My “Bookies”…

I haven’t had the time to review as many books as I’d like to, so I’m going to give some “bookie” awards to my faves from this year:

Best Fiction:  This one is a tie.  I honestly can’t decide.  So, I have two favorites for the year – The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

The Actor and the Housewife was a captivating story that pulled me in deeper than I have been sucked into a book in a long, long time.

The Help was an amazing story about the deep south in the 60’s and what life was like for both blacks and whites, as the civil rights movement progressed. 

With both books, I laughed, I cried, I rejoiced and I despaired… and not necessarily in that order.

Best Non-Fiction:  The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.  This is an amazing memoir of a woman’s upbringing that will have you saying, “no way!” Over and over and over again…  if you think your family is dysfunctional, think again. 

Best Self-Help:  ChiRunning by Danny Dreyer.  If you are an avid runner, if you struggle with injuries or pain, or if you want to be a better runner than you are, get this book.  Danny teaches a running technique that combines running with Tai Chi, in a way that reduces impact on joints/muscles and maximizes energy and efficiency.  I can’t say enough good things about this book.  Now I want the companion DVD that goes with it.

Best Juvenile Fiction:  Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke.  I haven’t read a lot of JF this year, but this was by far my favorite.  It’s a wonderful tale of dragons and other mythical creatures living in the modern world.  It is entertaining enough for the older crowd and tame enough for the younger set.  I’ve read a lot of Funke’s books, and I think this one is my favorite so far.

Best Young Adult Fiction:  The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan.  The Percy Jackson books are a family favorite right now.  Two of my kids have read them all (Megan has read the whole series 3 times, I think.)  And Ian, my non-reader is reading them, too.  For the record, I started them before the movie was even announced.  In this rare case, I don’t recommend listening to the audio versions of these books.  And I also don’t recommend waiting long periods of time in between books.  (Unless you are a Greek Mythology buff…. in that case you will have no trouble whatsoever keeping track of every character and sub-plot.)  The last book was the perfect ending to the series.  Loved it!

Best Series:  The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare.  I picked this one up after reading a review on www.blogginboutbooks.com.  I don’t know how to describe these books.  They are kinda like Twilight, kinda like Lord of the Rings, and kinda like Harry Potter.  If you enjoy fantasy, teen angst and forbidden love, and if you haven’t tired of witches, vampires and werewolves, then you will likely enjoy this series.  Megan liked them even more than I did.  The first book in the series is called City of Ashes.

Now for the worst – books I won’t be able to recommend:

Didn’t finish:  Rain of Gold  by Victor Villasenor.  This was our book club read a few months back.  I was first turned off by the lack of audio for this book.  Because I couldn’t find the audio, I had to wait for a library copy to be available, which left me with less than a week to finish this one before book club.  I didn’t finish, and I didn’t make it to book club, and within a day or two I lost interest.  This book has merit… I just wasn’t in the right mood to read it in the time allotted.  It’s a dynasty story about a Mexican-American family, written in a similar fashion as East of Eden.  I LOVED East of Eden, but about half way through this one I started to lose interest.  And honestly, I just couldn’t keep going… I don’t think it was the book, it was just me.

Biggest Disappointment:  Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins.  What more can I say about this that I haven’t already said?  I’ve griped plenty, but time to let the dust settle hasn’t lessened my disappointment any.  Maybe one day, I will go back and read them all back to back.  I still think that the epilogue in Mockingjay was the most well written chapter in the entire book.  The epilogue was the most moving.  How pathetic is that?

Wasn’t Terrible, but left me wanting more:  Artemis Fowl:  the Atlantis Complex by Eoin Colfer.  I was sucked into the Artemis Fowl vortex a few years ago, and have enjoyed his books immensely, although the last couple have had plots so complex, that I couldn’t always wrap my simple brain around the concepts. However this most recent book was a letdown.  Artemis isn’t himself in this book, and the villain ends up being a disappointment too.  The big climatic conflict in the end turns out to be so anti-climatic, that I finished the book thinking, that’s it?  Huh?

Now that I’ve wrapped up my year in reading, I plan to work on a wish list for next year’s reading.  I also need suggestions for books to read with our book club for the year, so please send any good ideas my way! 

Merry Christmas!

Hope this day has been a wonderful day to relax, enjoy family, friends and good food.  We’ve had a great day, and now I’m off to bed.  One last day of 11 a.m. church tomorrow before we switch to 9 a.m.  I need to make the most of my chances to sleep in!

Lights

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve already! 

Wednesday night we planned to go to see the Mesa Temple lights with the youth group from our local congregation.  Unfortunately, it began to rain on our way over.

In Arizona, rain usually lasts a few minutes, but as the night went on, the rain kept going, and going, and going….  It was heavy enough that I didn’t feel comfortable bringing out my camera unless I was standing under the overhang from the visitors center… but of course, 100 other people were crowded under there with me, so getting any pictures at all was pretty difficult.

It did seem like there were more lights up then in years' past, but who knows… it was raining so much we didn’t really get to walk around and enjoy them all that much.

So we headed inside the visitor center to see the Creche display, and warm up and dry off a bit. 

Here are some of my favorite nativity displays.

This one is a painting from Africa:

Japan:

I can’t remember which country this one came from, but I’m thinking it was a tropical location…. agreed?

We had planned to stop at another neighborhood with amazing light displays on our way home, but because of the rain, it would likely be 80% dark.  We’ll have to try to go back another day before New Year’s to see them. 

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Eve today… we will be baking all day, delivering goodies to friends, and going for our bike ride around the neighborhood tonight.  Thank goodness rain is OUT of the forecast.  (I wouldn’t mind getting a little bit of fog, though.)

Victory

I have never been a huge football fan.  But when our High School Football team gets to play for a state championship title, it’s a big deal.  It’s made even more awesome that the University of Phoenix stadium hosts the game!  For just $22, the three boys and I got tickets to see the football game in the Arizona Cardinal’s stadium in Glendale.  We got seats on row 15… which during a NFL game probably cost hundreds of dollars.  We could have gotten closer seats, but I let Taylor pick where he wanted to sit.  (Good thing we weren’t in Minnesota!)

  During half-time our state championship winning marching band preformed too.  We essentially had home field advantage, and so our school got tons of shout outs, including some time on ESPN!

The second half of the game was pretty intense.  We thought we would walk away with this title with very little effort, but the other team came ready to steal that championship away from us!  The last two minutes were quite the nail-biting ordeal, but we prevailed!

After Ian played flag football this year, he keeps asking me when he can try tackle.  “Never!” is what I want to say, but I’m trying to be diplomatic.  But after watching the exposure these guys get, I can see why he wants to do it.  Let’s just hope I never have to worry about it later on.

More Recipes (with photos!)

 

 

Peppermint Bark

2 c. semi sweet choc chips

2 c. white choc chips

8 candy canes, crushed

1/4 t. peppermint extract

Melt semi sweet choc in a glass bowl in microwave.  Heat for 1 minute, then stir, then heat for 30 seconds.  Stir again.  If there are still lumps, repeat heating and stirring every 30 seconds until smooth.  Add peppermint extract and spread onto a foil lined cookie sheet.  Put cookie sheet in fridge (not freezer) for 5 minutes only.  You don’t want it to completely set or the layers will separate later.

Melt white chocolate using same technique.  Spread white chocolate over semi-sweet, spreading carefully to avoid “swirling” the two layers together.  Add crushed candy canes to top of white chocolate layer and freeze.  20 minutes later, pull from freezer, remove the foil and break pieces apart from the foil side, removing foil as you work. 

 

 

Easy Cheese Enchiladas

12 corn tortillas

2 c. shredded cheese

1 small can enchilada sauce

garlic powder, onion powder

In a 9x9 baking dish, pour a small amount of sauce to coat the bottom of the pan.  Then pour a fair amount of sauce into a pie dish.  Microwave the tortillas for 30 seconds to soften them up and then dip them into the pie plate sauce.  On a paper plate, load a small amount of cheese, a shake of onion, and garlic into each tortilla.  Wrap them up and put them in the baking dish.  Pour remaining sauce and cheese over the top.  Bake at 375 for 15 minutes. 

Recipes

 

Do you ever feel like cooking a normal meal in December is impossible?  I find that when we are running from Christmas party to band concert to football games that I can’t pull together even a basic meal.

 

I wanted to share with you an awesome recipe I discovered online:

 

Root Beer Pork

2 lb. pork loin roast

1 can root beer

1/2 c. BBQ sauce

Put the pork into the crockpot, pour the can of root beer over the top and  cook on low 8-12 hours.  Shred pork, pour BBQ sauce into crockpot and stir to coat.  Serve over rice or on hoagie rolls.

 

And just because I’m feeling super generous, I’m going to share with you my best party recipe.  Whenever I need to bring an appetizer to share, this is usually what I bring.  It’s my secret weapon recipe, and people can’t stay out of them!

Grape Jelly Meatballs

1 large package of frozen meatballs

1 bottle of chili sauce

1 jar of grape jelly

Pour bottle of chili sauce into blender, add equal parts grape jelly and blend until smooth.  Put meatballs and sauce into crockpot and cook on low for 4 hours. 

My Collection

It's a well known fact that I have a lot of handmade Christmas decorations.  I have lately become obsessed with collecting handmade nativities.  The one in my blog header is made by Willow Tree, and it’s one of the few mass marketed nativities that I love, but here are the ones I have collected that can’t be bought at your local chain store.
This is the Baby Jesus for a Nativity set my grandma made for me.  She is the queen of felt, and she gave me the pieces for a nativity that go on my Christmas tree.  I usually try to get the nativity up first so I can group them all together, but this year I forgot to do that before the kids went crazy on the tree, so they are scattered, but they are all there.

This nativity I made at a Relief Society Craft night.  Michelle, I still love this one.  I’ve made many more like it to sell at craft fairs or give away as gifts. 


Eric got to go to Israel this summer for a conference.  I told him, I didn’t care what he brought home for the kids, but I wanted only one thing.  A Nativity set made in Jerusalem.  This is what he brought home.  This picture doesn’t do the detailed carving justice.  I love it!

This was a project we did this year for our Relief Society craft night.  The glass blocks have vinyl silhouettes on them of the nativity scenes and I put Christmas lights inside the blocks to backlight them.  I used a batting-like material to block the lights from being seen and diffuse the light in the blocks.  I am super happy about how they turned out!

Pretty soon I am going to be in full crazy mode trying to get everything done for Christmas before my parents come in less than two weeks.  Wowza!  But when I take a minute to sit and look at one of my nativities, I remember to slow down, breathe, and enjoy the celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  He is the reason for the season, after all. 

Butch

Over Thanksgiving Break, I was doing haircuts for all the kids.  I felt a little reckless and suggested to Brayden that we go short this time.  Like clippers-short.  To my surprise, he agreed.

Before:

 

After:

What was I thinking?  Hate is a strong word… so I won’t say I hate it, but I dislike it.  Now I remember why I grew it out in the first place.  It actually looks okay in this picture, but most days, it’s sticking up in weird places.  Part of it lays very flat against his head, and other parts stand up and fluff straight up.  I’m sure no one else notices all these things, but I see them every time I look at his head.  His hair has always grown fast, so I will have to bank on that happening again!

Puppy Love

My kids are in love with my parents dog, Charlie.  It’s hard not to fall in love with him… if you like dogs, even just  little bit, you’ll LOVE Charlie. 
On Charlie’s last night of a very long stay with us, the kids got down on the floor for a wrestling match.  He likes to lick faces, in case you couldn’t tell already!
The good news is that he will be back to stay again in just 3 weeks! 
Yay!