Her Mother's Hope

By: Francine Rivers
4 out of 5 stars

Oh how I loved this book! It was such a well written book. I read some reviews that complained about the authors inability to expand on major events in history and instead goes into details about the characters lives. I have to say I like the approach. I can read millions of books written on WWI or WWII. I can read all about the hardships the Japanese Americans experienced in other books. I liked how the author didn't get distracted and stayed focus on the main characters' lives and hardships. 

I am in love with Hildie, Marta, Bernie, Trip and all the other characters! They feel like real people with real lives. I have to keep reminding myself they aren't real.

I love the Christian references throughout the book. I don't think the author goes overboard, but makes it very clear how much religion is a part of this family's life.  

I could relate to so many parts of the story. Marta in particular reminds me of my own mother.  

I am only giving this four stars because I didn't like how it left me hanging. I know there is a sequel, but I don't like it when there is so much left unsaid at the end of a book.  

Clean read! Highly recommended!

Mr. and Mrs. Dawson

On December 5, 2014 Cindy and Mark were married.  They have dated for a while and almost were married in March of this year.  

I don't know Mark very well because we live so far away, but he makes Cindy happy and that is all that matters.  We were happy to get a chance to see her and celebrate this happy occasion.

Lee came up from Arizona and it was so much fun to visit with him.  We don't get to see him very often. 

I love Cindy's eyes in this one. Grant was chanting the whole time for Mark to stuff her face with cake.  He did a pretty good job.

The wedding was pretty small and very simple.  The ceremony and small reception afterwards lasted only about an hour and a half.  When I was taking the kids home I asked Grant if that was a short wedding.  Grant said, "no, mom.  It was still ridiculous long."  I then asked him how he would have liked the wedding to go.  (In my mind I am thinking it couldn't have been any faster.  I thought an hour and a half for a wedding was pretty darn good.)  Grant answered, "Just have them kiss.  Boda-boom-boda-bang.  Be done." I started laughing and asked him if this is how he wants his wedding to go.  He responded, "no.  At my wedding we are having a huge party!"  I'm still laughing about it!

First Day of Nursery

Sunday, November 2nd Celeste was officially old enough to go to nursery!  She was so excited to go and she loved it!

There is a boy who will be four in January and is somewhat of a bully to the little kids.  He took a toy  from Celeste, but Celeste wasn't going to be bullied.  She stole the toy back, screamed in his face, and ran away.  The leaders thought it was hilarious!  I did too!  Way to go Celeste!

Halloween 2014

I am catching up on all my pictures!  Halloween.  Halloween was a blast!  I took the Celeste and two neighbor girls to Kyle's work in the afternoon for some office trick-or-treating.  I love office trick-or-treating for little ones because it is warm and the kids get a lot of candy for little effort.  

After Grant got home from school we ate dinner and got on our costumes.  Grant went with the neighbors to some "far away" ward members.  These ward members decorate the houses all out and some give out full size candy bars!  

I stayed home with Celeste and she was not happy about getting left behind.  She really wanted to be with the other kids.

She was so excited when she finally got to go outside.  She wouldn't stay put for a picture and this was the best I did.

Grant was going to be a super hero this year, but as you can see that didn't happen.  Last year, we found a Hulk and Captain America costume for pretty cheap.  The costumes still fit and so I told Grant that he could dress up in one of the hero costumes.  However, all the neighbor boys were going as ninjas.  (One boy is not pictured below)  Grant really wanted to be a ninja like them.  He was so sad we wouldn't buy him a ninja costume.  So we caved in and bought him a ninja costume.  We surprised him the night before Halloween and he was so excited!

Grant with all his candy!  By the way it is the middle of December and his bucket is still more than half full!  Celeste on the other hand polished her candy off weeks ago.

Reversible Errors

By: Scott Turow
2 out of 5 stars

This book started off really exciting and then the middle was really slow and I almost just stopped reading it. By the end it picked up again and I had already made a pretty big investment by getting so far, so I just finished it.

This book has some fun little twists and turns in the middle, but it doesn't make up for the long drawn out parts. One thing that bugged me was the "good guys" in the book had dark secrets and the "bad guys" found God and wanted to repent. It was a little backwards. I get that we all have our problems, but the characters in this book were hard to like.

This book also had sex scenes and swearing. Not much of a fan.

Linder Farms

Before Halloween we went to a pumpkin patch/farm to pick out pumpkins and enjoy some fall activities.  We rode pedal tractors and ran through a hay maze.

Celeste loved the animals and little petting zoo.

We rode a tractor trailer to the pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins.  Celeste loved the pumpkins!    

After we picked out pumpkins the kids played in the Corn Box.  Celeste was a little hesitant at first, but after Grant dumped handfuls of corn on her head she decided the corn was fun.

See what I mean....

Grant liked doing corn angels.  

We had a great time at the farm.  The best part? Some of the corn box came home with us.  I cleaned out corn in my dryer, carpet, garage, car, and diapers for days!

Lunch Box Girl

I just have a random post today! 

This girl loves to put things in Grant's lunch box.  She carries it around everywhere!  So silly!

Pull Tabs

Grant's school collects pull tabs from soda cans and soup cans.  The school donates the tabs to the Ronald McDonald House.  We drink a fair amount of soda and eat a canned fruit and soup on occasion.  It takes us about 6-8 months to collect a small baggie full of these pull tabs.  

Well, my Uncle Bob found out about this little fundraiser Grant's school does.  It just a few months his office collected an entire bucket full of pull tabs!

Grant was so excited to take the bucket to school.  All of his friends thought he was cool.  My Uncle Bob was hoping the school would give Grant some type of award for collecting so many tabs, but I will tell you the social praise and attention was worth more than any award the school could have given him. 

The neighbor girls thought the bucket of tabs was really cool and wanted their picture taken with it.  

Where have all the pictures gone?

I have some pictures ready to post and will be posting them soon.  I have missed blogging and I can imagine you miss the pictures and regular posts.

I have been covering for a fellow SLP while she is out on maternity leave.  I have been so incredibly busy it hasn't even been funny.  I typically get home after 6 PM we eat dinner and put Celeste to bed by 7 PM.  I only get to spend a few minutes with my kids during the week.  I also have been working weekends at the hospital.  It has been insane!  I hate it, and I only have 7 more days to work and then I am done!

It has been hard, but worth it.  I make really good money when I work and we have needed a little extra money. Especially, since we had to replace our new fridge in July and then just last weekend our washer went out.  I am very grateful to have the extra money.  It has been a true blessing.  

I have also been very grateful because every. single. day. I witness small tender mercies from my Heavenly Father.  A couple of times my mornings have been super crazy and I get a call saying my first appointment is cancelled.  I then have an extra half hour to get out the door.  I have had appointments at the end of the day cancel countless times so I can get home a little earlier and spend a few extra minutes with my children.  My baby, who normally doesn't love to cuddle, was really cuddly one night when I put her to bed.  I needed to hold her and have her close to me.  I miss her so much during the day.  

I even forgot messed up my schedule one day and to make a long story short I was able to go back home for two hours and clean my house.  I really needed the alone time that day.  I was going crazy in my dirty house and it felt so good to vacuum, mop, and scrub my bathrooms.  

Let me tell you Heavenly Father knows me and knows what I can handle.  He has helped me get through this crazy few weeks and without Him there is no way I could have done it.  

Becoming Lady Lockwood

By: Jennifer Moore

I was hesitant about reading this book and am happy to say I liked it way more than anticipated. 

This book was a like a breath of fresh air after reading a couple of murder/mystery books. 

I am finding I like these proper romance books more than I used to. 

The end of the book felt a little rushed and I would have liked more from Admiral Beckett. The author did a really good job making him seem so mean from Amelia's point of view. I would have liked to see more from him. 

The author did a great job making the reader fall in love with William. I wanted to marry him too! 

This was a fun quick and easy read. I am impressed with Moore's debut novel. I would recommend this book and I hope the author writes another novel. I think she has talent!

Hard Stop

By: Chris Knopf

I had a hard time getting into this book ad it is most likely because I haven't read the first three books in the series. I have a horrible habit of starting series of books in the middle. I need to stop that!

Sam is one of my favorite characters. I really liked the depth of his character. He is probably one of my favorite characters of all time. 

I also liked the story. It was a little slow at times, but overall an entertaining and well written story.

I can only give this book 3 stars because of the vulgarity. The fowl language was excessive and annoying. Just when I thought the curse words were coming to an end there would be another long string of them. It was almost enough to make me stop reading this book completely.

The ending also was a little anticlimactic. I felt like there were some thing the author left hanging. I would like to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume he continues the story in the sequel. 

I can't highly recommend this book. Lots of swearing. No sex.

We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance

by David Howarth, Stephen E. Ambrose

This book can be summed up in one word: AMAZING!

This a story of survival and determination. I loved it! 

It is unreal that a man could have survived all that he does. I knew he survived when I started the book and yet I was still on the edge of my seat the entire time! If the introduction didn't explain that Jan lived to tell his story I probably would have never put this book down!

This is probably going in my top ten favorite books of all time!

Highly recommend this book! Clean!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows

I listened to this book, which I thought was a nice to help the reader keep track of all the different characters.  

I honestly didn't like this book until about 3/4 of the way through. I kept thinking, "how can anyone give this book 5 stars when it is so boring!" I hated the telegrams. I thought the longer letters were better and didn't chop up the story so much.

In the end, I really liked the book and I am very glad I read it. I would recommend reading this book, but maybe not as an audible. It went a little too slow for me.  

Very clean, no swearing and no sex scenes.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

By: Ayana Mathis
This book was on display at the library and I decided to pick it up.  This is a very rare occurrence so I must have been really intrigued by the book summary.  I usually only pick up books by recommendations.

I am glad I did. This is a very interesting story told from a different point of view. I like it when authors do a little something different. This was one of those cases. 

The story of Hattie is told from each of her children's points of view. It was a little hard to keep track of how much time was passing between the stories of each child, but otherwise a very different way of telling the story of a mother.

This book will make you laugh and cry. You will hold on the the edge of the book waiting for more.

There are some sexual references. A little swearing particularly from one son's part of the story. Otherwise clean. Highly recommend.

More Miss Celeste

This little girl is really close to being able to walk, but is not quite there.  Considering she can't walk I am amazed that she can climb up a slide!  Look at that little turkey! 

She can also climb up the big slide on our swing set.  It blows my mind just watching her do it!

First Day of School

I am so far behind in my posts.  I have been so busy.  Since school started I applied for a job with Idaho State University as an assistant professor.  I didn't get it and I am actually really glad.  I have tried to saturate myself in the Gospel.  I want to be better about living the Gospel.  I have tried to dedicate more of my time to eternal things rather than worldly things.  A few thins I have started doing include family history work and increase my temple attendance.  I have tried to be a better visiting teacher, a better friend, and a better neighbor.  I try and find lots of opportunities to serve others.  I tried to be a better mom and play with my kids more.  These are the things that really matter and I have tried to give these things a higher priority.

Grant was so excited to start first grade.  He really wanted a teacher named Mrs. Parker and was sad to find out he got Mrs. Shade.  However, when we went to meet Mrs. Shade and he saw that she loves super heroes and Star Wars he was excited! 

He was so excited to have three recesses and to eat lunch at school.  Since he has been in school for more than a month now he has adjusted really well.  He loves school and has done really well at school so far!

I really miss this boy!  I don't like him being gone all day.  He is such a sweet heart and is so much fun to be around.  I try really hard to spend lots of time with him during the evenings and weekends.  He is such a great boy!  I love him to pieces!

State Fair

I have a love/hate relationship with the Fair.  I love how excited me kids get when they can pet all the different animals.  I love looking at all the fun booths.  I also love some of the fair food that you don't get any other time of year.  

Celeste LOVED the animals!  She was all giggles and smiles.

She loved the goat licking her fingers.

She loved petting the sheep.

She couldn't stop laughing when the baby goats poked their heads out of the fence at her.

Grant thought it was so cool that he got to milk a cow.  I was jealous they wouldn't let adults do it.  I wanted to try my hand at milking a cow.

Grant liked feeding the animals, but not nearly as much as Celeste did.  

The kids got to ride a pony!  Celeste LOVED it!  She is at such a fun stage because animals are so fascinating to her.  Grant thought it was cool, but it wasn't his favorite part.

We had a great time at the fair for about an hour, but then Grant wanted to go home.  He was hot and tired.  Celeste started getting fussy.   This is when my love turns to hate.  Why do kids always get so grumpy when you try to do something fun?  Grant was ticked we wouldn't let him ride any of the rides.  We told him they were too expensive and we had already been to Lagoon this year.   Why does the fair have to be so expensive?  I think it is lame.  Hence the reason I love/hate the fair.  Until next year...