Recent Reads

Here are a few good reads we've come upon recently:

Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart: For elementary-middle school readers, except that I loved it and considered it one of my favorite reads this year! I bought it a long time ago to read and see if it was okay for Caiden to read. He read the Series of Unfortunate Events earlier this year and loved each book, so I was excited to see a new series of books that might be good for him. It was! Super clean, with a great story, and we were both captivated through the end. There are two more in the series, which will be going in a red box with a bow next month for him (and me!). These are long books, over 400 pages each, so they're great for keeping a fast reader occupied.

House of Dies Drear, by Virginia Hamilton: I read this one, somehow having missed it in high school. It was a different book, but very good, and I loved it. (Sidenote: the first night I started reading, it was a little scary and suspenseful, and at midnight when I put the book down and turned off my lamp, I realized I saw raccoon feet out in the barn. I had to grab a lantern and the dog and head out into the pitch black of the field and into the barn to wield off possibly-rabid creatures. I was scared stiff. Pace was asleep, so no help there. Even the dog didn't want to go in the barn! Then it turned out not to be raccoons at all, and I had to fight the urge to run all the way back to the house. I walked, but only barely. I don't read scary books very often, obviously.) There is a sequel I haven't checked out yet.

Our Only May Amelia, by Jennifer Holm: another juvenile book, but also not for younger readers. I can't remember where I read about this one, but I'm so glad I did. It takes place in Washington in about 1900 and is about a lone girl among 7 brothers. Her Finnish family experiences several heartaches in that year, and the story is in her voice, and it's excellent. I always come away from literature about that time period astounded at what pioneers struggled with just to survive.

Stories from Grandma's Attic, by Arleta Richardson: Caiden is reading these out loud to us for school, and even though the characters are a young girl and her grandmother, he loves it. Each chapter is a story from the grandmother's childhood, and she was a mess! We laughed out loud when she snuck hoop skirts under her church dress, sat down on the pew, and the entire dress flew up into her face. Each chapter is the grandmother's retelling of her life lessons to her granddaughter, and they're all based on the author's grandmother's life. There are a few sequels to this book.

March, by Geraldine Brooks: I read this after my dad recommended it. Yikes! I had a hard time with this one, because the character, Mr. March from Little Women, was completely different from how I'd imagined. In Little Women not much about him is mentioned, other than the fact he's at war and comes home emotionally and physically damaged. March is his story, and it's based on Louisa May Alcott's father's journals. (Father? Grandfather? I can't remember.) I have to be honest and say I didn't like the book until the very end because I didn't like the main character. Then I was glad I stuck with it, because it was riveting and touching and made me think. There are some adult themes in this one, being a book about abolition and war, so be forewarned.

Calm My Anxious Heart, by Linda Dillow: I've had this book a long time and occasionally re-read it, always coming away glad I did. Linda Dillow has written some really great books, Creative Counterpart being one of them. This includes a Bible study at the back and has a sequel that just came out, A Deeper Kind of Calm, which I haven't read yet. This is a good book for these days, it seems. So much to worry about, and Calm My Anxious Heart is a soul tonic!

I don't know what's next on the list. I finished Our Only May Amelia last night and need to pull out my copy of Honey for a Woman's Heart to find another good suggestion. (Honey for a Child's Heart is fantastic, a must-read for parents who want literature to play a key role in their children's lives. The booklists are dog-eared in my copy, but the beginning chapters are really where all the gold nuggets are. Each time I re-read them, usually at the beginning of our school year, I re-realize why books are so important!)

So there you go! What are you reading, that you'd highly recommend?

Leaf Pile

My husband says he doesn't know what to do with all the leaves that keep dropping.





I think the kids (and chicken) have figured it out!

She's Just Gourdgeous

Why am I spending every afternoon working on her,


when she's clearly smitten with her:

Plucked,

Protected,

Bedded on a mushroom,

Given a face

and swaddled,

put to bed,

with a sleepover guest.

Could a gourd live a better life?

I think not.

The First Year Quilt

I wrote about this quilt here, then renamed it when I finished it, since it's not, in fact, Addie's quilt, it's mine. I made it for me, to remember her first year by, and maybe someday, if I'm feeling particularly unsentimental, I might give it to her.

Or just let her sleep on it?


Maybe just look at it.

Oh, I'm kidding, I promise.

(Maybe.)

Anyway, it's finished, and I love it dearly, because it's my first quilt (I've made) to snuggle under. I made my husband this one, then this one for Addie, then these for the boys, but this is all mine! It's the perfect size, just big enough to sleep under but not so big to be awkward to quilt, and the back is two fabrics that are very 30s vintage, but you'll have to imagine it because I deleted my photos. Long story.

It stays folded up on my reading basket next to my bed, ever ready for a plop down in an armchair with a good book.

Or for the girl it's made in honor of, to roll around on.

Perfect.

Purty Poultry

I was tinkering around on my computer today and realized I have a high concentration of poultry pictures in my photos. Never in my life would I have guessed I'd be the proud owner of photogenic poultry!

Here are a few of the more recent shots:
Gloria, in all her turkey beauty. Okay, so maybe not loads of beauty, but she's very friendly and makes awesome noises that make us all laugh. She also lays beautiful pink eggs with chocolate speckles.
I had never seen a turkey look like this before. All the Thanksgiving drawings of turkeys show them with their feathers raised. Tom actually only raises his feathers occasionally, and is otherwise unimpressive looking, but he sure is funny. He gobbles on command, which alone is worth paying for his feed.
Here are a few of our babies, right after we got them. Now they're much bigger and look like miniature chickens, feathers and all, but for some reason I don't have any other pictures of them. I guess second flocks are similar to second children in that way!
Here are our big girls, minus one who was laying in the barn. There's Paprika, Victoria, Ozma, and Owl. Caiden names all the chickens, and he's having fun choosing names for the new flock.
And this? This is what you get in Texas in 100+ heat. A partially cooked egg in its shell. I cracked it open to cook it, realized it was already, and laughed out loud. Only in Texas. Sheesh.

So there you go! Purty poultry :)

In Between

I've tried to write for the last week or so, but there's so much to catch up on that I can't seem to put anything into coherent words. So here's an "in between" post, and later I can consider myself all caught up and move on!

While on my unintended break, here's what we've been doing:

Getting these!

My nephew Landon with Tom

Tom and Gloria, previously named Thanksgiving and Christmas, have received the holiday pardon and are now our watch turkeys. We were given them by friends, and we've already fallen in love with their silly, slightly-dignified ways. Gloria sounds like a spaceship, with all her blips and beeps she makes, and Tom's beautiful, huge stature has scared the hawks to death. The chickens follow them all around the barnyard, and we still can't quite believe we have turkeys.

Knitting her:

I got my copy of Susan Anderson's "Itty-Bitty Toys" in the mail and set out directly on knitting the Baby Doll for Addie's Christmas. Even without all her parts, I can already see how sweet she'll be. Addison will love her, and I think she might need a sister version if I can manage it in time for Christmas.

Visiting with my precious sister and her wonderful son

Leslie reading to the little ones

I hadn't seen my sister Leslie since last Thanksgiving, and I've missed her so much. I never dreamed we'd go so long without setting eyes on each other, and we made up for it by talking nonstop for a week! We sat over coffee, cider, hot chocolate, and Diet Coke and had long talks. We went to lunch and talked. We got up early in the morning and texted while she was still in the guest room. We stayed up late into the night--morning!--and talked. It was wonderful, and I told her she could just live with me forever, if her husband could stand it. He couldn't, so she went home, but I missed them both the minute they stepped on the plane. I'm already saving up to fly out and see them in the spring.

All four kids watching a Christmas movie together

My mom also flew in, for my sister-in-law's baby shower, and we had so much fun, all of us girls! My sister-in-law, Janae, has two sisters, and all 7 of us women went to her 4D ultrasound to "see" her baby girl! Another girl to add to the mix, and Addie is so excited to have a baby girl cousin coming. Addie went to the shower with us and drank at least 10 cups of "pink bubbles" (punch) and was quite impressed with her first baby shower.

Then Mom took Caiden to her lakehouse for three days, and I got a little teary the first night, feeling what it's going to be like when we moves out someday. Yikes! But they had a wonderful time, fishing, playing Monopoly, reading, staying up late, eating junk, and sleeping in. He's never stayed the night away like that before, and I think his friends will be hard-pressed to put on a better sleepover than his Grammy!

Since my family left, I've been reading "The Mysterious Benedict Society" with Caiden--it's a hoot!--and working on Christmas plans. I have a confession: all the excess of Christmas wears me down, and I long every year to have done it better, to have simplified and focused on Christ more, and to have enjoyed it all more. I bought a copy of "Simple Christmas" and have been reading it at night, as well as warning my husband that the Christmas budget this year will be tighter. He's a gift-giver, and I'm a budgeter, and that can often go awry! I'm making several gifts this year, especially most of Addie's, so every afternoon I've been up in my sewing loft, working while listening to Jan Karon's "At Home in Mitford" on CD. I read the entire series when it came out, and it has been so fun to listen again to these beloved books! My library carries the whole series on CD, so I have plans for many happy afternoons listening while the littler ones sleep. Caiden comes upstairs with me sometimes and listens, too. He thinks Dooley and Barnabas are terrific.

So that's the gist of what's been going on. We're finally enjoying beautiful fall days, full of sunshine and warm days with cool nights, so after we finish school each day, we spend much of the day outside, playing in leaves and on the tire swing, or in the play cottage. And of course there's soccer practice, laundry, groceries, and the like! Happy fall days, enjoying the little things God has given us.

Landon with Ozma, our Buff Orpington, and Gloria in the back