Random Thoughts about Books, Memories, and Families

Recently I have been reading two mystery series. Elizabeth Peter's Vicky Bliss Murder Mysteries are funny and entertaining to the last page. Her main character is an art historian who stumbles into adventures. I only have one book of this series left to read.

The other series is Ann Cleeves' Shetland series. The BBC show Shetland was based on these books.

There are 8 books and I have one left to read. 

Also, for our book group at church I have started reading Palestinian Memories by Alex Awad.

The news is full of the conflict going on in Israel/Palestine. I'm interested to know more about the people and their history.

Mom has been gone for over a year now. I am slowly giving away her things.

My brothers do not seem very interested in keeping much of anything.

I am having a hard time deciding what to keep, donate, or sell.

The junky stuff is easy to part with but there are so many memories that I feel are being lost.

Many of my friends have gone through this process. It is stressful but I don't want to make hasty decisions I will later regret. 

We spent Sunday and Monday with Joey and family.

I was struck by the thought that he has reproduced at his home many of the good times he had at mom's.

Fishing and kayaking in the lake. Croquet and badminton in the front yard.

Being three hours away from one set of grandchildren and a plane ride away from the others is limiting to me. I want to make memories like mom did. Searching for inspiration.

The croquet game was short.

We enjoyed watching Ava ride her bike and scooter, swing, and look for bugs.

The weather was perfect.

When we went inside all of us sang 'Happy Birthday' to Liam with Facetime.

What are you reading?

 

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.