Book Review: Bridge to Terabithia

I missed my book club tonight and for once I actually read the book. Mostly this was because it was a children's book that I could listen to on tape while I did chores.

Anyway here's my take on this book. I first read this book when I was a kid and I hated it. I've never been one for sad books and this book is definitely sad. As a result I was hesitant to read it again. However a few years ago I went to a children's book conference where Katherine Paterson was the key speaker. She was very interesting and I really love some of her other books, like Jacob Have I Loved. So since my book club picked the book I decided to give it a try.

The book is still sad but I found that it is actually hopeful in the end. And the writing is exceptional. It says a lot about families, friendship, and dealing with death. I enjoyed it and it wasn't quite as sad as I remembered. Although as I watched the movie, I definitely cried at the sad parts. It might just be because I'm pregnant.

Anyway it is a good, quick read and I liked the new movie too. It is definitely worth seeing and reading.

The Super IQ Test

My Result: Creative Theorist

People who are Creative Theorists are highly intelligent, complex people. They are able to process information of nearly every kind with ease, using both creativity and analysis to make sense of the world. Compared to others they also have very rich imaginations.

Take this test >

Book review: Austenland by Shannon Hale

First of all this is for John, who is always bugging me to do book reviews.

Second this book can be summed up by the dedication:
For Colin Firth
You're a really great guy, but I'm married, so I think we should just be friends.

If you don't know who Colin Firth is you probably won't find this book as funny as I did. There might still be hope for you if you love Jane Austen's books, especially Pride and Prejudice. John calls me obsessed and when I told him this book was about a lady who was obsessed with the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, he asked if I was going to sue (he's the one who bought those dvds for me). Now in all fairness, this lady is so obsessed with the movie that she can't have a normal relationship with a guy. My obsession is just recreational and based more in Jane Austen's books themselves than in any particular version (although Colin Firth is the best Mr. Darcy by far).

Anyway the book is a quick read and hilarious, playing off of Jane Austen's books and stories. The lady goes to an actual resort that tries to recreate Jane Austen's day and stories so you can live them for yourself. Actors are paid to mimic different characters from the different books, clothing and accomodations are authentic, etc. It is really funny as she tries to live out her fantasy while still clinging to her 21st century lifestyle. Like I said if you like Jane Austen (even just the movies) you'll find this book amusing.

I knew there was a reason I liked Amy and Kay so much!

You Are 40% Boyish and 60% Girlish

You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be.

How Boyish or Girlish Are You?

Christmas Thankyous

I had this grand vision of posting a picture with the girls and a favorite present from the extended family every day so you could see how much they are all enjoying your presents, but since I'm having a hard time even getting out of bed in the morning (and not returning as soon as possible) and also since I am still having a hard time transferring the pictures from our digital camera to the blog, here are some verbal thankyous to tide you over until I get more ambitious and organized. (And these are just the ones I can think of right now, so if I forget anyone, the girls still loved your presents, just chalk it up to the fact that I'm also half brain-dead when I'm pregnant.)

First of all, Kaylynn, the girls absolutely loved the capes. Nothing happens nowadays without a Super (insert the name) to accompany the running girl in a cape. It's almost like their long lost Linus blankets. For a while they wanted to take them everywhere we went. Good work!!

Second the girls all loved the beautiful dresses that Grandpa and Grandma sent. They love fancy schmancy anything and are way excited to wear them to Missy's wedding.

Emma also especially liked the workbooks that Grandma and Grandpa sent with the pencils. She LOVES them. She keeps them in her bed at night to make sure that she gets her work time in and she is quickly getting better at writing. On Christmas morning, after all the presents were opened and we were waiting for breakfast, the first thing Emma did was to sit down at their table and begin copying down the alphabet in one of the book's activities.

Ruth liked everyone else's presents and her own. She especially enjoyed Lily's pull puzzle animal thing that Grandma and Grandpa sent. She takes apart and puts it back together at least once each day and loves to pull it. She knows it is Lily's but tries to avoid letting Lily know she is playing with it.

Kate loves the Webkins charms and both wears the necklace proudly and loves to play the computer game. Missy has her all hooked up and in the know about using the game.

The girls also really loved the clothes that Amy sent. Everything fit well and they love them (although Mary's undying favorite is the tank tops (underclothes) that Amy sent sometime last year). She would wear them night and day and does although we've insisted that she wear something over them, Mary is always one to push the envelope, if we let her just wear them, soon she would be wearing no clothes at all.

I loved the giftcard I received from Missy and the cute notecards from Amy--Hand-made, good work Amy!!

All the girls loved the necklaces from Adam. They wear them to church and love to look at them
as they hang out of reach to prevent them from being destroyed.

Mary loves her art sets from Grandma and Grandpa. She worked on one of the pictures for a week and still has all the colored pencils in the set stashed so she doesn't lose them so she can work on them later. She's had lots of fun.

Lily loves everything and is just glad when her sisters let her play with anything. Usually they are hiding things from her or running off to hide her toys in their room so they can play with them. Ah, the life of a youngest sister.

Anyway, thanks for everything. The girls had a great Christmas!!

BYU sleep stories

I was reading BYUMagazine and they had a section where you could send in sleep stories. Unfortunately, about par for the course, I was reading it about 6 months too late so it was too late to submit any but I have some good ones.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to sleep. My roommates used to make fun of me because I could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. And I don't think there was a class in high school or college that I didn't sleep in at least once. And you probably don't want to hear my driving stories, they'd scare you. But here are two of my best school related stories.

First, when I was a junior in high school I had Pre-calculus last period. My teacher was a nice guy and everything but he tended to drone a little. He made me want to go to sleep after about 5 minutes of listening to him. Unfortunately, he seated people alphabetically and for some reason that put me front row on the last row by the door for the whole year. This was unfortunate because that was exactly where his podium was that he stood behind to lecture. I could not have been closer to him if I had tried. Now, being the polite person I am, I tried my darndest to stay awake. He wasn't a bad teacher, just monotone. But in spite of all my efforts, the only thing I remember about that class was sleeping every day all while he talked and waking up just in time to do my homework when he sent us to work.

I know, this isn't all that funny but here's the kicker, I was going through my high school stuff a few weeks ago looking for something and I found a certificate for Student of the Month from that same Pre-Calculus teacher. I laughed for about 10 minutes. I'm not sure what he was using for his selection criteria but it definitely wasn't "# of minutes in class with your eyes open", maybe it was more like, "ability to still get good grades even though you haven't heard a word I've said". Who knows?

Second, about my third year at BYU, I had an upper level French grammar class. Now this was when I was still considering French as a minor and had delusions about my ability with the language. Anyway, it turned out not so good in a number of ways. First of all it was right after lunch, my #1 hardest time to stay awake. Second, it was taught by a native French speaker who talked about a mile a minute. I think I understood about 10% of what he was saying. Third, it was full of returned French-speaking missionaries who also all spoke fluently. Now in my own defense, I could read French really well and knew my grammar 100% better than most of the missionaries but I just didn't have their experience with spoken French.

Anyway, all of these things added up to a whole lot of sleeping in that class. My brain would spend about 5 minutes trying to understand and then shut down and I would fall asleep. So one day I was 90% asleep, sprawled in my desk, and my brain caught a word I knew. The teacher was asking for a translation of a particular word (and had been waiting for a few minutes with no answer) and none of the missionaries knew it because it was something used mostly in written French. I had learned the word the semester before in a French literary class. I perked up, raised my hand and gave the English translation as soon as I was called on. Without missing a beat my French professor purred, "Ahhhhh, I knew it. Madamoiselle White dreams in French."

You can't argue with that

You Are Cheesecake

Rich, sweet, and simply perfect. You're not boring - you're just the best!

What Dessert Are You Most Like?

Too Subtle for Me

Ok, a little background is required to fully appreciate this story. I periodically bug John to put in writing what he likes about me. This is extremely difficult for him. He is very, very, very good at showing me he loves me by doing things for me so I'm not really complaining, I just happen to be a very verbal person and so every once in a while this pops up. This year around our anniversary and my birthday was one of those times. Anyway, so John gave me two books for my birthday. Now I love to receive books for presents, but sometimes when I get them it demotivates me in reading them because, hey, I own them and could read them anytime. (You know in case I was snowed into my house for a week and couldn't get to the library, I would definitely need something to read.) Anyway, so needless to say I didn't read the books. I put them on my bedstand with the other books I intend to read and would look at them every now and then and think, I really ought to read those books. They look like very good books. I think John made a couple of obscure comments about how he was glad that I "eventually" got to the books he bought me. (Which I do by the way, it just takes me a while, especially when I'm not reading that much anyway.)

So fast forward to this morning. I was kind of grumpy this morning. I stayed up way too late last night and was really tired. This combined with a couple of stinky diapers and screaming girls made for one not happy me. I was laying on my bed thinking I needed to be more happy when I saw those books. I thought maybe some uplifting reading would get me in a little better mood. I started reading the first book and got like 15 pages into it and found a little paper that had the date of my birthday on it and one thing John appreciated about me. I thought that's interesting, I don't remember reading that before. So I started flipping through the book and about every 20 pages there was another little paper that said something else he appreciated about me. I couldn't believe it. I looked at the other book and sure enough every few pages there was a little paper. I was shocked. Here was the list I had requested months ago and I didn't even know it. I might not have read those books for a while (years actually) and missed it. At first I had a fleeting thought that maybe these were books that he gave me last year. But when I looked at the date it was this year, phew! It only took me 3 months to get it. My next thought was what a turkey (in a good way) John was. I could have been mad at him that whole time and he would never have said anything even though he had done the requested thing. I wasn't but I thought that was a pretty big gamble. Anyway, it did make me happy and laugh. I do like surprises and John sure is full of them. He's a good guy. Maybe it was just his little way of motivating me to read books sooner.

Incidentally, one of the last pieces of paper said, "I'm glad that you eventually read all the books I buy you." Ha Ha. Very funny. He is funny. But maybe a little too subtle for me sometimes.

Writing Emma and Reading Ruth

Emma and Ruth are obsessed. Emma with writing and Ruth with reading. Emma first. Emma really wants to learn how to write. She copies everything she sees. She copies out whole books. One day she showed me a sheet and told me she was "practicing her letters". All the letters were run together so it took me a minute to pick out words but I finally realized that she had been copying the computer screen. The girls had been playing one of their computer games and it had been left on the menu screen, so Emma had copied things like "options" and "start game". It was really funny. She always signs her name on everything too, but usually in mirror image. I think it is because she is left-handed or something. If I ask her to do it the right way, she does but she prefers the other way. I was talking to my visiting teacher and she said that she and two of her siblings were left-handed and they always wrote things backwards when they were first learning. She said she still reads clocks backwards. I don't know. But Emma is intent. She found an old spiral notebook of mine and she said it was her long lost notebook and has been diligently writing in it everyday. She also found an old folder that my mom gave her and she is filling it with paper so she can practice her writing. I asked her what she wanted for Christmas if she could only have one toy or thing. Her answer: I need some more paper for my folder so I can practice writing. I said, "You want that more than any toy, like a littlest pet shop or something?" "Yea, Mom. I need more paper!" Whatever. Paper's cheap and writing is good. At least it keeps her busy. I just wish she didn't have to write all over the house sometimes, but you got to take the good with the bad.

Then there is Ruth. Ruth wants to read, bad. She spends hours a day sitting with a huge stack of books just going through them. When I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she just said, "Books." She loves to look at them all and then stack them. She doesn't like them to be on shelves. She would much rather have them in little piles all over the house. I find little piles everywhere. And she will read anything. It doesn't have to have pictures. She still meticulously looks at every page. She knows how the whole thing works. About a week a go she must have had a bad day because she took two books, one a picture book and one a 60 page chapter book and meticulously ripped each page out. In my anger when we found her I said, "Ruth, if you do this again, I'm just going to have to take the books away." And she responded in a tone that said I had just threatened to cut off her hand,"No mommy! Don't take my books away! I'll be nice. Don't take away the books!" It was so melodramatic that I almost couldn't help laughing. Ah well. If she teaches herself to read, then she'll have one more way to amuse herself.

Schmoozing

Our Ruth is a schmoozer. Today I took her and the other girls (except Lily) on a walk to pass out some things for visiting teaching (my current calling). Anyway as we stopped at each house Ruth enthusiastically talked to each of the people and then gave them a big goodbye at the end (maybe she has been spending too much time with Tom J/K).

At the first house we visited a couple who are in their 70's. They have quite a few knickknacks displayed in their entryway. The wife took me back in the back to show me some quilting projects and while I was gone Ruth accidentally broke a little glass dog of theirs. I was very apologetic, but Ruth just gave Br. Duffin her big smile with dimples and all and said, "You can fix it huh?" He laughed and said that he put together 5000 piece puzzles so he was pretty sure he could put the dog back together. Then we said our goodbyes and Ruth said very enthusiastically, "Bye-bye Grampa!!Bye-bye!!" and waved as hard as she could with her big smile flashing again. It really was super cute.

At the next house, Ruth ran in the lady's house to see her cat and again flashed her smile and dimples and gave her the wave. The lady asked where she got her dimples from and I just smiled.

At the third house, she gave the girl a great big hug and hello and good bye, dimples and all.

At the forth house, she kept calling, "Bye-bye livie" because their 2 yr old daughter Olivia is in Ruth's nursery class. The mom kept saying, "That's so cute!"

And at the last three houses she did the same. I'm glad she could be so friendly but I think it wore her out. When we got back home, she started screaming because we were going in the house and she wanted to get in the car and go somewhere. When I dragged her in the house, she flopped down in front of the closed front door and cried. Eventually she went and took a nap.

She's a good kid and I love her but I think I'll have to keep an eye on her. You never know what she'll use those dimples for.