Christmas Books Part 1

Last year, we started a new tradition with the boys: An advent/countdown of sorts with Christmas books. We are by far not the first family to do this - in fact, I blatantly copied it from someone else.  Copying good ideas is always a good idea! (How's that for redundant?)
Basically, Every day from December 1-24, there is a different book under the Christmas tree (or in the hallway outside of the boys' bedroom sometimes), all wrapped up and ready to open. They take turns opening, or help each other to open the book.  Then, we read it.  Simple and fun.

I like to number the books so that the Santa-type ones are evenly spaced with Nativity-type books, and the really great ones are out longer than the so-so ones. Some of them I don't mind reading every day all month, others I'm glad will be around for only a week until they get put away, if you get my drift.

Last year I bought the majority of my books in a lot on Ebay.  That was great and saved a lot of money, but I knew that some of the books would not be favorites (I was right), and so I plan on swapping out some not-favorites for a new book each year.  This year there are three new books in rotation, but next year (and the next and the next etc.) I plan on doing only one new book, until our Christmas book library is full of only the best.

So, partly for myself and partly because I think I just might be able to help somebody else choose Christmas books that they can really get excited about, I thought I would share which books we have in the pile this year and what we do or don't like about them.

December 1
Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn Beuhner
Illustrated by Mark Beuhner

This is easily one of my favorites.  There is a reason it's the first book to be opened!  The rhyming story is pleasant to read and flows smoothly, which is a big deal to me, as the primary reader in the house. The pictures are absolutely amazing. I can't get over the beautiful way that the glow of Christmas lights is portrayed.  Also, there are several hidden pictures on every page. There's a mouse, which is fairly easy to find (my 4-year-old can find it), and 3 or 4 (maybe 5?) others which are difficult for an adult.  This book is such fun!  This one is in our collection permanently.

December 2
How do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? by Jane Yolen
Illustrated by Mark Teague


This is a new one this year for us. I bought it mainly because Wyatt loves all of the other "How do Dinosaurs" books.  Some of them are better than others.  I'm afraid this one lands in the "others" category.  It's not bad, by any means, but I was disappointed in the emphasis only on what not to do (lick all the candy, take all the presents) rather than good things to do at Christmas (Maybe giving a gift to someone else would have been a good idea?)  Anyway, this one is here to stay for a while.  It might get changed out when the kids are older and not as obsessed with dinosaurs.

December 3
Jingle Bells written and illustrated by Iza Trapani

This is a cute book that can be read OR sung to the tune of Jingle Bells.  I like it because it explores the Christmas traditions of other countries in the world.  Wyatt loves that we sing the chorus.  I don't see myself ever swapping this one out.

December 4
This is the Stable by Cynthia Cotten
illustrated by Delana Bettoli

inside:
 
 This is the Stable is another one that is staying forever in our collection.  The words are beautiful and the pictures are too.  The boys love finding and pointing out all of the animals on each page. This is probably my favorite nativity book.

December 5
The Polar Express written and illustrated by Chris van Allsburg

I already know people are not going to agree with me on this. So if you know and love this book, go ahead and skip what I have to say about it. I had never read the book before I ordered it.  I had seen the movie and liked it, and I have also read and loved several other of Chris van Allsburg's books, so I thought I would love this book.
I was underwhelmed. 
The writing feels choppy to me, especially for reading aloud.  The pictures are ok, but give a very creepy vibe to the North Pole.  I am also not a big fan of the huge emphasis on the "Santa is real" theme, which is what this book is all about.  There's no mention of the joy of giving or anything else to do with the true meaning of Christmas.
We are keeping it for now because Wyatt loves trains.  It will most likely get swapped out in coming years.

December 6
The Twelve Days of Christmas illustrated by Don Daily


The pictures are cute, but the version I have of this book is teeny tiny - 3 inches tall by 2.5 inches wide.  It's fun, but I plan to swap it out for a bigger version of this book/song.  Whether the same illustrations or different ones I don't know yet.

December 7
C is for Christmas written and illustrated by Tonya Skousen Arenaz

Another new one for us this year.  It's a keeper!
The format is simple - A for this B for that, and so on - but the illustrations are AMAZING!  The boys are as mesmerized by them as I am.  My favorite is on pages 17-18, letter Q.  Coming in a close second are all of the other Nativity scenes. You'll just have to see it for yourself. 

Coming up: our Christmas books December 8-14.  Or maybe more, depending what day it is when I get around to posting again :)

Book of the Week: Heartless

 

My last post was not really much of a success.  I find that the picture is horrible when viewed on the computer.  And it's not because it was bad in the first place -- my phone has an excellent camera and it was a nice picture.  I don't think the mobile blogger is on my good list.  So to make up for that, it's been way too long since I've had a book of the week post!  This is a great one.  

 

Title: Heartless

Author: Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Published: 2010

Short Synopsis: Princess Una of the kingdom of Parumvir has been looking forward to the time when suitors will come to pay their respects to her for what seems like her whole life. She cannot wait to be swept off of her feet by a handsome, romantic prince or nobleman.  

Then the suitors start coming.  Prince Athelbald is, in her words, "Stodgy," Gervais is romantic but has hidden problems, the Duke of Shippening is old and fat . . . and so it goes.  Even though Una has been clear that she does not care for Athelbald, he keeps sticking around.  This becomes even more annoying to her when she falls in love with an unintended suitor.  

By giving her heart away, Una unwittingly unleashes a beast that has been far from the minds of her countrymen for ages.  Only one man can help to save Una, her kingdom, and her family.  And only she can allow him to do it.

Some things that I liked: This is a lovely fantasy that can be enjoyed by just about anyone.  It is clean and simple enough for a young teenager or even tween, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I consider myself to be an adult.  The thing that grabbed me the most (and this is going to make me sound like a crazy person, but here ya go) is that the story seemed very familiar to me.  Waaay back, like when I was 12ish, my sister had this epic dream that she told me one morning, and asked me to write it down while she told it.  The dream was all about a princess who met all these different possible future mates and some turned out to be rotten, others were ok, but only one was stalwart through her journeys and trials. That's the short version of the dream, anyway.  I had written it down, and actually in the past 5 years have been tying to write it into decent story.  I was shocked several times as I was reading this book because there are so many similarities between "my" story and this one.  Not to worry, there is a twist in this book that is completely different than mine (it has to do with dragons!), so I'm not all the way back to the drawing board. I would be annoyed, but the story is done so well here that it really just made me excited about it.

Another thing I loved about this book is that the characters are fun.  Una's nurse is hilarious and her brother Felix is pretty entertaining too. And I must not forget the blind cat, Monster, who is a personality all of his own.  

Some things I couldn't decide whether I liked or not: In reading all sorts of reviews and descriptions of this book, I learned that its genre is "Christian fiction." I guess it is supposed to be in the same realm as C.S. Lewis and even Tolkien.  Not trying to compare itself to the sheer epic-ness of those authors, but trying to have Christian undertones and comparisons like they do.  On the one hand, I like that. Because unlike a lot of Christian fiction, in this book there is no preaching, no "Come to God" speeches, no awkward and unnatural conversion scenes.  (Now you know how I feel about Christian fiction, haha).  In this book there are simply depictions of absolute good and absolute evil, of Christlike characters, and other themes which contain much truth if you're looking for it.  On the other hand, I don't like that this book is categorized that way because I think that description could scare some people away.  I consider myself devout and faithful Christian and sometimes I pass on books with a Christian description for the above-mentioned reasons. I think also that someone who is not even religious could read this book and love it.  But they might not even read it because of the description.

That was probably an over-long explanation.  Sorry.

Some things I didn't like:  The name Parumvir.  How exactly is that supposed to be pronounced?  Par-oom-vir? Pa-rum-vir? Pare-um-vir? I stumble over it every time it comes up. I also think that Una is overly bratty to a certain prince that she doesn't care for.  I mean, it's cool that she's immature at first because that's part of her character and part of the story, but she's just way, way rude at the beginning, which is very un-princesslike.

My Rating: 3 out of 3 stars.  Not as favorite for me as the Muirwood books, but still SO worth a read.  I just learned the other day that there are 3 more books that go along with Heartless. The series is called "Tales of Goldstone Wood," and Heartless is the first book.  So I am looking forward to reading those next.

An Experimental Post

I have become one of those bloggers. You know, the kind that don't make regular posts. I make the excuse that it has been summer, and I'm busy... but I'm not really that busy. I don't know what my problem is.
To help remedy this non-posting, I now gave the ability to blog on my phone. So today, I'm testing that out. It seems to be working pretty well so far.
I do have some books to review, but I'm definitely not going to attempt that on the phone. So look forward to that sometime soon.
Today, I will list follow up on a promise I made waaaaay back to share temple construction photos.

If you look close, you can see some supports for walls coming up! In fact, they are now tall enough that they can be seen over the fence from the far side of the road!  The big crane stands very tall over our whole area. I love that every time I see it, I think of the temple. There is a power and influence that I feel in my life and in our home that comes from the nearness of the temple, even though it is a crane and not a spire that stands there right now.

Gardening Without a Garden

I am by no means an expert of any kind on gardening, but I do like to grow things and eat them.  
The place that I live is not conducive to gardening in the normal sense of the word.  So, we had to improvise.  Last year, my husband got crafty and made this wonderful thing:

 It is really just a raised square foot garden.  6 feet long and 2 feet wide.  This year we have planted in it mostly beans (which are still coming up, as you can see), with a little patch of Bright Lights (or Rainbow) Swiss Chard on the end.  
One of the coolest things about our planter is that it is raised high enough to get the maximum amount of light available because of the fencing around our porch/patio and the direction our home faces AND it is tall enough that our barbeque grill fits underneath.  
Have I mentioned I love it?  
Last year we loved having fresh green beans basically whenever we wanted them, and enough Swiss Chard to share.
The garden doesn't end there, either.

 In pots we have some tomatoes, cilantro, strawberries, and of course some flowers just for fun.  
Admittedly, the strawberries don't produce enough to make jam or anything, but I enjoy having something that the kids get excited about.  Just a couple of weeks ago, my 16-month-old decided he really liked strawberries and picked all of them - even the green ones - and ate them.  
I love that my kids are able to learn so young about plants and soil and water and sun and that we can get good food from all those things and some work.   
This is the view from my porch swing.  It's a nice place to be!

(Notice the pile of dirt and toys there by the grill)
(Oh, and the chair.  I have to have that to be able to see and reach the whole planter.  I should probably get a stool for that, since all of the stools in my house have been claimed as potty stools).
 

Meal Planning My Way

I think it's high time I made a non-book post, lest people start thinking that all I ever do is read.  Don't worry - I've still got some great book reviews in the wings - but now is the time to talk about something else for a minute.  
(If you don't have the time or patience to read my rant, go ahead and skip to the big bold underlined part that says "This is what I ended up doing.")
Food.  We humans spend an awful lot of our lives dealing with food.  I think the stay-at-home-mom spends more time on it than most other people.  We shop for it, working to get bargain prices whenever possible, matching coupons with sales, working the case lot sales and so on.  I do this every week.  Then we prepare it, serve it, eat it, and clean up after it.  Then we do it again.  Three times a DAY, sometimes more. It does get old sometimes.  And that is an understatement.
To keep the food cycle in my life from becoming an utter drudgery, I try new recipes constantly.  There is something really exciting to me about trying new things, even if it's only slightly different from something I have tried before.  Trying new recipes all the time has also made me into a not-so-shabby cook!  Trial by error proves to be a very effective teacher.  And I'll tell you what, a few that-was-really-weird-and-not-yummy's are totally worth the eventually resulting THAT-WAS-AMAZING!!!'s.  To me, they are, anyway.  
Thank goodness I have a husband who will eat anything, but who is also very honest and will tell me whether a certain recipe was a keeper or not.  
So this all brings me to the point of my post today.  
Meal planning.  
I have never been good at it.  Growing up (and still, I'm sure), my mom was the queen of meal planning.  Meals are planned a week in advance - what meal, what recipe, what day.  Me and my siblings would joke that mom could completely mess us up if she were to make the wrong breakfast on the wrong day of the week.  Seriously. Monday Wednesday Friday - oatmeal.  Tuesday Thursday - pancakes. Saturday - waffles.  Sunday - oatmeal, with cold cereal as sort of a "dessert." For dinner, my mom works off of a list of certain recipes, rarely deviating from that list.  Some dishes we would eat at least once a month, others not quite as often.  The advantages of that include something very important: the fact that if you make the same things all the time, you always know what ingredients you need to stock up on, and you are able to have almost everything you need for almost any of your recipes at almost any given time.  (I use all the almosts, because there are always exceptions here and there).
There's nothing wrong with that.  But I guess growing up that way, that's how I thought meal planning had to work.  And try as I might, I could not think of a reasonable way to incorporate meal planning with my love for trying new things.  
For years - almost seven now, if I think about it - I have stumbled through this routine of shopping the sales (so I have lots of ingredients that were a good value, but generally don't have lots of relationship to each other) and then every day at 4 or 5 pm, scrambling to find a recipe that uses the ingredients I have on hand.  Obviously it didn't work too badly, because otherwise I wouldn't have kept it up for so long.  I have learned a lot about substituting ingredients during that time, which is an excellent skill to have.
Still, the bigger my kids get, the busier I get, and the harder it is to find time every day to figure out what exactly I'm going to make for dinner and how I'm going to get it on the table.  Around the beginning of this year, I realized it was time to change my habits.  
I went to pinterest for inspiration.  I didn't find what I was looking for.  There are a million cute meal planners out there, with cute printables and adorable ways to display it in your kitchen.  But they ALL work off of the principle that you must have a list of 30 or more recipes which you use to plan your meals with.  Tacos - Monday, spaghetti- Tuesday, pizza - Wednesday and etc.  I have to have more flexibility than that.
A really smart and efficient lady who used to be in my ward had a cool idea of keeping a list of your recipes on the inside of your pantry door, keeping all of the ingredients you need for those recipes stocked up at all times, and then you can just make whichever of those you want any night of the week, no advance planning needed.  Definitely more flexible and more my style.  But I still had the problem of - how do I put recipes I have never tried - and even ones that I don't yet know exist - on a list like that?  And then when I do use a new recipe, and don't like it, I have to cross it off the list, and then what?  The balance of the universe is fried!  The plan has failed!  Right?
I needed something which gets me organized without overwhelming me.

This is what I ended up doing:
I have two lists.
List #1 = Meals.  This is a checklist.  Every time I see a new recipe that I want to try,  or think of an old recipe I want to make again, I put in on the list.  If it's a new one, I add where the recipe was found so I can find it again.  
List #2 = Groceries.  This is a shopping list.  When I add a new recipe, I look through it to see what ingredients I do not already have in the house or will need to replace in the pantry and add them to the list.  

Every Tuesday, I take some time to sit down and go through the lists.  If I don't have seven meals on the meal list, I go through my cook books, magazines, and pinterest to get as many as I need.  

Then I update my shopping list accordingly.  

Then I compare my list with the weekly grocery store ads and add all of my pantry staples that are on sale to the list.  

Wednesdays, I go shopping.  Sometimes I can put it off until Thursday. 

Every morning (or evening, as it may be), I look at my meal list and choose something from it that will be for dinner that night, knowing that I will have the ingredients I need on hand even if it is a new recipe.  It is completely flexible, so if I want to, I can change my mind fairly late in the game. There is no monday, tuesday, wednesday on the list.  Only meals.  If I start thawing out meat for a certain recipe and a friends calls and invites us over for a barbeque, I can throw the meat in the fridge and make the same thing tomorrow without disrupting the balance of the universe. 

After I have made a recipe on the meal list, I cross it off.  

Some weeks I plan for 9 meals so that the next week, I only have to do 5.  I'm thinking about trying to do even more than that.  

If I need to buy an uncommon perishable ingredient for a recipe, I try to either use it all in one night, or use another recipe with the same ingredient that week as well.  

The ingredients that are on sale that week help me to choose recipes for the next week.  Mushrooms are on sale?  Well, I'll buy some now and then next week we'll have some kind of stir-fry one day and loaded chicken another day.  I can use recipes I already have for those dishes or find new ones.  
  
I make these lists on my phone.  I have a shopping list app for the shopping list (crazy how that works), and a simple checklist app for the meal list.  That way, they are always with me when I go grocery shopping.  Now, there is no reason that you have to do this on a phone.  They could be on the fridge, in a notebook, whatever.  But they have to be accessible and portable, and if you do have a smartphone, there's no reason to not make good use of it.

It is all flexible, and kind of spontaneous without being crazy.  I can rest my mind knowing that I'm not going to be banging my head on the pantry door tonight trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  I can stop nagging my husband (sorry hun, love you) to give me an idea of what sounds good to him.  (He always says "anything is good" which is great, but not helpful).  There is peace and order in my life, all without giving away my freedom to try new things.  It really is a major breakthrough for me.  I am having fun with my food while being organized, without conforming to the world's view (or at least the American stay-at-home-supermom-blogger-lady view) of what a menu plan should look like.  

I know that works for a lot of people.  If you are one of those people, good for you.  You get to use super cute menu plan printable thingys if you want!  I don't.  It's a personality, right brain/left brain kind of a thing, I think.  

What can I say, I'm such a rebel.

And after reading all that, you're probably just thinking, "whew, I always knew that girl has issues . . ."
But seriously.  If anything I have said here helps even one person even one little bit, then I have accomplished my goal in writing it down here.



 

Book of the Week: Les Miserables

Les Miserables is more like a book of the month.  I really am a pretty fast reader.  Most books I finish within a week, and many within 2-3 days.  I read Mockingjay in one day, and I didn't even neglect my children that day. This book is so long that it took me from March 18 to April 20 to finish it.  I have learned from the trusty (hehe) wikipedia that Les Miserables actually makes in onto the list of longest books ever written, at approximately 1321 pages and 464,450 words.  
Whew.  

Title: Les Miserables (unabridged)
Author: Victor Hugo
Published: 1862
Short Synopsis: Well, to make a very long story short, it follows the life of one Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, and details his path of redemption, which includes his saving of a young orphan girl, Cosette.  The story covers a time span from 1815 to about 1832 and includes such an intricate plot that it's impossible for me to summarize it.  
I know many people know the Story of "Les Mis" because of the Broadway musical based on the book.  I am going to now admit that I am an  uncultured swine and tell you that I have never seen the musical.  And I am only very vaguely familiar with the songs from it.  I know, I'm strange.  So, I do not know how closely the musical follows or does not follow the book, but I really want to watch it now so that I can compare.  

Some things I liked:  Technically, I liked that most of the chapters are really pretty short.  That made tackling such a long book feel not nearly so daunting.  I also feel like the French to English translation was superb.  
This is one of those books where there are several story-lines which all become intertwined and everything connects to everything else some way or another.  I really love that in books.  All of the loose ends get tied up, and I hate loose ends.
I also love in books where I am given sufficient time to really get to know the characters.  By the time I finished the book, I felt that I knew Jean Valjean so well that he could be my brother.  He is someone that you truly come to love and respect throughout the course of the story and miss when it is over.
There were several places in the book where the tenderness of the scenes and the insights brought me to tears.  That is always a good thing.

Some things I could not decide whether I liked or not:
Hugo is very passionate about Paris and France and goes into GREAT detail about its history and architecture.  On the one hand, that's cool and he is a good writer so I'm glad that is preserved for the future generations.  On the other hand, most of his details about the motherland don't feel connected to the story. Well, they do at first, but then after 5 or so chapters of descriptions and history lessons, with no references mentioned to the story at hand, it stops feeling relevant.

Some things I didn't like:  The book reads like a driver who likes to slam on the brakes abruptly and then takes a while before he starts moving again.  While the story is moving along, it is wonderful, amazing, moving, riveting.  But periodically, it halts completely while we are given a history lesson, an intense description of something, or a lecture on the author's views about something such as religion or politics.  Some of those include the complete story of the battle of Waterloo - which could be a book of its own, a diatribe about life in a convent, and the story of how the sewers in France were made.  All of these are several chapters long. While all of these things - the battle of Waterloo, life in a convent, and the sewer system in Paris - do have a place in the story, they do not play a big enough part to warrant the lengthy digressions that happen here.  That's my opinion, anyway.  I would be lying if I said I didn't skim over the history of the sewers.

My rating: 3 out of 3 stars.  (1= good, 2= better, 3=best).  Les Miserables is the kind of book that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  It is also the kind of book that I will read again, not only to catch the things that I missed the first time around, but to revisit the characters that I have come to know and love (or hate) so well over that last month.  It is definitely worth your time.  I just think it's important to know what you're getting into before you start, so that you don't get discouraged somewhere in the battlefield of Waterloo and give up.  I wholeheartedly advise skimming the non-story parts of the book if you get bored with them.  You will miss something, but nothing that will hinder your ability to understand what's going on in the story.

I guess I'd better see the musical now, huh?