Adventures in La La Land

Amazon Link Justin and I drove to Auburn Hills for a little getaway this weekend. It's a 2.5 hour drive and I am a horrendous traveler. I can't handle being bored and I'm a very anxious passenger. Without fail, I get a stomach ache an hour before we leave, filled with an xiety about dying in some gruesome highway crash and leaving my girls orphans. All that's to say, I was looking for something fun and light to keep my attention on the drive. This book fit the bill. (And reading it on the Kindle prevented the usual sickness I experience reading a real book while riding in the car.) It was silly and fun and interesting. There were definitely parts that had me laughing out loud and reading through tears trying (and failing) to convey the humor to Justin. My favorite parts were her list of what makes a good best friend, and this description of herself as a kid that I hugely identified with: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with listing my favorite things. I kept a...

Amazon Link I broke my rule about branching out from inspirational fiction to read this book. It was one of my bookbub recommendations earlier this week and when I saw it was about an arranged marriage, I was hooked. I'm a sucker for arranged marriages. Haha. There's not much to say about this book. It was a great read. It's more than just romance. There were a lot of historical elements and I enjoyed the setting and time period (Scotland, 1500s). There was also a fair amount of mystery that had me guessing throughout the book. My one complaint is that the main character, Anne, was way too perfect. She goes through all these horrible circumstances, but knows how to respond every time. She's the perfect Christian, the perfect sister, the perfect wife. Don't get me wrong. I don't want my fiction reads to be totally realistic. I like to read as an escape. But it'd be nice to be able to relate a little more to the character. Haha. Two thumbs up from me! ...

Amazon link One of my friends recently starting writing a beautiful and thoughtful blog . In one of her entries, she mentioned this book and inspired me to put it on my Christmas list. Justin's mom bought it for me, and after all the frivolous fiction I've been reading lately, I decided to start it last week. The first half was interesting and practical, but nothing I really struggle with. So I started to lose interest. Then on Monday, I got bad news about my car and started my downward spiral into depression. I forced myself to pick this book back up just so I could finish it and move on to some more frivolous fiction. Lo and behold, the second half was all about trusting God and growing through our trials. It's funny because I "bragged" about my ability to see the big picture and trust God's goodness throughout my trials when I got the initial bad news about my car. But when the second wave of bad news came through, I suddenly lost sight of that. This bo...

Favorite Color: Red/green (I asked her what her favorite color was and she said, "Ummmm, red. Green! She doesn't actually know her colors. Just their names.) Favorite Food:  Macaroni and Cheese or cheese roll ups Favorite Song:  "Wheels on the Bus" or "Let it Go" Favorite Book: " The Oops Book" ( Blue Hat, Green Hat by Boynton ) Favorite TV Show: Daniel Tiger (she calls him "Neighbor")   Favorite Animal:  Kitty Favorite Game:  ? Favorite Snack:  Cheese Favorite Fruit:  Strawberries Favorite Drink:  Apple juice Favorite PJs:  Elsa jammies Favorite Toy:  Her babies Favorite Outside Activity:  Slide and swing I copied and pasted this from Lucy's 2 year update and kept a lot of the same answers! Haha. 

1. Week 3 of being stranded at home. I didn't handle it as gracefully this week. I lost my mind on Wednesday and didn't know how I'd ever make it through Thursday. But my marvelous sister brought me Olive Garden and sat and chatted with me for a few hours. Amazing what good food and adult conversation can do for the mood! I called about my car and it's not going to be finished until the end of next week, so if anyone's up for bringing me Olive Garden . . . Haha. No, the repair shop said they would get me a loaner vehicle.  2. In the midst of my  doldrums  this week, I was encouraged by this article . I love how she writes, "just do the ne xt thing." She actually posted a poem earlier this week by the same title. It's such a simple but important sentiment. When I'm overwhelmed by the state of my house or the months of homeschooling yet to plan and carry out or the utter lack of spiritual growth in my life, I start to panic. So I have to remember ...

I hate writing these entries because I feel like my limited writing ability can't possibly capture Lena's personality and character. But I'll hate myself even more if I never do it, so here goes . . . Lena is 2 years old today. She is hilarious and naughty and sweet and quirky. The Stats She has most of her teeth. Still waiting on all 4 eye teeth and at least one more set of molars.  She's still tiny. She has a doctor's appointment at the beginning of February, but my best estimate is that she's around 25 lbs. She is just  starting to grow out of her 18 month shirts. But 2T pants are huge on her (way too long). The Fun Stuff She can count perfectly to 11. She sings the alphabet (loudly and often). She can identify heart and star but doesn't know any other shapes. I wrote in Lucy's 26 month update that she was starting to identify letters?! I've never even tried to work on letters with Lena. She definitely can't identify any of t...

1. The car saga: I brought my car to the shop on Monday night. They called me Tuesday morning and said they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, and it needed to be looked at by a transmission specialist. My dad drove me back to the shop so I could drive my car down the street to the Ford dealership. They called me on Wednesday with the great  news: the transmission has something majorly wrong with it and either needs to be rebuilt or replaced. Of course, it's some special kind of transmission that Ford only made for a few years before realizing it was more trouble than it's worth. So the parts are hard to find and very pricey. The estimate to rebuild is $2500. That's more than half of what I paid for the car a month ago. The Ford guy said this problem has undoubtedly been happening for months and the guy who sold it to me had to have known about it. :-( I'm entirely too trusting and think that everyone is honest. Maybe the craigslist guy genuinely didn't...

1. This week was brutal. It was so freezing cold/snowy all week that I refused to leave the house. We drove 6 miles to the library on Wednesday and it became apparent that something is wrong with my car. I couldn't get it to go above 30 mph and the RPMs were jumping all over the place. Transmission, right? Exactly what was wrong with the van I just got rid of. Oy. We have an appointment to have it looked at on Tuesday.  2. Since we never made it farther than the library, I never got groceries this week. I decided to take it as a challenge and see what I could scrounge up for dinner every week. One day we had canned soup and a freezer burned Lean Cuisine, but the rest of the week wasn't too bad if I say so myself! Monday was homemade mac n' cheese with ham, Wednesday was chili (made with spaghetti sauce since I didn't have tomato sauce, but with enough cumin, no one was the wiser ;-) ), Thursday was chicken fried rice, and yesterday I dug out an ancient frozen pork ten...

Wednesday is library day at our house, and has quickly become "Mommy's reading day." I am incapable of stretching a book out over any length of time, but instead find myself allowing hours of TV time for the girls simply so I can read "one more" chapter. I did it again, yesterday, with The Ship of Brides  by JoJo Moyes. I know I've already read one book by her (Me Before You ) in my 30 Before 30, and I really should be branching out more, but I happened upon this one at the library and the premise intrigued me. Once again, it was about World War II - my third book in a row set in this time period. Ha. But this had very little to do with the war, and was actually about life after it finished. Here's the Amazon synopsis: 1946. World War II has ended and all over the world, young women are beginning to fulfill the promises made to the men they wed in wartime. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other war brides on an extraordinary voyage to Engl...

Amazon After finishing Unbroken , I wanted something more lighthearted to read. I also wanted to try reading a book on my Kindle for the first time, so I went to the library's ebook catalog and browsed until something jumped out at me. My friend Cara recommended Fannie Flagg to me when I first asked for book suggestions, and I know I've read something by her before, though I can't for the life of me remember what it was. (I also saw Fried Green Tomatoes  as a kid, which gave me nightmares about the old lady with long white hair, and forever terrified me of train tracks.) The downside to the library's website is that there's no synopsis of the book. You just borrow it and hope you're gonna like it. Haha. I had no clue what this was about before I started, but it immediately pulled me in. It was actually kind of ironic because it's set during World War II, and is largely about pilots - just like Unbroken . Although the pilots in this book are women, kn...

1. Despite my claims in the 2014 Year in Review about Prozac changing my life, this week was rough depression-wise.  I'm blaming it mostly on PMS, but also the disruption of my routines. I love Christmas and New Year's, but they totally threw me off my game. I'm looking forward to getting back to normalcy next week.  2. Lucy has a new obsession with watching Youtube videos. It started with her searching for Frozen videos. Then she found the "Disney Collectors" series, where adults show off new Disney products and act out stupid  scenarios with Barbies and Peppa Pig and Frozen characters, etc. She's also latched on to Play-Doh demonstrations. They're almost all sales pitches to get you to buy a certain play-doh set, but she loves   them. This, in turn, has led to her creating her own videos and pretending she has an audience every time she plays with her toys. She dictates everything she's doing and demands that I pretend to be "one of the kids...

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand I started this book knowing nothing about it. A few of my friends had given it rave reviews, as did my dad. All I knew was it was about an Olympic runner who joined the war. Since it encompasses two of Justin's favorite things - sports and war stories - I decided to buy it for him for Christmas, and then when my curiosity was piqued I broke it in for him. Wow. I did not know what I was getting myself into. For some reason, I didn't expect it to be a gruesome war story. At first, it was an easy enough read. It was interesting and incredible to read about the way these men survived on a raft in the Pacific for 40some days. When I realized how much of the book I had left to read, I assumed it'd be about the men surviving alone on an island for years or something. I had no idea it was about POW camps and the unthinkable horrors they encountered.  I purposely don't watch war movies because I can't handle them. Justin once spent a cou...