books

Book ClubZ | Intro

INTRODUCTION

I’m excited about this new blog series! Reading is another favorite thing of mine and I love it when I can share that love with my family and/or friends. Each month, I’ll choose a book to read, then I’ll plan out a fun night for my family/friends, and then share that night with all of you! I hope that you will be able to use the ideas to have a great night with your book clubs!

Each month will include:

a book review with questions
themed dinner or treat ideas
themed activity ideas
some new products, inspired by the book

So this blog series will be on the 4th Saturdays of each month – starting in January! I hope you will join me in this new adventure filled with books and fun!

What do you think?

Join me in January for the book: Mary Poppins
and feel free to send in your ideas for what we should read next!

Ideas for a great book club night!

Fourth Saturdays

Monday Magic | Kid, You’ll Move Mountains Initiative

Every Christmas season, I like to find a service project that my family can participate in. Usually, its something small and crafty-oriented. But this year, I have something else in mind.

My nephew, William has been in the N.I.C.U. for over 2 months (we are hoping he gets to come home before Thanksgiving) and during my daily visits with him, I have been reading Dr. Seuss books to him. The book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” has been especially poignant, as Will has had a bit of a hard time, but he’s a fighter. As we edge closer, to healing and getting him home, I have thought about this book many times and what an inspiration it is and I have came up with an idea that I just love. I have decided to purchase the book and get all the doctors and nurses that have worked with William to sign it (and add personal messages) and then when he gets to go home, the book will go home with him.

And then I got to thinking how amazing it would be if every NICU baby could take this book home with them. What a treasure it would be for the parents to have to remember all the doctors and nurses that were a part of the journey! What a treasure for the doctors/nurses to have a chance to say goodbye and share their experience! And what a treasure for the children to have as they grow up and see how special they are!So that’s what I want to do this year. I would like to start this initiative to buy as many of these books as I can to donate them to the Utah Valley Hospital N.I.C.U. in December! If it goes well, I’d love to keep this initiative going to help provide books for as long as I can. I feel that this is something that could make the N.I.C.U. a little better for all of the families that have to experience time there and just provide something extra special for them all.

Will you help me? I am using YouCaring.com to host this fundraiser and I would LOVE it if you could check it out and make a donation to help me with this project. I need help sharing it too, so if you would like to social media it up, that would be amazing! Thank you so very much for making this possible!

www.youcaring.com/movemountainsinitiative

I’m still working on finding the best place to purchase these books in bulk and will continue to research this out and do all that I can to make this succeed! If you have ideas or places I could look into, please let me know! Thank you!

Just a little magic to help start your week off right!
Fun ideas, inspiration, tutorials, or whatever I feel like!

Mondays

Family History TuesdayZ | Reading

Journal prompt: Do you enjoy reading? How many books do you usually read in a year? Do you have a favorite genre and/or series?

My Journaling:
I absolutely adore reading. There is nothing like stepping outside of your own life and immersing yourself into another world through books. I have loved reading for as long as I can remember and I am happy that I have handed the love of books down to my daughter. And thanks to the wonderful invention of the audiobook, I feel like I have been getting through so many more books and I love that. I would have to say that I read at least 20 books a year – I would love for it be more than that, but life prevents me from more.

Before I was married, my favorite genre would have to be LDS Fiction (especially the romantic ones). At that time, that was pretty much the only thing I would read. But thanks to a wonderful book group that I was able to join when I first got married – my world of reading grew. I started reading books of all genres and realizing that there is so much more to read about and enjoy. Now, I still love my LDS fiction books, especially The Work and the Glory Series by Gerald Lund and any books by Anita Stansfield and Rachel Nunes (and many many many more authors) – but I would have to say that my favorite books now happen to be Young Adult Dystopian Novels, things like The Hunger Games and Divergent. I can’t seem to get enough of it and I *almost* jump at the chance to do housework just so I can listen to an audiobook!

I love that there are always new books and new adventures to explore! It never gets old!

Each Tuesday, I am going to be offering prompts or ideas. If you don’t write in your journal regularly – I am going to encourage you to write just ONCE A WEEK and answer the question/idea that I give on Tuesdays. These ideas hopefully will spark a memory and you will be able to capture that in what you write/record so that it can be left for your children/grandchildren/family/friends. Give as much detail as you can when answering.

Will you do this for me? Will you do this for your families? You can write it down in a journal, you can type it up on a computer or journaling software, you can take a recorder and talk, you can videotape your answers, you can even scrap a page with the journaling. It doesn’t matter how you do this – it’s just important that you do it. The memories, the dates, the information is the only real thing we can leave to our families when we are gone.

Life 2012 | So Interesting!

My daughter loves to read. That should come as no surprise to my family since her parents are both read-a-holics. I have really enjoyed seeing Beth come into her love of books. She has her favorites – she’s really into the Rainbow Magic Fairy books and the Magic Treehouse books right now. But she also loves when a new issue of the Friend comes and she basically reads it from cover to cover.

But there is something that she doesn’t enjoy reading as much – Baggie Books. Her school has a reading program where they achieve different levels of reading by bringing books (in ziploc bags) home to read to their families. She gets a new book every weekday to bring home and read. These are small readers that get harder/longer as they level up. Actually Beth is on the higher achievement now and brings home 2 books to read every day. Anyways, she’s never really too enthused by these book choices. She still reads them out loud and does a good job and sometimes she does enjoy some of the stories. But a few weeks ago, she brought home a book that interested her so much. It surprised me a lot – enough for me to stop what I was doing (making dinner) and actually sit down next to her and discuss it.

The name of the book was Telling Stories Through Art and she kept reading it and exclaiming things and showing me the pictures. Almost every paragraph ended with “Wow. That’s so interesting!” It was adorable to hear that coming out of her mouth. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised that the history and paintings of indians would interest her. Growing up, many of my family vacations were to visit historical sites and indian ruins. It’s something that my Dad really enjoys and I always enjoyed it too. But its also something that I haven’t really shared with my children before. I’ve never really visited with them about historical sites and stuff and obviously its something that I need to remedy. Beth hasn’t stopped talking about the indian carvings and paintings and how she wanted to see some “for real.” I am definitely going to have to do some research and see if there is some places we can visit. How neat to see that Beth is experiencing a new interest in history. I can’t wait to visit some new places with her and I hope this love just grows. I think it will be really fun for her to learn and grow through the history of our country and the history of the people on earth and even the history of the people in the scriptures. I’m excited to share more of this with her!

Life 2012 | Dr. Seuss Day

I have been seeing all sorts of fun ideas to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday (which was on Friday, March 2nd). I would see it, pin it, bookmark them, and then say “oh well, maybe next year.” But on Thursday night (March 1st), I realized that if I didn’t do anything, I would regret it. My kids love it when I make a big deal about things. I’ve been pretty lax this year with this kind of thing. I have just been in a funk and I’ve not really been that much fun to be around.

So Thursday night, I said, “Okay, I’m going to just do this and make this fun for the kids.” So last minute, I came up with a plan, got a few groceries on Friday afternoon and I made it happen. And I’m so glad I did, because I think these are the moments that my kids are going to remember. It wasn’t that hard to plan a special dinner and I had some fun discussions with the kids and you know – I just love Dr. Seuss and I love that my kids like his books too. The kids were so excited about the dinner and it just went well.

So our Dr. Seuss day actually started with the kids having a great time at school. I came up with a fun EASY hairdo for Beth – actually it came together accidentally, but it worked great and she was excited about it:

They both came home telling me about all the fun reading times, games, treats, and just fun activities that they had at school. Beth got to take her Sasha to school with her and she almost finished her book so she was thrilled. JJ got special treats and had people come read to them and they both just had a great time. So they were already excited about the day when they got home from school.

I met them with a fun after school snack – Cat in the Hat Kabobs! And yes, I saw it somewhere online and it was perfect because it was just strawberries and bananas on a stick! And the kids were delighted – Beth loves Strawberries, so she got more of them. JJ doesn’t like Strawberries, so he actually got more bananas and gave his strawberries to Beth. It’s actually kind of funny, because JJ loves the flavor of Strawberries, but he just can’t stand the texture or feel of them raw. Put them in a smoothie, a cheesecake, candy, etc. and he loves it – so its just a weird texture issue.

While they were eating their snack, we had our normal conversation about school and what was going on in their lives. They watched some tv, played on the DS, played with legos, etc.

Then for dinner, I made Green Eggs and Ham & Bacon (I just made scrambled eggs with bits of ham and bacon cooked right in – colored with food coloring) and I made a fun “Oh the Places You’ll Go” Pancake Mountain for each of them. And of course it was all drizzled in maple syrup. The kids got a huge kick out of the Pancake mountain, especially eating the teeny pancakes. Oh and we had Chocolate Milk too!

Then of course we had to watch HORTON HEARS A WHO and have our dessert – Cat in the Hat Jello Snacks! Mine didn’t turn out perfect, but they tasted good!

So, I could have done a lot more. So many fun ideas out there, but at least I did something and my kids went to bed happy! All in All – a successful night!

Life 365 | Week 52

Monday, December 20, 2010

Joey came home in the middle of the day with an amazing surprise! He received one of his company’s employee awards this year! And what did he receive – AN IPAD! And not just any iPad – the best one that they have out right now. WOW! He was so excited and I’m just so proud of him. He totally deserves it. It is so fun to see him enjoying it!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

It snowed again – and it was the best snowman-making snow – so of course we had to get out in it today! It’s fun having the kids home during the day. We made our Frosty and made snow angels and had a snowball fight and just had so much fun. Unfortunately, it got warmer later in the day, and some of the snow melted away, along with our Frosty. I was so glad we didn’t delay in getting out there and playing!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Today’s activity was to read and watch the movie of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever! So in between playing and cleaning, we read the book and before bedtime we had it done, so we got to watch the movie! It was so fun!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

We did laundry and cleaning today and the kids got to play games on Joey’s little computer. They loved it!

Friday, December 24, 2010

What an amazing day today. Joey completely surprised me this year – many times he is quite the grinch around Christmas – but this season, he has been so wonderful. I think its because as a family, we have really focused on teaching the kids the real meaning of Christmas – we have been reading scriptures every night and the kids have really responded to Jesus and the Christmas story. Joey went shopping and came home with Uncle Aaron and a whole list of fun things to do today. I did some cooking so that all I had to do was stick the potatoes in for tomorrow’s Christmas dinner and did some last minute cleaning. I also made up a batch of swirl cookies for Santa. We played games, and did puzzles, and watched movies, and read books and just spent the whole day together. We were glad to have Aaron join us. We also took the Trax up to temple square and saw the lights and the wonderful nativity scene they had there. There was such a wonderful spirit on the temple grounds and it was so fun being there on Christmas Eve. On the way home, we picked up Chinese food from our favorite place – Mings Garden – and then we came home and ate it. We opened our new pajamas and got a picture of us in them before bedtime.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

It was a fabulous Christmas! The kids had so much fun. From Santa, JJ got Buzz and Beth got a Rapunzel doll. And they also received from us – Jessie, Woody, and Bulls-eye, lots of games, movies, and other fun things and we just spent the whole day playing. The Toy Story movies have meant a lot to me and the kids so it was so fun to see Beth and JJ play with their new Toy Story characters! Joey surprised us all with the Wii Sports Resort Game and he gave me the Wii Fit Plus – which I have wanted for a long time! It was a great day!

Sunday, December 26, 2010

It’s just so much fun to have new things to play with! It was a relaxing day – just spent at church and together.