Monday Confessional

I have a secret quest in life: to ensure that my only daughter properly (and passionately) falls in love with all the same old books and movies that I have loved ever since I was her age. (Some true classics, some 80's & 90's classics!)

So far I've had about an 80% success rate... so I'm feeling pretty good about it. And I'm hugely enjoying my quest, especially when it means Kendall and I can go hide in my bedroom with the laptop or our books while sports games are going on in the living room! We've knocked out so many favorites and I have so many more still to introduce.

Biggest hits: Pride & Prejudice (watched 4 times now), My Fair Lady, The Fiddler on the Roof, The Princess Bride, Sleepless in Seattle, my entire Lori Wick book collection, and as of last night, Anne of Green Gables.

I originally introduced my dearest Anne a little too early, in both book & movie form, so Kendall remembered nothing except that she found the first book daunting and the movies boring. Oh was she pleasantly surprised yesterday! We had ourselves a little movie marathon, to be continued today, and she also found the books on my bookshelf and is ready to dive on in.)

{I love you, Anne Shirley! And now Kendall does too!}

Biggest failures: Grease, and Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. We are talking BOMBS, here. She walked out on me during the first one, saying it was way too racy and she was uncomfortable (while I was busy singing and bebopping along to Sandra Dee), and swore to never watch the second one again after the slightly disturbing forced wedding scene with Marian, Nottingham and the witch.

Girl's a prude. Err, I mean, MY BAD!

(Funny how many scenes you forget about when remembering movies you watched as a kid/teen!)

(Note to self: give her a year and try again ;)

Guilty pleasure

{Raising readers}

Reading is the current guilty pleasure taking me away from more regular blogging. I only call it a "guilty" pleasure because I can't seem to do it with any semblance of balance. Cooking? Housework? Outside activities? A decent bedtime?

OUT THE WINDOW.

I am engulfed. And because I know this is how I work, and life just keeps getting busier and busier as my kids grow older, I allow myself the guilty pleasure of a good book binge less and less. But I do allow it! Reading is good for the soul! (It's also good for the vocabulary. Kendall informs me that mine is vast. Hehe.)

Georgette Heyer is one of my all time favorite authors and I have every single one of her historical romance novels. On my bookshelf and on my kindle. (If you love Jane Austen then you will love Georgette Heyer. Super clean. Very witty. Excellent dialogue. Just ignore her mysteries.) I force myself to wait as long as possible before picking one up again because I know that when I do, I will fall back in love all over again and reread almost all of them.

(THERE ARE OVER 40.)

I think it's been close to 5 whole years since I last went through them all and this past weekend I decided I'd waited long enough. I'm now on # 4 for the week :) 

I'll see ya when I see ya, is what I'm saying ;)

P.S. My very faves? The Foundling, Cotillion, The Convenient Marriage, Devil's Cub, Friday's Child, Frederica... I could go on for a while, actually...

The kindle.. aka "where to find me"

It's not quite my birthday yet, but Russ bought my present already: a kindle paperwhite to replace my dearly beloved old keyboard style kindle that broke forever back in March of this year (may it rest in peace.)

After 5 days of use I am now here to sing of my eternal and everlasting love of the paperwhite and all it's many virtues, and to also tell you: don't bother me.

I'm busy.

Reading.

Reading everywhere, because it's so darn small & light, reading for long spells, because there's no glowing LED screen, and most importantly, reading in the dark, with a built-in adjustable light that is super easy on the eyes and doesn't change the battery life of EIGHT FREAKING WEEKS.

(Changed my life, people. Also, my sleeping habits ;)

I could go on and on but this isn't a paid review or anything, I just really love the thing, and I really love my husband, who was so obliging as to get it for me early and give it to me right away because I could wait NO LONGER, DEAR SIR!

That is all.

For the love of reading,

10 Things (a Tuesday list)

1. I think I mentioned yesterday how much I loved the new Hunger Games movie. Looooved. Well one of the trailers before the movie was for a film called Divergent. Which apparently is also a 3-part book series, and I know this because I just downloaded all three onto my kindle, that's how interesting the movie trailer was.

2. This means I shall not be going to bed before midnight all week because I can NOT put a good book down. And I can tell, these are going to be good.

3. While on the subject of good books, I would like to share my excitement about a new book by my parenting mentors, Joey and Carla Link from Parenting Made Practical.

I have been listening to Joey and Carla's Mom's Notes presentations for probably ten years now... and a more practical and relatable, wisdom-filled teaching based on the Growing Kids God's Way (Babywise/Childwise) series you'd be hard-pressed to find. The help we have received from them in our parenting journey has been truly invaluable. You can find their new book, Why Can't I Get My Kids to Behave? on Amazon, or at Barnes and Nobles here.

4. And having nothing at all to do with books... a week ago I asked Blake what he would like for Christmas. His answer was a power wheels car that you can ride in and that "can fly just a little bit". Hmmmm.

5. Last night I asked Blake what he'd like for Christmas again, wondering if he'd remember what he'd said last time or if he'd be onto something new. His answer? "Meat. Deer meat." Well, that we have in abundance, my son. And also, YOU ARE STRANGE.

6. I think it says much about my age that my top two Christmas wishlist items are a new four-slot toaster and a sonicare toothbrush. Hey, properly toasted english muffins and good oral hygiene are both very important to me.

7. Remember back when I said I loaded new books onto my kindle? I may have just taken a writing break to "peek" into the first one and lost an hour of my time. Good gravy I'm in trouble.

8. Everyone is doing these "month of thanks" daily posts on facebook... or at least it seems like everyone. I'm thankful for lots of things too, but I have this stubborn streak that makes me not want to do something like that just because so many people are. So instead I think of the things I'm thankful for and refuse to tell anybody. Ha! Does that make me the Thanksgiving Grinch?

9. Don't answer that question.

10. Ten things is really hard when all you want to do is dive back into a book! SEE YA! ;)

Home from the woods

Since I haven't blogged in 9 days, you may have been wondering if we ever came home from our camping/hunting trip to Eastern Oregon. We didn't get lost, we just arrived home to a crazy busy weekend and I haven't had any time to play on the computer. Nor will I get to much over the next couple of days seeing as that my laundry room still looks like this as of late Sunday night:

Please pray for me.

As for the trip: it was a giant success, barring the fact that it rained a few nights and our trailer leaked like a sieve - causing me to call down curses from heaven upon it and use all our pots, pans and plastic bowls available to catch the drips. It put a bit of a damper on the week. (Get it? Damp? Hardy har ;)

But besides that, and the fact that my children all ran out of clean socks well before the week was over because they couldn't seem to keep their booted feet out of the creek even though I nagged them to death about it, we had a splendid, splendid time.

our home sweet home for 7 days

Remember the stack of books I brought? I read through eight of them. EIGHT. I was in book reading heaven the whole week and my fabulous Mr. catered to it by taking the kids on hikes and road hunts and leaving me in cozy silence. In return I came out of my warm trailer cocoon at lunch time and in the evening to cook yummy camp meals and chat around the fire and we decided that since we both got to do exactly what we wanted the whole time, we're pretty much a camping match made in heaven.

With five cousins in camp my kids of course were thoroughly entertained when not out with their dad and I honestly didn't see that much of them, except for the first day when they had to do almost a week's worth of school work and I decided by noon that a home-schooling mama I was NOT meant to be.

don't let their sweet smiles fool you... there was MUCH whining, complaining, dire threats and bribing with candy going on here!

Fun with the Grandle cousins

And because collages are fun, here's another one of the rest of us at camp:

Clockwise from top left: Russ and his sister Cara, Nathan and Marvin (Tim's brother and Dad) with Russ, Tim and Cara, nephew Ben, Russ and I (in my awesome pink rain boots ;)

The highlight of the trip was probably on the last day, when our oldest nephew Ben shot his first buck, and we all got to go search for it and be there when he found it. Fun family memories I tell ya.

the whole crew minus me, the photographer, who formally apologizes for not knowing how to remove blood from a picture. Sorry about that. 

And Ben wasn't the only one to succeed in the hunt either.

I know this pic is about Uncle Nathan's spike deer but could Blake in his Carhartt overalls be any cuter???

The rest of the hunters all had some close calls and exciting moments out in the woods so still had a great time even though they didn't bag a deer. (Will you look at me with all the hunting lingo? It's like I was married to a hunting maniac or something...)

But the best part of all was the family time together and new memories created. So worth a couple nights in a leaky trailer if you ask me :)

Don't forget the entertainment!

We leave tomorrow for a week long family vacation/hunting trip into the Eastern Oregon wilderness, and for the past 24 hours we've already been in full-on pack mode. 

(When you are traveling hours away from civilization, running water, and electricity, it is important to not forget things like food & water, warm clothing, and the all-important bug spray. It pays to be thorough.)

Last night I worked on one particular area of importance: my reading selection. When we made this trip two years ago I read 6 books in a week, and I plan to at least reach that number again this year, if not exceed it... so I need good material to work with. 

It's not a matter to be taken lightly. 

After much thought, back cover reading, amazon.com browsing, some word-of-mouth recommendations, and a couple of very spontaneous kindle purchases that we're going to keep on the down-low (*ahem*), I've narrowed it down to 10 titles. 

(You never know what reading mood you're going to be in for so it's best to have variety.)

7 paper books (collected mostly from yard sales this past summer) and 3 new additions to my kindle.

Can you believe that Russell rolled his eyes when he saw this stack? Doesn't he know that good books are a serious matter? Actually he does now because I told him so. 

I think I've pretty much covered my bases. Spiritual teaching, Christian romance, suspense, drama, biography, NY Times bestsellers, criminal comedy, a period piece, it's all here. And I've got my bug spray, so I'm good to go!

Looking forward to diving in soon... wish me luck :) 

The Help

Saw it.

Loved it. 

Cried a bajillion tears.

 With TWENTY girlfriends.

(If you're going to cry and laugh out loud all movie long, why not do it with a bunch of other women who are all doing the exact same thing?)

Those of us that read the book first...

And some of those that didn't (but still LOVED the movie).

How a little word of mouth can go a loooonngg way - almost everyone who went.

Had one of the best girls nights out Eva. 

Yogurt Shack helped ;)

(And let's be honest, so did the Breaking Dawn movie trailer... woohooo!)

Book lover

I'm on a total reading binge right now. I've always loved reading and used to borrow or buy new books regularly, but over the last couple of years my reading has become a lot more sporadic - I can go months without picking up a single book. 

The thing is, once I do I'm immediately reminded of how much I LOVE a good book and will go on a week or two long binge of reading NON-STOP. As in, not much gets done and I stay up waaay too late. It's real fun for Russ and the kids. 

If you're not sure of what I mean by non-stop, I mean that it's Thursday and I'm about to start my fourth book THIS week. (Downloading books on my kindle is just way too convenient.) Yesterday I was finishing The Help and I'll just tell you that it's a miracle my family ate last night because I could not put it down. So we had blueberry pancakes and I read in between flipping them on the griddle. I read in the bathroom. I read into the wee hours of the night and might be a little bleary eyed this morning. That was ONE GOOD BOOK. 

Oh how I love a good book. But I'm only going to read one or two more and then I'll need a break again, if for nothing else than to win back the love and affection of my family that I've abandoned ;)

picture taken by Blake. For a three year old he's a bit of a superstar with the camera.