Busy reading and transplanting flowers

Between sewing and reading I have been busy the last few weeks.

I bought some books by Ann Cleeves from Thriftbooks.

The two in the back were bought. The two in the front came from the public library.

My intent was to read her Vera mysteries that I have enjoyed watching on PBS.

The four books below are her Shetland mysteries which have also been made into TV shows.

These books are for young English Learners.

I volunteered to review new books for a TESOL group.

After reviewing them I gave them to a friend who teaches young ELs at a nearby school.

This week we continued digging flowers at my parents' place.

I love the irises and daisies. Martin likes the day lilies and glads.

Back home I saw this froggie in the cannas.

Hope it eats lots of bugs. 

A wren left this egg in the planter by our front door.

What was she thinking?

Here are some of the established iris in our front yard.

Not my favorite color but they are blooming like crazy.

More adventures with books to follow.

 

Memories for New Cousin

February 2nd my cousin Betty became a grandmother. Unfortunately she is not here to hug Heidi Elizabeth. 

This baby's birth reminded me of Betty's birth. I was ten years old when Betty was born. 

Her mother, my Aunt Billie, was my favorite aunt. Billie was a teacher, graduated from Millsaps, and loved playing games with my brothers and me.  I took Latin in high school because of Aunt Billie's influence. She was also one of the reasons I attended Millsaps.

Memories of my cousin Betty and her brother Bob: When my family moved to Clinton Betty and Bob's parents bought our house on Robinson Street. After a few years there they moved to Florence. Most of my memories of them were made there. They had a large pool, horses and a pony. I loved riding their horses. In summer we looked forward to swimming in their pool. It had a slide and a very deep end. 

Back to little Heidi. Today I mailed a quilt, flannel blanket, board book, and note to her in Texas. I hope to meet her one day. 

Pink and grey quilt for Heidi with a favorite little board book, a note for her baby book, and copies of photos of her father and grandmother.

Welcome to the family, Heidi Elizabeth!

 

Holiday books and such

Post about January 2021 

I wrote a whole post about books on my sewing blog.

The link is above. Wish I could just paste it over here.

Have a great day.

Passing on reading traditions

Ava and David are four. The perfect age for make-believe play.

Stuffed animals, lego figures, costumes, and dolls start their imaginations rolling.

I bought some books about mice that were favorites of mine when I was teaching kindergarten and when my brothers and I made up adventures for our little stuffed animals.

Emily Arnold McCully’s books feature a large mouse family that have everyday adventures like going on picnics and sledding in the snow.

This cookbook has recipes that correlate to books Liam has read or may read.

For baby Kenton there are two Richard Scarry favorites.

Always so funny!

Picnic was a featured book for my ESL kindergartners.

I had a video and 3D cut paper activity that helped students understand the story.

Anatole is a classic story that I remember checking out from the Livingston Library when I was in elementary school.

Set in France, Anatole helps the cheese makers improve their cheese.

Finally, two new books for Liam.

He likes graphic novels and PB&J looked silly enough for a kid who likes to laugh.

Neil Gaiman writes for all ages. Some of his books are too scary for me but this one is funny. 

It reminds me of a Roal Dahl story. Strange, funny, odd, quirky. A good read. Hope he likes it.

I have been reading some mysteries and just finished reading my first Steven King  book.

More on those later.

 

Penguin books

We are going to a penguin birthday party for Ava on Friday.

After checking with Joey I bought these Tacky the Penguin books.

I was surprised at how many Tacky books there are.

Below is the first book.

The message in all of these books is that being odd is not a bad thing.

Below are all four books we are giving Ava.

Tacky doesn't fit the mold of a good penguin.

At first his penguin friends try to distance themselves from Tacky.

 But his silly way of looking at the world saves the day every time!

Hope Ava enjoys reading about this unconventional penguin. 

Sharing a reading tradition

Recently I mailed this little book to Ava with some doll dresses I made for her. She loves princesses and princess stories. I thought she would like this book as much as I had. 

My mom rarely bought us books. We visited the library weekly and I checked out a stack of books each time we went.

I think there was a sale on Golden Books and so mom bought each of us three or four books. As you can see this one was only 25 cents but our weekly groceries were about $10. 

Below you can see my 3rd grade penmanship. I was just learning cursive. I changed schools the summer after 2nd grade and remember that I was very anxious to learn cursive. I was afraid that

I would be behind the others if they had learned it in 2nd grade since I had not.

One day I will share the other books with Liam, David, and baby boy Cate. (His name has not been chosen as I write this.) I read my special Golden Books so many times. I could probably recite them today. We forget that re-reading favorite stories is an important part of building reading ability.

I hope Ava enjoys this book as much as I did sixty plus years ago.

Share your love of books with those you love. 

Cookbooks and Fantasy

In February after the graveside service for mom we ate together with family at mom's house.

Three year old David asked who would make him cookies now.

Mom always tried to have molasses cookies for the great-grands to eat when they came to her house.

She even sent cookies when we flew to NYC to visit Liam and David.

Martin and I got together a box to mail for Liam and David's May birthdays.

I made molasses cookies to include with the lab coats, books, and other treasurers.

The cookies aren't exactly like mom made them but I hope they are a comfort to David.

After I found mom's recipe file and while we are staying safe at home, Emily suggested that we make a family recipe book to share.

I pulled recipes from mom's file, my collection of saved recipes, mom's 1949 Good Housekeeping Cookbook that has had the covered loved off, the Calvary Cookbook, and the Brownsville Baptist Cookbook. I have retyped 9 pages of favorites so far. It is a good activity to work on in spare minutes.

This week I started reading The Enchanted Forest series.

I heard about the books on a teacher's book blog.

Ordered the box of books from Thriftbooks.

The series is for middle grade readers and is a fun read.

The first book was very engaging.

Started the second book last night

and the main character that I really liked has not appeared yet.

Still a good read. I would have loved these books as a middle schooler.

Of course they were not written until I was grown.

If you like magic kingdoms, dragons, humor, and mild suspense, you would like these books.

What are you reading today?