life of seven

Preparations and reading

Here's a tiny, stylized sample of what it looks like when you are planning a camping trip, a homeschool year, and an international move, all in the same week. In other words, it looks nothing like this. Everything is so crazy right now. Do you see the tab on my Denmark to do list, knitting? It's all about the priorities right now. Hee hee. Gotta make sure that part of trip is thought out and ready. Jude may not have his kindergarten along, and we may forget Grace's spelling, but I'm going to have the knitting organized down to a t. Because, we all need hats, right? This is Scandinavia we're talking about!

See that lovely stack of books on top? Some new reading material for my eager readers. There is something so enticing about a beautiful new stack of books that you've not explored before. The stack was taller yesterday as Grace, Cate, Evie and I have tapped into it early and read ahead just a bit. One book you don't see here is The Bread Winner, not to be mistaken with The Breadwinner ( book I haven't read and thus can't speak of its merits, though I've heard many good things about it). I read The Bread Winner when I was growing up, and I remember finishing it and thinking it may have made it on my list of favorite books. I loved it. It was so sweet and unexpected. Grace picked it up yesterday and finished it in an afternoon. I asked her if she loved it, just loved it, and she said maybe I'd talked it up too much. She enjoyed it a lot, but maybe lower your expectations while reading this one and you'll be in for a delightful surprise.

Another fun one Cate has been reading, and I've been speed reading, is The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. Flavia is a delightful character who is a chemistry whiz. I really enjoy chemistry (basic, basic chemistry. I'm not that smart) so this is just a fun read for me. However I haven't finished it yet to give you my full stamp of approval yet. If it's good though, I'll be very pleased to discover a new, creative mystery series for kids.

Cate and I both finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. She loved it and I liked it. If you're particular about such things, like I am, you'll want to edit this first, as I did, before handing it to your older child.  Several curse words and some innuendo. 

Grace sped through This Present Darkness last week and loved it. She thought it was exciting and scary and interesting and really enjoyed this. Haven't read this since I was a teen, though Cate read it a couple years ago. Remember all the spiritual warfare talks everyone at church wanted to have as a result of reading these books? They definitely open opportunities for discussion, but its also just a very fun story. Again, I recommend being familiar with the content before giving this to your older child. 

Evie has begun Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, and Gideon has started a series that takes place in Denmark during World War II.

That's what we've been reading!

Book Party Traditions

You know it's a great party when the party decorations include a party bunting made of pages from a book (unless you are such a lover of books that pages torn out to become merely party decorations makes you ill- however neither I nor my friends at the party are yet of this ilk).

Every year my sister Stephanie and another friend host a book lover's party. When I attended last year, Clementine was a mere week or two old! This year I left her with Ben and the boys and remembered bitter-sweetly that at the last party she had met many important friends and family in her life for the very first time. 

At the party, we bring themed food from a favorite book, and you can see by some of the pictures here that there are some pretty creative and fun renditions of fun book-themed food. We also do a book exchange. About a month or two before the party I always worry about what I am going to bring, because, despite thinking of myself as a reader, I often look over the year at what I've read and it's a lot of unfinished books, or else it's books that I read right along with my friends, and I just can't bring that to a book exchange because no one wants to come home with a book they just read. I ended up bringing Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth, forgetting that three of my friends are pregnant. Not a good book to read while pregnant. Too high a worry and gross-out factor. Oh well, it was the best I could do. Next year I vow to have many, many choices for the next book party. I am going to read, and finish,  more books. Yes. 

Cate brought the first book in the Mistborn trilogy. I'll say this for the series. I have not seen Cate's face, outside of practicing piano, eating meals, or doing chores, for the last 10 days, since she began reading the series. Several days she has told me that she was growing close to getting tired of reading so much. This is Cate we're talking about here. A couple of afternoons after reading all day she felt a little nauseous.

I remember when growing up and visiting our city's largest library, the Denver Public Library, and leaving with a brown paper grocery bag filled to the brim with books, diving into them on the drive home, not letting up all afternoon, continuing through dinner (if I could sneak the book on my lap under the table) and into the evening, and then telling my mom, "I think I'm getting sick. My tummy hurts."

"Um, Jenny, you probably aren't sick. You just sat and read for 6 hours straight. Go outside and get some fresh air."

Watching Cate consume, no, inhale, Mistborn reminds me of that. She's halfway through the third book and her kindle tells her she has 13 hours to go. A dream come true for a book lover who is always on the lookout for new reading material like a man in desert looks for water.

I came home with The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and couldn't be happier. I hear it's a great inspiration to get people reading again, not only in the entertaining book itself, but in the great book suggestions throughout the novel. I'll tell the truth- instead of messing with my stupid phone, I carried the book around with me this morning and am about 70 pages in. Yes. Thank you, book party.

Grace brought Daddy Long Legs and came home with The Bronze Bow. Good. I want her to read that book. I want to read that book. Evie brought the ever delightful Betsy-Tacy and came home with Twenty and Ten, a book I forgot about, but have read at least 3 times growing up.

Oh, how I love yearly traditions, especially when they are good ones, like the annual book party.

 

 

 

Reading update

Like many others, we love Shel Silverstein around here. I enjoy reading poetry to the kids, but they have through the four, or maybe five Shel Silverstein books on their own many many times. Their favorite poems are dog-eared, which means just about every other page has been dog-eared.

This week, I believe everyone got pretty close to their two hours a day. By everyone, I mean Cate, Grace, and Gideon. If you include my read out loud to Evie, I think she's pretty close to two hours a day, as well. 

Unfortunately, if you include my reading, I probably bring the average way, way down. I managed to read another ten pages out of Atlas. I'm trudging through this book. Next week I'll try to do better and have a better report about my reading.

Cate and Grace have been reading The Worst Hard Time, which Grace just finished. She doesn't want to admit that this history book wasn't boring, like she claims all history book are. She cried in a couple of places, claimed "I'm going to be depressed the rest of my life after reading this!", and came up with a new saying that's been going on around here: "Just when I am about to say 'It's too hot-' I think about the dust bowl and- '...never mind.' "

And so it goes among the kids:

"I'm so tired of eating sandwi-...never mind."

"Our house is so dir....never mind."

So, I don't think this book was boring for Grace, though she won't admit it to me.

Gideon has been reading Anne of Green Gables, and Evie and I are keeping up with him. He's also been reading a Lemony Snicket book, book three in the "All the Wrong Questions" series, and likes it better than the Series of Unfortunate Events, all of which are favorites at our house.

Jude and Truman have been read multiple Curious George books all week, by me, by Evie, by Gideon, plus looking at the pictures by themselves. They have quite a few sections memorized. I had just picked up the edition with all the adventures in one book recently, realizing they hadn't read many of the stories, and they are just loving them so much. I'm remembering the charm of the stories as well while I read them to the boys. 

Those are our reading highlights for the week. I'll give another update in a week!

I wrote a...Book!

See that? I wrote a book last year, without even really trying! Well, that's not strictly true, but it is true that it didn't seem to take nearly as much effort as what it looked like when I saw it all, bound up into one thick book. (Did that make sense? I feel that sentence was akin to Bilbo in Lord of the Rings: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.")

Blog2print was the website I used, and of course the instant I ordered one for us as well as the grandparents, I began getting 20% off  coupons in my email. Oh, well. I'll use it next year.

This has been a busy week for us. Cate and Gideon both recorded their piano concertos for a competition, and Grace and Cate are in a piano competition this Sunday. I hate doing live recordings. Even if I'm not the one doing the piano playing. Of course our memory card ran out of space the first day. So we tried again on day two. And of course one of the recording had a glitch in the middle of it and cut out two minutes of the piece. Despite these frustrating attempts I think Cate and Gideon both ended up each with a good audition.

Now I am off to make breakfast for some mid-week breakfast company. That makes for a fun change on a Wednesday, but I will have to try to recover and still fit everything in today. I think I'm still trying to find my rhythm after the holidays...