Mommy Brain

Well, we had a wonderful weekend away and then a week of sick kids. Josiah and Noah are both fighting a cough/fever thing, and Natalie’s just getting over a cold, which may or may not be the same thing. I wish they would all get it on the same day instead of spreading it out over weeks!

I’m doing better after my re-entry shock. For some reason, no one in the real world wants to serve me all my meals, make my bed every morning, and let me read as much as I want to. Funny, that.

Our weekend plans are pretty low-key, what with the sick kids. I’m heading over to Michelle’s tomorrow evening to watch The Devil Wears Prada, but other than that we have nothing planned. If the kids are well enough to get a little work out of them, I’d like to clean the basement Saturday. We’ll see. I’m just praying hard that Kevin and I don’t catch it. And that everyone is completely well by next Saturday, when the boys have their first promotion test for Tae Kwon Do. Noah and Jonathan will both be testing for their “white with yellow stripe” belts. They had to memorize a ton of knowledge, not to mention their form, punches, blocks, kicks, etc. I am really proud of how hard they have worked.

I have a couple of posts rumbling around my head: one on The Awakening and Selected Short Fiction by Kate Chopin that I hope to get done in time to participate in Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, and one on my complete and utter failure to meet my goal in the Winter Reading Challenge. But for right now, here are a few links that intrigued me, entertained me, or made me think this week:

~Chronicle Books is holding a Best Chronicle Children’s Books of the Year Contest. Click on the link to enter. The Grand Prize gift basket includes a copy of An Egg is Quiet, Cybil winner in the non-fiction picture book category.

~This list of error messages had me and my husband in stitches. I can’t remember where I saw the link – if it was you, let me know so I can give you credit.

~Christianity Today has an interview with Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia. I’m reading this aloud to Natalie right now, and the previews for the movie have me scratching my head. I feel a little better about seeing it after reading this interview.

~The Rebelution has the results of the Modesty Survey posted. Very interesting reading – a must for all young girls.

~Katy at fallible is a wonderful writer who cracks me up and makes me think on a regular basis. She was one of the first blogs I started reading and remains a favorite. This post was just what I needed after dealing with sick kids all week.

~This man’s 3D pavement drawings are amazing. Hat tip: Lisa Samson.

~I found Principled Discovery‘s post on what to do if you want your child socialized at this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling. Very funny.

Have a happy – and healthy – weekend!

…watching:

…listening to:

…reading aloud:

What are you listening to/watching/reading in your house these days?

Make your own here.

Plus, don’t forget to check out the Cybils web site. They will be announcing the winners today at 2 p.m. Chicago time.

There’s supposed to be a cool blue graphic and a “What Color Are You?” title, but for some reason the html doesn’t work right.

Found at Lisa‘s.

It dawned on me that the Cybils awards are being announced on Wednesday (Valentine’s Day), and I haven’t even blogged about the five finalists yet! Here are the finalists in the non-fiction picture book category (I had the honor of helping to choose the winner in this category!), in no particular order:

I can tell you that the kids and I enjoyed each one – some more than others. I don’t want to say anything else that might give the winner away, but be sure and check the Cybils web site on Wednesday for the announcement of the winners in all categories: picture book, picture book non-fiction, middle-grade fiction, middle-grade and YA non-fiction, YA fiction, poetry, and graphic novels. Just browsing through the nominee lists has given me some great ideas for reading aloud to the kids!

Have you read any of these finalists? What did you think?

We’re home. I’m really tired, but refreshed and rejuvenated at the same time. Does that make sense?

The kids all had a wonderful weekends It was so nice to know that they had awesome people to stay with – we didn’t worry a bit! And they were all well-behaved. Even the boys, who I was (a little) worried about. Unless, of course, Michelle is lying to me and they were hooligans. Michelle’s husband, Don, also deserves much thanks since Michelle ended up partially down with a tummy bug on Saturday. The boys played hours of game cube, had Pokemon matches, watched Pokemon movies and reruns of MacGyver on DVD, and did lots of noisy boy stuff.

Natalie stayed with my parents. I think it was good for her to have a weekend away from her brothers. Being a girl with three brothers and no sisters isn’t always easy. Mom and Dad’s friends from church came over to play cards, and Natalie got to play, too. She loved being the center of attention. As she said before we left, “Grandmama and Papa’s friends are coming over tonight, and they all love me!” No poor self-image there! Aside from playing cards, she made blue snickerdoodles, played games on the computer against Grandmama, and watched Little Women (the old June Allyson version).

Kevin and I also had a wonderful time. When I got out of the shower yesterday morning, I mentioned to Kevin that I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a shower without someone yelling at me through the door, wanting something! We ate out, took naps, shopped at Barnes & Noble and Circuit City, watched movies, read, slept in, and played a highly competitive game of Scrabble, in which Kevin tried to convince me that “gayvoters” was really one word.

We watched three great movies – in the hotel room since they had a better selection than what was playing at the movie theater. Casino Royale is probably the best James Bond movie I’ve ever seen. I had a ton of doubts about Daniel Craig, but he was brilliant. And that’s saying a lot, cause I’ve been a Bond fan for a long time. School for Scoundrels made us laugh really really hard – it has that guy from Napoleon Dynamite. Flags of Our Fathers was very well-done and very sad. It struck me that politicians never seem to change. Even though World War II was a more just war than we have fought in the years since, there was still much injustice going on behind the scenes. It always seems that the people in charge – the ones who aren’t actually fighting the war – see the soldiers on the ground as little more than chess pieces to move at will and sacrifice when expedient. Of course, I just made a huge generalization, and I know there must be polticians out there that grieve over the loss of life and think of the casualties in terms of people with families rather than numbers. I just wish there were more of them.

Now, just to change the topic completely and with no segue whatsoever, here are the treasures I found at Barnes & Noble:

Kate Chopin is an author I discovered while listening to an audiobook of short stories called Great American Women’s Fiction. I enjoyed her stories in that anthology, and so decided to pick up a copy of her novel The Awakening. I’m about halfway through and haven’t quite decided what I think.

Michelle has been enjoying and talking about a book of Wendell Berry’s agrarian essays, and I’ve also seen him mentioned (and raved about) at magistramater, so that’s what influenced that purchase.

Kevin picked up these:

(Could our reading tastes be any different?)

I found this for Natalie:

And this for Noah:

And for Jonathan:

(He was very excited to receive a book he could read ALL BY HIMSELF!)

For Josiah:

On the two-and-a-half hour drive there and back, we listened to parts 5 and 6 of Mark Driscoll‘s sermon series on Spiritual Gifts. I have to say this series is the most balanced, biblically based teaching on the charismatic gifts that I’ve ever heard. Go here, click on “Sermons”, then “Books of the Bible”, and then “1 Corinthians”. In the bottom frame you will see listed all of the sermons in his series on 1 Corinthians. They are all free for download and make excellent listening and discussion-starters.

Well, that pretty much sums up our annual weekend get-away. I just wish we could afford to do it twice a year!

“Inkheart is about Meggie and her dad who can read things out of books when reading aloud. One night, he was reading aloud from a book named Inkheart and these people came out. That was when Meggie was three. When she was twelve, Meggie and her dad went to see their aunt, and then Meggie’s dad got captured by the people who came out of the book.

Meggie and her aunt go and try to find Meggie’s dad. They get him and they start driving home, but then their car breaks down. Some of the people that came out of the book are following them, so they throw the car down a hill so it will look like they got in a wreck and then they start walking on foot. Read the book to find out what happens next!”

by Natalie, age 10

“Who I don’t like: Capricorn, because he’s really mean and I hate his Shadow. I hate him because he murders people and he wanted Meggie to read the Shadow out of the book.

Who I do like: I like Dustfinger because he helped Meggie and Mo. And even though Dustfinger helped Capricorn get the book I still like him.”

by Noah, age 8

Since my husband and I are leaving tomorrow for a weekend get-away without the rugrats, I’m posting early. We won’t have access to a computer while we’re gone – nor would we use it if we did – so I won’t be posting again until Sunday evening or Monday.

We will be staying here, shopping here, eating here, talking without interruption, sleeping in as late as we want, reading, seeing a movie (possibly this or this) – and doing anything else that occurs to us.

You gotta love a man who says, “Don’t forget to pack the Scrabble game!” and who knows that the hours spent in Barnes & Noble are one of the things I’m most looking forward to and doesn’t care in the least. And also said, “I don’t want to go to Circuit City this time – I’m afraid I’ll buy something!”

Natalie will be staying with my parents, and the boys – all three of them! – will be staying with Michelle and her husband, Don. Did I mention how blessed I am by her friendship? (And not just because she’s watching my kids!) I need to tell her husband that they can never move away from here.

So here are some links for the weekend:

~Christianity Today posted their list of the 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2006. What do you think? Did they miss any? Are there any on the list that have you scratching your head?

~I’ve never thought of juggling as an art form until I saw this video at Author Intrusion. This guy is incredible!

What about you – any interesting finds on the ‘net this week? Any great plans for the weekend?

Good Grief by Lolly Winston was one of my favorite finds of 2006. I picked it up at Barnes & Noble around this time last year (on our annual weekend away without the kids, which we just happen to be taking again this weekend — woo hoo!), and devoured it, then passed it on to my sister Andrea, who also loved it, and my friend, Michelle. She enjoyed it, too.

So when I heard that Ms. Winston had another book out, I quickly purchased it and put it on my “to-be-read” shelf. I wish I hadn’t. This book was a huge disappointment.

First of all, it was much racier than Good Grief. Now, granted, the protagonist in Good Grief was newly widowed, and so didn’t have much opportunity for romantic liasons. But the characters in Happiness Sold Separately certainly do, and like to reminisce about said encounters with more detail than I want to know.

I know, I should have put the book down. But I really wanted to see how it ended – and in the back of my mind was the thought: ‘But her last book was so good!’

Happiness Sold Separately tells the story of Elinor and Ted Mackey. In Chapter One, Elinor discovers that Ted is having an affair with his fitness trainer, Gina. Their marriage was pretty much destroyed before the affair started – devastated by the inability to conceive and the stress of unsuccessful fertility treatments.

The rest of the book follows Elinor and Ted’s attempts at reconciliation and making sense of their lives. I don’t want to give away the plot in case any of you want to torture yourselves by actually reading this book, but I will say that in the end Elinor makes a choice that the author clearly sees as the right decision, but that denies what is right and true about marriage and love.

Ms. Winston is a gifted author, and this book is well-written. But it still isn’t worth reading, in my opinion. Thank goodness it was a quick read and I didn’t waste too many hours of precious reading time.

Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson has been released. I make a point to read every new book of hers as soon as possible – and I can say that about very few other authors. I have a review copy coming soon, and I’ll be sure to post a review as soon as I finish it. But you don’t have to wait to get your own copy – it’s available now.