Lent

Lent is not something that I grew up with. I have always gone to your basic expository Bible teaching church - a good thing - but I wasn't exposed to church calendar concepts like Lent and Advent until an adult. Even then, they were fuzzy foreign concepts. The more I have learned about them, the more that I have come to look forward to these seasons, even though I still feel like I am no expert!

In my Bible study that I'm doing with Community Bible study this fall, we are working our way through Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Throughout these pages, you see so many times where God is telling his children, the Israelites, to look back and remember what he has done for them. Make a memorial, build a remembrance, tell the stories to their children. Then He tells them to look forward to see what is to come. For His people, wandering in the wilderness until they finished their 40 year debt for their grumbling and lack of trust in Him, he reminded them over and over that a promised land is coming! A land of milk and honey! A land where one day God would lead them in victory over the surrounding pagan armies! But, as it was for the Israelites, it sure is easy to keep my eyes focused on what I'm lacking in the moment, than the bounty that is ahead.

This is mirrored in the New Testament when young believers in churches across the Middle East and Asia are encouraged to look back on their old self and see that it is done away with. Behold, a new thing has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17) But again, it sure is easy for me to get bogged down in my self-pity, my lack, my suffering, etc. Instead of staying in the suffering, look forward to what the Lord has in store - his grace that is sufficient for me, his peace that passes all understanding, his joy that will be my strength, both here and in the new land that he is preparing for us this very moment. (Revelation 21:1)

The past two (+) years have been doozies. Harder than hard. I have grieved over some things and cried and asked God why is he not fixing ___ and making it right! But God is not mine to command (thankfully!) so even though He hasn't "fixed" things, I haven't given up on Him even if the "fixing" needs to be me.

For Lent this year, I decided I needed to just sit with God on this. See what he says about suffering. Look for beauty in the midst of hard seasons. To that end, I'm reading through Job. I did get the She Reads Truth journal so I will have somewhere dedicated to journal and scribble my way through this, but I'll probably be taking it more my speed than theirs. I'm also reading Christine Hoover's book Searching for Spring. I love what she said in chapter 1: "We may not be able to see and comprehend clearly all of what God is doing in the present, but we can always mine the past the future for treasures."

I'll be doing some mining for treasure as I prepare my heart for Easter. Looking back to see what God has done for me, counting those blessings one by one. Looking forward to what is yet to come.

Soli deo gloria.

Reading Round-up - January & February 2019

Settling back into this space on a wet Saturday evening, as one does. Actually most of our weekends have been wet the last month - ridiculously so! Spring is here and early this year by the sight and sound of it. I am ready for the sunshine and warm breezes and all that brings. I am nearing the end of a commitment to direct our homeschool group and with that "freedom" I'm hoping to putter here a bit more. I find I think about this space more than just a bit and miss stringing thoughts together, even if just for myself. :)

On to the bookish bit!

In January, I read six books and uncharacteristically, 4 of them were rereads. There are certain times of the year that I crave a reread - fall especially as school starts back and I don't have the mental energy to tackle something new for myself. I lapse into a reread of a good series - last year it was the Harry Potter series - and feel no guilt about it one bit. This year I participated in Carrie's LM Montgomery reading challenge for the first year in ... a few ... and revisited her Emily series. Thanks to Goodreads, I realized I hadn't read through this series since 2011 and I really enjoyed getting into it again. Definitely a "darker" series than the more popular Anne, it fit my mood and season of life perfectly.

Our read aloud for January was also a reread - Ethan and I started from the beginning of the Narnia series and have a determined purpose to see it through this spring. :) We had read The LWW last summer but it didn't click with him enough to jump into book two, however that has since changed! He is enjoying it so much that we have been reading a bit during our school day and then continuing it at night before bed when we can (instead of our usually school day and separate bedtime read-aloud). No complaints here.

In other January reading, I dabbled in two series mentioned via Sarah (Read Aloud Revival). I'm a sucker for a good junior or YA fantasy series. I read Flyte by Angie Sage, which is the second book in the Septimus Heap series. I think this could be a fun read aloud for Ethan down the road or one to hand off to him in a few years. Adventure and quirky characters galore, but yet not one that I'm dying to fly through myself. I also started the YA Ascendance trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen and read the first book, The False Prince. I will probably finish this series slowly - enjoying it, but no rush to devour it.

In February, Ethan and I finished Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader in our Narnian journey. Onward and upward! I also read several stand-alone books this month. I dearly love a good series, but haven't found a good long one to draw me in right now! I finished:

Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge. I love her books The Little White Horse and The Scent of Water. This one was a little bit more of chore to get through, but I finished it and enjoyed it. Not as much as the others, but it is beautiful writing set in the English landscape which drew me in!

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden. I had read Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale which was a haunting folktale set in Russia. I couldn't put it down - I really loved the glimpse into Russian folklore and legend - but yet haven't moved on to the sequel. This book is also a creepy ghost story but set for 10-12 (and up), I'd say. (I'm starting to get the impression she writes more spooky stuff than I am used to). I would be careful what child I handed this too as I hustled to finish it - I really wanted to find out what happened but I also wanted to get to the end of the book! If you like Jonathan Auxier's The Night Gardener, you would probably like this book!

I also did go ahead and read The Runaway King (book 2 in the Ascendance Trilogy). Not as captivating as the first book, but still a great series so far.

My first non-fiction for the year - Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales. I LOVED this book. For someone that has always struggled with measuring up, fitting in, and trying to hard, t this book was a needed reminder to me of who I need to rely on to fill my needs - not a spouse, not my children, not my calendar ... the Lord is the only one that can bring contentment and peace and when I do slow down to ponder and grasp that, the outflow into my life and the life of others is world-changing. Of all I have read in the first two months of the year? This book, hands down, is my first highly recommend of the bunch.

And there's the first two months of the year wrapped up in a nutshell. And now, to curl up under a blanket and maybe get a few pages in this evening!

The Literary Best of 2018

For a sporadic blogger, I've been looking forward to looking back over my reading for 2018 and making this list of favorites! 2018 was a good reading year for me, helped along by many hours sitting on the benches at gymnastics as well as moving my phone to charge across the bedroom instead of using it as my alarm on my nightstand. After last year's post, I had some reading goals for 2018 and I think I improved in the areas that I wanted to. I read more over-all (91, up from 70), more non-fiction (14 versus last year's 8). (You can see the full list in my sidebar here).

One area where we have slipped has been read-alouds - 12 total for the year. That makes me sad, but it's where we are right now. My 15 year-old goes to school outside the home, and my 7th grader doesn't join us for read-aloud most of the time because of her schoolwork. Most of those books have been bedtime ones with Ethan at night and I'm so grateful that he and I still have that time together! He and I are actually participating in the Read-Aloud Revival's 31 day reading challenge in January - we each have to read to each other 10 minutes a day. He needs to build some fluidity in his reading and I need the help getting back into our routine!

All that said, here are some of my favorites from this year, in no particular order!

Come and Eat by Bri McKoy :: This was a surprise read that I ended up LOVING - I had been eyeing the book for a while, and when it was on sale on Kindle for a song, I snatched it up. I went into it thinking it was a cookbook/memoir type story, and while it does have some recipes in it, it's more about cultivating hospitality in your home and what that looked like for her and her husband. I loved it, and it has made me think about those that I want to invite to sit around our table in the coming year.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas :: This book was recommended to me by my 15 year old - her History/Geography teacher handed it off to her and she read it and said I HAD TO READ IT. (Emphasis hers). And then she wanted me to take her to see the movie. :) (Which I did!) This book was super outside my comfort zone but wow, I'm so glad I read it. This was an eye-opening look into the lives of inner city African Americans - something that I will never, ever experience or understand. The book was excellent (warning: there's a fair amount of language), and the movie was just as much so. So glad she pushed me to read this.

Renegades / Archenemies by Marissa Meyer :: A few years ago, I stumbled upon Marissa Meyer and her Lunar Chronicles and devoured that series. This is her newest YA series - teens with superpowers, good v. evil (but who is good and who is evil?), clean ... I love these books. Renegades is the first in the series and I've already read Archenemies (book 2) ... book 3 doesn't come out until late 2019!

The Ministry of Ordinary Places by Shannan Martin :: Another from my non-fiction stack from this year - I've read Shannan Martin's blog off and on for some time now, and this book was heart pulling in both good and hard ways. If you aren't familiar with her story (and I won't even try to do it justice), she and her husband left a comfortable lifestyle and beautiful farmhouse to move into the inner city area of Goshen, Indiana, and learned to love the neighbors around them right there in their hardest spots. A call to loving those around us where they are ... not where you want (or think) they should be.

The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers :: One of the read-aloud wins for us this year ... Ethan and I read this series aloud together and it was delightful. I was tipped on to this series by Sarah and she didn't give any spoilers away so I'm not going to either - other than it is allegorical and brilliant and I loved it so so much. Read this series (there's three, but I only could find photos of two), buy it as gifts, etc., etc.

The Read-Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie :: Even though it is getting harder and harder to read aloud with my crew I still 1000% (not a typo) believe in the power of connecting with my people through books. This book deserves a spot on your shelves and should be part of baby gifts as friends start their own families.

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge :: This languished on my shelf for far too long - English characters and countryside and delightful story to boot. I am making a plan to read more Elizabeth Goudge in 2019!

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline :: My husband took me to see this movie earlier this year and it was a surprise hit with me. (I don't know why I was surprised - futuristic, young underdog wins, and 80s themes abounded!) Travis bought the audiobook for one of his many, many work trips this summer and since this was the summer of carpooling kids all the time, I started listening to it as well. It should be noted that there is more language than I like in this book and one chapter is extremely mature and could be skipped all together without detracting from the story. That said - this book was outstanding. This is one of those works of fiction that (even though it is not "Christian" material) that continually pointed me back to God because the incredible creativity of its author. I've not read anything else like it and it reminded me of how creates his people with such amazing creativity and ingenuity and what we create is a reflection of his Creation and creativity. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was a book that moved me to praise because of what he allows us to do ... and though I don't think I have it in me to write a Ready, Player, One, he has created me to be creative in His image and am I doing so?

All that to say, this was a GREAT book and an even greater life lesson out of it.

Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson :: I wasn't sure about putting this on my favorites list because it's a book about books, and I read it fairly late in the year. The author is Sarah Clarkson, daughter of my beloved Sally Clarkson, and I enjoyed reading her short essays on her reading history and I really enjoyed the book lists in the book. This book will be referenced many times over the next several months for inspiration for my own reading. While I do love me some juvenile and YA fiction, I'm inspired to also read a bit more for me v. all the reading / prereading I do for my kids. I'm looking at Dickens, Anna Karenina, and other authors to round me out a bit more in 2019.

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street / The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karina Van Glasser. My favorite juvenile series discovery of 2018! If you love the Penderwicks, All of a Kind Family, the children from The Saturdays ... basically any family whose children get into all sorts of adventures (and scrapes) sometimes (and sometimes not) through no fault of their own. :) We've flown through books 1 and 2 here - book 3 can't come fast enough!

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome :: Nestled in this stack is another favorite - one that I read on my own after (again) having it sit on myself for far too long. I loved Swallows and Amazons and see this as becoming a fun read aloud with Ethan down the road. English children, adventures and scrapes (reminds me of the book just above!) and things always working out in the end. This is whole series, but I have managed to hold off on devouring the other 7-8 books or so that I understand are out there!

Lastly (and without a photo) are two books by Jen Wilkin worth mentioning worth your reading. This summer, I worked my way through her study of the first twelve chapters of Genesis, God of Creation. As someone who is pretty familiar with the book of Genesis, I loved her insight and perspective and came away with thoughts that fueled my planning for my home and my CC community for the fall of 2018. God is a God of order, of form and function, and creativity and we are in his image. Speaking of In His Image, that was the title of another book of Jen Wilkin's that was was excellent and worth adding to your stack. She walks through ten characteristics of our God that we are called to imitate (in contrast to her book from last year, None Like Him, where she explored ten attributes of God's that are his and his alone.) I recently heard somewhere that with the plethora of media we have available to us (podcasts, books, social media accounts, etc.) it is so easy to jump around and take little bits of insight from too many people. "Back in the day" you might have just a few authors that you follow, through their written work only, and you would revisit their works and let it settle in more and more with each reading (I think of people that have influenced me like this such as C.S. Lewis and Elisabeth Elliot). This is something that I'm trying to embrace more in the coming years, just because I follow someone on social media doesn't mean I need to buy and read their book - there are very few that I want to mindfully support financially and invest lots of my head and heart knowledge into. Jen Wilkin is just one of a very few current authors that I would call out that makes that cut for me. 

If you made it this far, thank you! What were some of your favorites for 2018? Anything I should add to my list for the coming year? 

And Happy New Year to you and yours. ❤

Currently :: A Present Participle List

Shaking :: the cobwebs off my blog. I'm seriously rusty at writing but I miss it. Here's to a brief catch up list.

Hearing :: the cat investigate things underneath our Christmas tree. She is up to no good!

Seeing :: my calendar in front of me as I need to figure out what's going on next week. 'Tis the week before Christmas yet it's still a full one. I'm looking forward to the two weeks that come after when my calendar is blank!

Watching :: movies! As you have probably seen, several companies came out with monthly movie passes - buy a pass and you can see X number of movies a week in the theater. This summer, T and I each got a movie pass through our AMC theater and it has been so fun. We don't go to the movies every week (there's not enough good stuff out there for that, for sure!), but we have enjoyed going more often and getting nicer and reserved seats like Imax, Dolby surround sound, and dine-in seating - seriously spoiled with that one! This past Thursday, we went to see the new Peter Jackson movie, Mortal Engines, on opening night in IMAX with the reclining seats. It's been a great investment in date nights for us!

Reading :: it's been a good year of reading - five and half hours a week of gymnastics will do that for you! I made my list last week of the top 10-ish books I've read this year and would love to figure out when to blog it. It's on the to-do list! Currently, I'm reading Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard. It's the second book in the Red Queen series (YA dystopian novels are my thing right now apparently) and I'm enjoying it. I read the first book a couple years ago, but didn't love it enough to finish the series. Not sure what's different this time, but I've made it to book two!

Educating :: three out of the four kids at home this year. This fall, for the first time, we have put one of our kids into public school and has taken some getting used to! It has been a great change for our oldest for many reasons and she is settling into 9th grade and has survived her first semester and enjoyed it. I miss having all my kids at home with me, but it's been a good step (for her and me!) We're taking the other kids a year (or a semester) at a time and seeing what they need - isn't that what we as parents do about everything. No kid is the same, and that becomes even more apparent as they get older and you really start to see how they learn differently. There's such a stigma in the homeschool community when you do something like this with one of your kids and I haven't loved that.

Planning :: to work on my power sheets this weekend. The last several years have been "ugh" for lack of a better word. Power sheets aren't the answer to my problem, but I'm looking forward to using them as a tool to help me process some things that have been going on and move in a different direction in the future. (It's vague, I know).

Creating :: not much. This is first year that I've haven't diligently worked on a Project Life album and I miss it! I have worn out two little selphy photo printers and decided that this year I would use the Project Life app to make our family scrapbook pages. It's a great app, but it's not for me! It's too hard for me to sit and create scrapbook photos on my phone without my eyes crossing. :) I love writing out the journaling cards and printing my photos, so I'm hoping to get back to in 2019.

Here's to a quick catch up and moving on. Happy December!

January Reads

January ended up being a pretty decent reading month for me, all things considered. It turns out that the first month of the year is one of the busiest for the person who is a director of a Classical Conversations community. It's time to re-register families for the coming year, hold informational meetings, figure out how to fill out 1099s for the first time, and the list goes on. I've been sticking to a pretty strict to-do list and just checking off the next thing. That said, the majority of the stack above are read-alouds - that's where most of my reading time ended up taking place. Personally, I read a couple books on my Kindle and one fairly good-sized series which was fantastic and a great way to end the month.

To recap our read-alouds, the two books leaning to the left in the photo above were actually December's read-alouds. They were all I finished in December (besides the big Bible reading project that I'm nearing the end of) and I never got a monthly wrap up for that month written. We finished Mr. Popper's Penguins and By the Great Horn Spoon this month. Mr. Popper's was a HUGE hit with my 7 year old. We read the book, we saw the play at our local children's theater, and he has the audiobook loaded on an ancient iPad and has listened to it several times. It's fun to look back and now and see when I had last read that book aloud (before he was born), so the 7 year cycle of repeating books is working out pretty good for me!

We also finished Sid Fleischman's By the Great Horn Spoon which tied more into the American History memory work that we are doing in CC this year. I admit, I wasn't sure about this book when it started. However, it did pick up about halfway through the book and by the end we were to the "just one more chapter, please!" and finished it up rather quickly. It was a great story as far as describing what it might have looked like for someone heading out to try their hand during the great gold rush.

In January, we finished The Prairie Thief by Melissa Wiley and Little House on the Prairie (and who all should know who that author is). :) The Prairie Thief was a just-for-fun read and requested by my 10yo girl - since she is the one that I seem to have the hardest time engaging with a read-aloud, I obliged her and we all enjoyed this one. (Again, this was another re-read, last enjoyed in 2012, so the girls would have been 4 and 5ish, and the boy not quite 2).

Little House on the Prairie was as reread for Natalie, who remembers it the first time we read it and has since read the series on her own at least once. Betsy didn't remember this at all ... and I have to say, I pick up different things every time that I go through the series, and especially the farther along I get into parenting. What a hard life it would have been to travel with three little girls with her husband to build a home literally from the ground up. And to read aloud Ma's feelings towards their Native American neighbors was not exactly pleasant, but we did have some good conversations about it. 

The last read aloud worth mentioning is The Hobbit which the boy and I read before bed off-and-on in December and January. It doesn't even need to be said how great a book The Hobbit is, but I might argue it's an even better read-aloud. So, so good.

On my Kindle this month, I read two books: The Boneshaker by Kate Milford and Lost and Found: Losing Religion and Finding Grace by Kendra Fletcher. I had such high hopes for The Boneshaker after I read Milford's Greenglass House books. As you might predict from the cover alone, it was a little creepy and I didn't love it. Lost and Found was a book that I've had on my wish list for years, and was able to buy for a steal as a Kindle version. I used to read Kendra's blog (Preschoolers and Peace) years ago when my girls where tiny. A year-ish ago she wrote this deeper work about her and her husband's shift in faith through some deep trials in their family and how they were drawn deeper to Jesus and from a works/checklist based faith. Her testimony in this book spoke to me, and I'm thankful I finally got the chance to read it.

The rest of the month was completely taken up with Brandon Mull's Beyonders series. Last summer I fell hard for his Fablehaven series, and decided to try this series featuring an older protagonist. I loved this series just as much! Where the main character in Fablehaven is a young teen girl and her younger brother, this series is focused on Jason, about 15, and how he becomes embroiled in Lyrian. He takes on a cause that he has no tie to because it's the right thing to do and becomes the unlikely hero of the tale and one well worth recommending. While I handed Fablehaven immediately off to my 12 year old, (and I'll be recommending the Beyonders to her as well), I'm excited about this series with a male hero for Ethan when he gets older.

Happy reading. :)

Reading Anne in January

It's been a tradition for several years now, that my friend Carrie over at Reading to Know hosts an L.M. Montgomery reading challenge every January. I think I've participated almost every year ... some years I'm reading on my own, and a couple of those years, the kids and I have worked through a read-aloud together.

I'm hoping to pick up something by LMM this month and join in the challenge ... but I'm having major indecision on what to pick. So far I've:

• reread the Emily series (2011)
• Story Girl and The Golden Road (2012)
• Jane of Lantern Hill (with the girls and my personal favorite for a LMM read-aloud with kids) and Rilla of Ingleside (2013)
• The Blue Castle, Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat (2014) ... Mistress Pat has one of my favorite literary quotes ever and I always forget how much I love those two books.
• The Story Girl and The Golden Road again, this time as a read-aloud (2015). The summer of 2015, I also did a re-read of the whole Anne series for the first time in FOREVER.
• Anne of Green Gables, read aloud with the girls (2016)

I would love to do another read-aloud with my munchkins but with a 7 year old boy in the group, I don't think Anne is up his alley. (I do think he would love Jane of Lantern Hill! That's just a good, all-round fun story). I am would love a reread of Emily, but I'm also not sure I want to dive deep into a series right now when I have an imposing stack of things on my to-be-read list. 

I think I'm leaning toward A Tangled Web to start with and we'll see what happens after that. Classic LMM with quirky family characters that I remember being quite humorous. Based on my GoodReads account, I haven't marked that I've read in since I've started logging books there (2006), so I can also justify that it's time for a reread. :)

All the 2018 Thoughts

Happy 2018!

Our Christmas break has been a whirlwind around these parts. While we didn't travel, I realized today that (I think) there was only one day that I managed to stay home the entire day we have been on break. Not nearly enough hibernating for me! However, in spite of the busy-ness, it was a good break with lots of just-us family time, movies in the evening (we finished our annual watching of Lord of Rings / Hobbit movies, extended editions of course), and mornings without an alarm clock. We have reached the point where it's time to go back to school because we need more structure to our days!

I've spent some of the last week thinking about the coming year and where I think I need to put a little more focus and diligence. I hesitate to call them resolutions ... one, because as a New Year's Eve baby, on top of it being a new calendar year, it's also a new year around the sun for me. I just happen to be able to combine the two. :) There will always be books that I want to read in the coming twelve months (or revisit) and new promises to snack less and drink more water, but I've had a word stuck in my head and on my heart for several weeks now, and it's something I want to pursue in the coming months. The word JOY has been on the forefront and I want to be conscious of it in my own life (instead of tending to be a glass-half-empty person) and how can I cultivate that in my life (spiritually, physically, emotionally ... and all the other -ally words). :) This isn't something that I can make lots of lists about - my preferred method of working on something and getting it done! But I'm excited to keep this in the forefront of my mind and heart and work on a new perspective in several areas.

Here's to a new year, a fresh clean calendar (for now), and the promise of what's to coming the next twelve months!

Of note: JOY was apparently my word of the year in 2009. I guess it's the season to revisit this one again! :)

2017's Favorites

One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is to look back over the books that I've read and remember what stood out to me as the really good ones. The ones that I went and added to my shelf if it was a library copy. Or the ones that I finished and went and told one of my girls "you have to read this RIGHT now."

What follows are my top ten (plus one bonus, of course) from 2017. They are in no particular order - I decided to just blog them in the order that the pictures uploaded so I didn't have to rank them!

Just to give you some idea of numbers, here's what I tallied up from this year:

• I read 70 total books this year.
• 24 of those (34%) were read-alouds. (We did a LOT of reading aloud.)
• 11 of those were ones that I read aloud with just Ethan in the evenings. 
• 8 of those (11%) were non-fiction.

Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers. This was one of the read-alouds that I did with Ethan in the evening and I LOVED it. Sarah Mackenzie has raved about this author and series on her podcast and after reading book one of this trilogy, I can see why. I'm not going to spoil it for you (Sarah didn't for me!), but it's an allegorical tale done so well and so cleverly that it wasn't until about half-way through that I started putting the pieces together. This has been our go-to gift book for our boy friends that are 8-9 years old and upwards this year.

Sally & Nathan Clarkson's book Different was one that I really needed this year - encouragement as we homeschool and parent some munchkins that would fall in to the category of "out of the box" kids. (She defines that as a child that doesn't fit the mold or expectation of how a child should learn and behave whether it is because of a larger than life personality, a learning struggle, clinical diagnoses of some kind, or a combination of any and/or all of the above.) It was very timely for me and I've recommended to several friends who have munchkins wired the same way as one of ours.

Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan. Delightful and magical and wonderful. The story of three children all tied together by a single item. Just read it if you haven't. Why I haven't purchased a copy of this for our shelves yet, I do not know, but I'm rectifying this ASAP.

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. This was my fun, guilty pleasure reading this year. For the fantasy fan or Harry Potter enthusiast that needs another series, I highly recommend this one. This was one of those books that I finished and immediately hunted down N2 (age 11) and said you MUST read this. And she might be getting the whole series under the tree this year. Completely creative storyline and a perfect series for junior (or YA) reader that love fantasy. 

Greenglass House (and Ghosts of Greenglass House) by Kate Milford. This is where my bonus book comes in. I've owned Greenglass House on my Kindle for ages, but I finally picked it up this fall and started reading it. It's a ghost story, but it doesn't go the way you think. Another one that I think my girls would all LOVE and I'm contemplating a read-aloud of it in the spring. (But I enjoyed reading this one on my own because I couldn't put it down and when you read-aloud you have to go slower!) When I finished the first book, I immediately got the second one on my Kindle and am hoping to read more of Kate Milford in 2018. I love authors that make you want to find all their books and read them all!

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I bought this pretty copy last year for Christmas and it's a book that is worth rereading every few years. It just gets better with age.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton. This was another new author to us this year and one that we fell in love with. To repeat what I wrote back in January when we finished this one: this is a delightful stand-alone story that was recommended to me by a fellow homeschooler on Instagram. It is a blend of nonsense and wordly wit that reminds me of the great Roald Dahl.  (High praise, indeed!) There were so many lines that I wanted to go through and flag so that I could read them to my grammar class that I teach in our Classical Conversations community - fantastic uses of alliteration, rhyme, -ly adverbs, etc. The author is a crazy, talented illustrator in her own right AND is the sister in law of Andrew Peterson, author of another of my favorite series, The Wingfeather Saga. So many good signs that pointed to us loving this book. And we did. Highly recommend as a read aloud and for your library.

Note: We also read Jennifer Trafton's newest book, Henry and the Chalk Dragon, and loved it as well. (But Mount Majestic was my favorite). :)

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie. If you don't have this book in your homeschooling arsenal, why not? I've blogged about this book some here and revisited again this year. I took away from it something completely different this go round (a reminder that teaching from my strengths v. what I see others doing is always the better choice). Sarah has a new book coming out in 2018 about reading aloud and y'all know how I feel about that. 

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. This ended up being one of my absolute favorite read-alouds of our year! I picked this one this past spring because we needed a "boy" book thrown in our rotation. I was dreading it because I remember the old Disney movie from when I was a kid (and how I had bad dreams about the shipwreck at the beginning of the story!) By the time we got to the horse race at the end of the story we just had to read through to the end! 

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong. Last in the list and another surprise read-aloud favorite. I picked this one because I'm eventually going to read all the books that have one the Newbery Award. We were captivated by the school children of Shora, a small Dutch town that doesn't have any storks. The children of the school want to know why the storks don't land and nest in Shora anymore and it turns into a project that pulls the children, and eventually the town, together.

There you have it. :) The best of 2017. I'm already plotting what I want to read next year - definitely more non-fiction. I have several books that I've bought and started or are just waiting to be picked up that I'm eager to get to. What was your favorite book of 2017? I might need it add it to 2018's list as well!

PS. I've edited and updated our Family Read-Aloud List up through 2017, and my full list of what I read in 2017 if you're interested in all the books. :)

November 2017 Reads

My reading stack for November. It was a light month for me as far as books go. I've got a big project that I'm working on book wise and it will probably take me through the end of the year (more on that in a minute).

We'll start with read-alouds. The boy and I finished Prince Caspian as our bedtime read-aloud last month. We are slowly but surely making our way through the Narnia books - if I'm counting right, this is my third time through reading them aloud. We were going to jump into The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but we have taken a slight detour (though a worthwhile one) and he and I are reading The Hobbit together right now. Just so you know, The Hobbit is so much FUN to read aloud. This is the first time that I've ever done that and I think it's easier to follow when I'm reading it aloud versus reading it to myself. And, since Ethan has watched the movies (4th child with older siblings problem), he can ask if this is the part with the ring or Gollum or the goblin cave and is following along just fine.

The other read aloud we finished in November was our school-time read, Little House in the Big Woods. N2 (my 11 year old) remember much of the story from when we read aloud several years ago (and has read it on her own since then), but I'm not sure how much B remembers. She would have been 3 when we originally read it! Ethan hung in with this "girl" book pretty well ... there is a lot of Pa in this book so that helped. We'll see how he feels when we get to something like These Happy Golden Years. :)

As far as personal reading, I read Emily Ley's book, A Simplified Life. I enjoyed this book - Emily has a very friendly and encouraging writing style as she walks you through ten different areas and ways to simplify your life. I think I need a book like this every so often to remind me that it's ok to let go of things (clutter does not equal joy) and where I can tighten up ship around here in other ways. The book also has blank pages if you need workbook space to work through your simplifying needs and strategies. I haven't used those but those could be a great tool for a wife and/or mama that is completely overwhelmed and needs even more help on where to start.

The other book I have read this month is an advanced PDF of Kristen Kill's book Finding Selah. I read this book in one sitting (started it on my phone at gymnastics on night - my least favorite way to read ever!) and I am eagerly waiting my advance copy to get here so I can highlight in it. I became aware of Kristen when she began co-hosting Sally Clarkson's podcast with her and was eager to read her writing since Sally (one of my top homeschool mama mentors) thinks so highly of her. Her writing is lovely and I hope to share more on this one later.

The other big reading project that I've been working on - and the reason my book stack is so small - is that I've challenged myself to read through the whole Bible this Christmas season. Instead of a chapter a day, I'm getting through as many as I can with the goal of absorbing and taking in the big overarching scope of the Bible. I have read through the whole Bible before as a year long project, but if you are like me, by the time you get three-fourths of the way through, it's a little harder to find those connections with what you read at the beginning. Plus, I love to spend time also doing in depth verse by verse studies of certain books ... again, well worth my time, but hard to get the feel of the book as a whole. Which is what it is - one whole book, subdivided into different books but with one overarching theme and story that it is telling. I've just finished up 2 Samuel this morning and am about to dive into the lives of the kings of Israel and Judah. I can't wait!

November in a nutshell! I foresee December's stack will be small with my Bible project, but I'm sure there will be a read-aloud or two to share in a few weeks. :)

Making Advent Harder Than It Needs to Be

Apparently, I'm not the only one that makes things harder than they need to be! After hitting publish on that last post, I thought of several areas where this is glaring at me right now. (I'm sure there are others, but two are in the forefront of my mind right now.)

The first is Advent.

I realize that it is December 1 today and if you are like me you have been inundated with Advent every where you turn for the last few weeks. Daily activities for children. Countdown calendars. Devotional books for adults. Devotional books for children. Jesse tree projects. Christmas book projects. And, on and on. There are just so many options - good options - that it gets overwhelming. And I tend to think that I need to reinvent the wheel every year and if we don't do all the things I will fail my kids utterly.

That's really not true. (Whew.)

I am giving myself permission to keep out Advent simple. For the most part, I'm not planning on buying anything new. (Except for the chocolate Advent calendars ... last year's were eaten). :) I'm reading an Advent devotional that has been on my Kindle for at least a year (maybe two) and I've never read it. We are going to read all our Christmas story books without wrapping them. And that's really as far as I've thought about it. Micromanaging our month is not just stressful, but it's not really all that fun either. Most of the things that would probably be on my "want to do" list happen naturally without needing to make a note that we are making gingersnaps on the 8th of December no matter what unfolds on that day's schedule.

December always seems to hold a magic of its own and when I overplan and overschedule, I tend to miss it. And for me, instead of December being about all the extra activities, it is about the margin that comes to our schedule because of the break from Wednesday night church and gymnastic practices and music lessons. It's more nights at home and time to make a real dinner as opposed to eating quesadillas over the stove as I cook them up for everyone before heading out the door. Margin to take a meal to someone that needs it, or for those one-on-one shopping trips with a child that usually always includes a trip for coffee or a donut.

Maybe that's where I've been getting it all wrong ... focusing on the more, more, MORE that comes with December instead of embracing less. Less stuff, less going, less "me, myself and I" this month. I think this is the direction I'm going to head this way for this year.

Making It More Complicated Than It Needs to Be

I've gone back and forth over the last couple of months over whether to let my blog fade a slow death, start something new, or just pick up here like I haven't fizzled off writing except for the occasional monthly book report. (Of which I haven't written one on here since May!) My kids are older now. I have one who starts high school in the fall of 2018. (High. School. Not possible). The days of all of sitting around the table doing our school work together have faded over the last year so posts about art projects and joint curriculum have fallen by the wayside. More often than not I ask to take their picture now instead of the cute candids ... and then I need to ask before sharing it.

Like most moms that have a houseful of littles, I have found that several of my hobbies have fallen by the wayside to getting this child reading, or getting that child sleeping better at night, or filling the need as tutor for this child's class. I've lost a little of my own individuality in the process. My schedule has turned into less of the hands-on-all-the-time parenting to the role of chauffeur and cheerleader on the sidelines. While not an overabundance, there's margin in my days that comes with older kids and I'm struggling with how to fill it. I'm still very available, but instead of the time consuming need to sit on the floor to tie all the shoes and cut all the food and get everyone's clothes laid out and ... and ... and ... before heading out the door, it's now coffee and chocolate and all the conversation. Parenting tweens and teens is an entirely new animal altogether and most days I'm not quite sure what I'm doing.

All that rambling monologue to say, I may use this space once again. I don't know what will turn up ... most likely I'll write about books some (a lot). Photos and photo projects. (December Daily is coming up and I'm in the mood to do something with it this year.) Whatever I'm reading in the Bible and what God is teaching me.

We shall see what comes of it!