The Rest of Our Weekend

Larry's best friend from med school, Ben, was supposed to spend Friday night at our house so we could meet his fiance, Alex, but they missed their flight (Ben said who knew they wanted you to get to the airport at least 30 minutes before your flight). That left me with a free morning so while Larry rounded at the hospital, I went to the Scholastic Warehouse booksale with my friend Amber.


I got back just in time for Alex and Ben's arrival and we were able to visit with them for a littel while (but I forgot to take a picture!). Candice's family arrived right as Ben and Alex left. We went out to lunch and shopped a little with them and then Larry and I volunteered to baby-sit while they shopped a little more.



The find of the day was this jacket from Target that Larry has been eyeing. It was on clearance so I had to pick it up for him and Candice got one for Mark too. I think they look particularly nice with the sock monkey pajama bottoms.

What's Up Doc?

I haven't downloaded my pictures from this weekend, but I have pictures from Friday night from my friend Heather.

Heather and Rick had two other couples over for a What's Up Doc? Party. I wasn't sure what the night would entail, but knowing Rick and Heather I knew it would be creative and fun. They provided each of us with part of a costume for one of the characters Larrabee (Larry), Judy (Me), Howard (John) , Eunice (Amy), Hugh Simon (Rick), and Judge Maxwell (Heather).

I'm not sure where to begin to describe the evening so I'll borrow Heather's description:
We watched some of our favorite scenes in the movie and played games relating to each scene. Pictured below are some of the funnier moments, including the "Eunice dragging Badge-Lady competition" and "Cutting flour away from the igneous tambula rock" We celebrated at the end with "hhhot fudge sundaes" compliments of our fantastic friends.

We had so much fun, but Larry and I learned that we need to brush up on our What's Up Doc? trivia before we have a rematch with the Halls!

Old Pictures

We have big plans for the weekend, but I don't have much to mention about the rest of the week so here are some old pictures that we just developed.

Halloween (hey, I told you these are old) Larry is making a scared face because he's Icabod Crane/The Headless Horseman and I'm not sure what kind of face I'm making.

This is what Larry actually wore the to hospital on Halloween (He has scrubs on under that jacket). He wore the mustache all day and some nurses actually asked him it was real.

Thanksgiving at our house. We are all holding up little turkey finger puppets with our names on them that I made as place markers.

And this is us visiting the Ohio Caverns back in February.

Have a great weekend!

Book Reviews

I started posting my book reviews on my Children's Literature Book Club blog knowing that if any of you are interested in reading them, you can always check over there. You can get there by following this link or using the link to my book club in the column on the right. Ijust posted a new review today and a few last week.

You'll notice that it seems like I read and review things in spurts. The truth is that I'm reading all the time, but I don't review the books the I read for book club because most of the time they are books that I've already read, and the book club members are going to hear my opinion on them anyway. You can always check on the book club site to see what they are reading, and they are always good books because the host has already read books for their topic and selected their favorites to share.

This month we are focusing on multicultural books. I've already read Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt and Day of Tears by Julius Lester and I highly recommend them both (although instead of rereading Lizzie Bright, I thought I would listen to the book on tape version and so far I don't really enjoy the reader). I've heard great things about Anna's other picks for this month too.

Traditions! Traditions!

As you can probably tell from the blog, I've been thinking about family traditions. Larry and I have adopted a few of our own family traditions. We just started buying Pajama pants for each of our visitors from out of town. I started trying something new for each year of my age. We held our first annual snowflake cutting contest earlier this year (we ate a dinner of all white food, a great idea from Cat who also provided the meal, and the prize winners got some warm article of clothing like a hat or scarf).


Since I've been paying attention I've heard about some other really cool family traditions that I would like to adopt. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Every New Year's Eve my friend Rachel's family writes predictions for what will happen to each member of the family in the next year (John will propose to his girlfriend, Jane will get her first kiss, etc.) They each keep their predictions a secret. They seal them in a jar and wait to open and read them on the next New Year to see who was correct.
• At a park here in Columbus they hold a moonlight/flashlight Easter egg hunt for older kids. That would bring back some of the fun of the Easter egg hunt once kids are past believing in the Easter Bunny.
• On the last day of school, my parent's neighbor's family skips dinner and celebrates with a banana split night.
• Candice has started making a cd of her kids' favorite songs each year and keeps all of the cdÂ’s together for them in an album. It's kind of like the soundtrack to their lives.
• On birthdays another family is visited by the fairy of the age the birthday boy/girl is turning. IE if a child is turning five, the five fairy visits and leaves five $1 bills, five tubs of playdough, five cookies, and five pieces of sidewalk chalk.
• Growing up my family held an annual Family Home Evening award ceremony. Everyone dresses up and each child receives a few awards for things they did very well that year and one award for something they need to work on. Each child gets to give a thank you speech after each award. Ie, One child might get an award for showing a lot of improvement in school that year and the same child might also win the award for being the hardest to get out of bed in the morning (not that it ever happened to me or anything . . .)

I think they're all such fun, original ideas. It makes we wonder what other amazing family traditions I'm missing out on. If you can think of any to share, I'd love to hear them.

Stringham time

We decided spur of the moment to head down to Athens on Saturday afternoon to see Mark's last play at Ohio University. We had a little time to spend with the boys before the play. Grant showed off his new reading skills.

Then Grant gave me a lesson on how to play his V-Smile.

Then we headed to Ohio University to see the insect play. I wanted to try to sneak a picture, but the director sat directly behind us so I couldn't. Instead, here's a picture before hand of Candice and Larry pretending they are watching the play.


After the first scene a screen was raised to reveal seats on the stage and we moved to sit up there. There were two intermissions so here's another picture of Candice and Larry pretending to watch the play from our new viewpoint.

Candice wouldn't even let me sneak a picture of the curtain call so I didn't manage to get a picture of Mark as a nerdy man trying to catch butterflies or Mark as Mr. Cricket or Mark as a jogger who discovers a dead man.

We celebrated by bequeathing Mark with the traditional Taco John’s burrito bouquet (Oh yes, Taco JOHN’S, not Taco Juan’s. You probably won’t be surprised that their specialty is a burrito with tater-tots inside).

A Ferocious Monster

Because you deserve something a little more cheerful today, I give you Grantasaurus Rex.

Perspective

Several times in my life I have seen lonely seniors in resting homes who are never visited by their families. Most of them are so grateful for even a moment of your time, and I know I have thought several times what selfish families they must have to never visit them. Now we have become one of those families. We love Grandpa Ford, but we cannot be in Utah to take care of him right now. Grandpa Ford has been very sick, but I think he suffers the most from loneliness.

Now not seeing Larry two days at a time, doesn’t seem so bad because at least I know that he’s coming home.

I have more to look forward to than weekly or even daily phone calls. I have a husband who makes me lunch almost everyday, I have a sister who will call me to talk about the Gilmore Girls, I have friends who will listen to me talk about books for hour and hours, I have you out there reading this blog, and I have an amazing adopted family in town that are always inviting us over for fun events. Tomorrow will bring something new. So will the next month, and the next year. My life will be changed by my interaction with others and they will changed by me too. I have so much to look forward to, so much to experience.

It’s so sad to think of Granpda Ford sitting day in and day out in his empty house, living the same day over and over again. For the first time in my life, I find myself wishing that someone I know would die. Because even though I love him, that is what he wants.

Delivery

I got home yesterday to find a package waiting for me with this inside.

Sometime last week Larry emailed me out of the blue with a $50 Amazon gift certificate that he received for filling out a really extensive survey. He said it was mine to use on anything I wanted and I better start shopping (which was especially nice because he has a wish list on Amazon a mile long so he certainly could have used it himself).

I was excited to find a cheap copy of the whole collection of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theater. I watched them all over and over again with my sisters when we were little. We loved to act them out ourselves and we spent ages arguing over who got to be which character.

When it finally arrived it was like a little slice of my childhood on my doorstep. Thank you Larry! Now I can't wait for the other things that I ordered to arrive!

Texas Ranch House

Is anyone out there as obsessed with The PBS History House shows as much as I am? I liked Colonial House and I loved Frontier House so I was excited to watch the latest series Texas Ranch House. The idea behind the show is that a group of people volunteer to live for 2 1/2 months as the people during a historical time period lived.

Texas Ranch House is set in 1867. Many ranches in Texas were abandoned during the civil war and wild longhorn thrived so after the war families hired cowboys and set out to make their fortune. How often have we heard people say things like, "I couldn't have survived back then," or, "I would have loved to live back then when things were so simple." This shows gives people a chance to experience what life really would have been like.

I think the most interesting part of the show is when people start to struggle with the social constraints of their new roles. Previews show that the woman who was hired as the "Woman of all work" thought she would be doing more than just house work, when she gets to the ranch she settles into her designated role, but she gets sick of it and decides she wants to be a cowgirl. I'm not sure how they're going to deal with that. They have a lot of consultants who try to make the show historically accurate, and they throw in unexpected events that might have happened (like at the end of the last episode Native Americans took all of the horses while the ranchers were sleeping).

Anyway, I know I'm a nerd for admitting that I love this show, and I probably bored my friend Katherine to death with it last night since most of the drama is just getting started, but I can't help it; I love this show! Come on, it's reality TV minus all of the trash and it's actually educational. How can you go wrong?

Oh, did I mention that I was supposed to watch less TV this week? My friend Alicia keeps a list of a few of her favorite TV shows and that is all that she allows herself to watch. I think I need to adopt her method because I waste so much time in front of the TV watching junk I don't even care about, but I just zone out and sit there. I could be so much more productive if I would just stick to a few favorite shows. But hello, Texas Ranch House is on every night this week so I guess I'll have to start next week instead. I think I might need to order one of these stick-on quotes to keep myself inspired (Wonderful Graffiti is one of my favorite Web sites, They have such cool decorating ideas).