Facebook does have redeeming qualities

Wade has been reading up a storm lately.  He read all the Harry Potter books recently and an adult non-fiction book about the World Fair in Chicago called Devil in the White City.  I was having a hard time keeping up with him, so I asked for book suggestions on Facebook.  The response was quick and overwhelming!  This list I made needs updated already because I am STILL getting suggestions from people!  Sometimes, Facebook does have redeeming qualities, haha!

Decluttering reveals many treasures!

Thanks to the blog "Becoming Minimalist," I really got the bug to clean out some things around our home last week.

I sold a few things.  I gave some other things away.

I found my trifle bowl that I thought I'd lost forever.

I found my favorite bookmark.

I discovered a new place to store books.

And I found a very inspiring book in that process, Letters, by Marjorie Pay Hinckley.  I can't remember where this book came from, whether it was a gift or not.  There is no inscription in it, so it may have been one of the books in Grandpa Ed's wonderful collection of books that we were able to go through.

Regardless of where it came from,  it is a GOLD MINE and made me cry happy tears last week as I sat in the new "book nook" and read a few pages.  Sister Hinckley's children wrote a letter of their own as an introduction, and the last paragraph really got to me:

"And so, we offer this sampling of Mother's letters....We hope you will see them as a celebration of the power of the ordinary.  We hope that as you peek into the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday-ness of her life, you will see with new eyes the value of your own.  And, most of all, we hope that your family will decide to write and save more letters.

Having a wonderful time.  We only wish you were here, Mother!"

How awesome is that!  It was a quiet, sweet validation of my own splendid, ordinary and blessed life.  I'm looking forward to reading more from it!

Books, books, and more books

I'm in book heaven right now, where I've been reading a lot and have enjoyed everything I've read.  First there was this one for next year's Battle of the Books list:

Then a Kindle freebie that I actually really enjoyed, a clean romance that held my interest:

Then these for Battle of the Books:

Stayed up late to finish this one last night  (WHERE has this book been all my life?  Surprisingly good!):

Waiting their turn on my nightstand:

Happy!

Let's call it what it really is

Tonight is book club at our house--we're discussing R J Palacio's book Wonder, which I L-O-V-E.  I think every parent and every 4th grader on up should read it.

In preparation for the book club, I was making a grocery list this morning and telling Jason and Rhiannon what I planned on making for tonight:

Kathy's Cinnamon Bundt Cake
Chocolate Raspberry brownies
Seasoned popcorn
Crackers and cheese ball
Veggies and dip
Fruit

Jason's eyebrows arched up and he said, "I think you should call this what it really is--Treat Club."  :)

I'm looking forward to it!

Update:

Success!  6 friends showed up, along with Rhiannon and Wade, and we had a good time.  I woke up smiling about something Wade had said and posted it on Facebook this morning:

Funny Wade time:

Last night at the book club I invited both Rhiannon and Wade because they enjoyed the book.

We were teasing Wade about his dad saying he'd take away Wade's man card for joining us, and Wade goes, "It's okay, I've got 3 of those."

He calls these Chuck E Cheese credit-card looking things his "man cards." No one else knew what he was talking about, but inside I was laughing SO HARD!!!!!!

A gift for a special teacher

Earlier this morning I shared something that happened to me yesterday involving popcorn seasoning and feeling Heavenly Father's love for me.  Yep, the two are related.

Well, today that "tender mercy" magic happened again. 

At Wade's school this year I'm doing something new and helping with the Battle of the Books program.  My friend Becky and I meet with about 25 4th and 5th graders every Wednesday at lunch and prepare them for a book competition coming in the spring.  The kids are there voluntarily, missing out on recess time to be with us.  It's been a lot of fun for me so far, and challenging. 

Right now we're doing little "book talks," where we preview each of the 30 books on the list and try to psych the kids up to read them.  Today I decided to get a jump on next week's book and get organized for it.  It's Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, a great book!

Thanks to Google Search, I came across this:

 

The man on the left is Steven Kellogg, a fantastic illustrator, and the woman is Patricia MacLachlan.   The man on the right helped design the book.

 

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Steven Kellogg's children's books.

 

I really like Patricia MacLachlan's Sarah, Plain and Tall.

 

Steven lived in the Sandy Hook village in Newtown, Connecticut for 35 years and was very, very sad about the school shooting that happened in December 2012.  He called up his friend Patricia and asked her to make a book with him.  Their collaboration, Snowflakes Fall, came out this year on October 29th. 

 

You can bet that my book talk on Sarah, Plain and Tall will mostly be about two friends coming together to heal their own pain and help others do the same.  Amazon.com shares a little more; that the publisher of the book, Random House, donated to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund and also gave 25,000 books to the national literacy organization First Book, in honor of Sandy Hook children.

 

Finding out about this book was a tender mercy. 

 

Realizing that I'd just stumbled on the perfect book for Wade's special teacher for Christmas was another!

 

Merry Christmas!


Post Script:  5 days later...today (Monday) Wade's teacher thanked us for the book.  I'd slipped it in her teacher box in the office on Friday.  She said that day she'd gotten chewed out by another parent over a small thing, and she was feeling low.  She went to her box at the end of the day and found the gift, at just the right moment.  The book was perfect, our letter to her was perfect, and she was very appreciative.  AWESOME!!!!!!!!

 

 

3 winners in 48 hours

I've read three books in less than 48 hours, and each one has made me feel like my heart was going to burst and made me think, think, think.  Hats off to authors who can do that!

R. J. Palacio's book Wonder came out this year in February.  I don't know how I missed it.  It is wonder-ful.  "Be kinder than is necessary..."

Another super sweet, unexpected winner that came out this year--Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan.  I read this in an hour or two and wanted to the kids to read it right away.  I said, "It's so good, like Charlotte's Web good!"

 

 

Rhiannon encouraged me to read Karen Hesse's young adult fiction book Safekeeping.  I stuck with it and agreed it had a good message, too.  Thanks, Rhiannon, for the recommendation!

 

 

 



Summer reading

I've got a hefty pile of summer reading from the library.  I have NOT been impressed by the Top 100 lists on my Kindle lately, so the library has definitely been getting more of my "business" this summer! :)

Here's what I'm dabbling in right now:

   


and, finally, don't laugh, .....




 I ran across the How To Win Friends book on a substitute teaching blog I check.  First I laughed, I mean, what an over-the-top ridiculous title, right?  I checked it out only for a good laugh.  Well, I'm a few chapters into it now and it is fantastic.  Most "self-help" books I look at are skim-worthy but rarely do I hang on to the very end--I just get bored out of my mind.  But this particular book is fascinating and very, very uplifting. 

Kudos to Mr. Carnegie.  He got it:  "The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules whose would you use?"

Hula hoops, bean bags, and a really great book

I really enjoyed my sub job today.  I needed to get out and take a break from other things I was worried about, such as Oscar's little "surgery" at 8am this morning.  

A few times a year the 1st-grade teachers get subs and let us entertain the kids with a morning of PE activities while they do testing in small groups.  It's pretty smart, and the kids love it.  Last time I got the playground station, so it was only fair that I do something different this time.  Instead I rotated 4 different groups through


the hula hoops and


the beanbags station!

It was fun.  I was REALLY proud of myself for remembering to wear athletic shoes, too.  It's not the most professional look, but when you're outside running around for 3 hours, it's the only way to go.

Just before the teachers came back, we got the kids settled back in their classrooms and read books that had been left for us.  I absolutely loved this one:




The kids were spellbound, not just by my attractice read-aloud voice, heh-heh, but because of the story itself and the beautiful pictures.  It was TERRIFIC!  Sometimes it takes a miracle to get a group of almost 30 1st graders settled down, but this book did it easily! 

Afterwards I asked the kids what character they'd like to see hop out of a book.  I said I'd like to meet Knuffle Bunny.  The kids had no idea who that was--maybe that'll have to be the next read-aloud!

Take a trip down Memory Lane with me:  Wade reads Knuffle Bunny

A little humility is good for my soul

The book club I attend has gotten huge, so big that it's hard finding a place to sit AND there's usually not just one discussion going but several at a time.  We decided to try hosting the same book on two different nights to break it up a little.  A friend beat me to the punch and wanted to host The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  I adore this book!  I was happy to take the hosting night that was left.

So I got things ready to go today (a very minimal amount of preparation, in all honesty) and waited for the doorbell to ring.  The entire night I had two friends show--Melissa, who was excited to get out of the house after being super sick for a few weeks, and Kiahna, who had been to the PACKED Tuesday discussion and dropped by to give us the juicy details.  The three of us had fun discussing the book, and then after Kiahna left, I sat and talked with Melissa for over an hour and a half.  It was so relaxing and fun to get to know her better and talk about all kinds of things.  I wasn't upset AT ALL that more people didn't show.  Instead I felt like I'd been given a gift, the gift of Melissa!

Cue the music

The book fair is at our school this week!  Rhiannon and Wade love it, and they use their own saved up money to buy books....

(Conversation as we were walking to the van after school)

Wade:  There was this cool Lego Star Wars dictionary that I wanted to get.

Mom:  How much was it?

Wade:  The lady said that it was $21.  (He slumps over and puts on a sad face.)  I only brought 10 dollars.  But then!

(Wade gets this big grin on his face and starts singing the Indiana Jones theme song really loud...)

Wade:  There it was!  An Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull book!!!!

Mom:  (smiling) And how much was that one?

Wade:  7 dollars!  I got it and sat down at recess to read it, almost 60 pages worth!


I laughed and laughed over that, and Wade had fun recreating the scene for Dad at dinner time, too.  Rhiannon bought 3 books and said she'd read almost 70 pages in one at school today.  Love, love, love books!

Thomas Jefferson: "I cannot live without books."

Jason SHOCKED me at Christmas with one of these:




I'd seen the Amazon Kindle ads for months, every time I got online to purchase Christmas gifts for other people.  I'd look at all the hype, then look lovingly at my big stack of books on my bedside table, and I'd just laugh.  "There is no way  I'd give up a good, old-fashioned book for something like that!" I thought.  At the time I was also thinking of the 900+ page book I'd just bought and planned on bringing up to Utah for Christmas--Doris Kearns Goodwin's goodness called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  It's AWESOME, and it's HEAVY.

But then my sweet hubby surprised me with a Kindle, and I started using it.  I've got a bookcase of free digital "classics" on my Kindle so far, everything from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to Edgar Allan Poe and good ol' Leo Tolstoy.  I feel so SMART.  Another really, really, really happy day was when I "purchased" a free version of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South.  I placed a hold at our local library for that book and had been waiting MONTHS for a turn with it.  Now it is mine, all mine, whenever I want to look at!!!!!!  (I am smiling ear to ear right now!!!!)

Today I took the plunge and actually spent some money on books for the Kindle.  First I bought the LDS Scriptures Kindle edition, which has all the LDS Standard Works and then a treasure chest of other stuff, everything from hymns to inspirational quotes to the Family Proclamation.  Then (don't laugh) I turned the other way and bought True Grit, by Charles Portis!

I'm done for a while.  It'll take me a long time to read everything on this slim device.  Plus, I've still got plenty to keep me busy with my "real book" pile--that Lincoln book and this HUGE Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 and The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner for book club and The Help because Santa got it for me and it's worth reading again.

I love books.

Any form.

The End.