idea, I just didn’t think it would work for our family.
Greg mentions how his father has taught him about home repairs and the grout in the tiles. His imagination runs away from him and he imagines “The Grout” as a big monster. My son loved this part and started asking me about the grout in our house.
Add in some wasps and a wayward squirrel and my son was in stiches at Greg’s and his dad’s antics. Home repairs probably shouldn’t be done by this family! Things got even more nutty when the construction crew showed up.
Our Funny Home Renovations Story
It reminded me of when we did our kitchen renovations 12 years ago and how much chaos there was in our apartment. I was very pregnant with my daughter and my older son was two year old. Frankly I frankly never want to go through a kitchen renovation again. It was so disruptive to our life! I had to serve meals in our living room and sometimes in our bedroom! I only had a microwave to heat things up with – we ate a lot of takeout or things in cans. Luckily we only had one kid at the time to follow the crew around. We used two guys named Paul and Paul. Paul 1 was really funny and loved talking to my son who had just turned 2. My son was so into construction and couldn’t stop asking questions. He wanted to know when the bulldozers were coming. Paul #1 had to explain that they were going to use hammers and sledgehammers. My son wanted to help. Paul #2 wasn’t very friendly and basically ignored all of us. Especially my little boy who kept trying to ask him questions.
Paul #1 came running in one morning and announced that he had measured wrong and our stove was not going to fit. He frantically had to re-order the cabinets for the island so our stove would fit. It was almost a catastrophe! And when they ripped up our floors for the new tile they found so many cockroaches under the floorboards. YUCK! I am so glad I didn’t see that -unfortunately that’s what happens in New York City!
We didn’t want to touch anything ourselves – but let Paul and Paul and their crew handle everything from start to finish. My father is a carpenter and seemed to drop by a lot to check their work.
When they finished the kitchen, I was ten days from giving birth to my daughter! I was so happy they finished because I would have been miserable with a work crew and my new baby in the house. We immediately added a baby gate so I could keep my son out!
While I won’t spoil the rest of the story, Diary of a Wimpy Kid #14: Wrecking Ball kept my kids’ interest and they can’t wait to see what happens in the next Diary of a Wimpy Kid story.
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