Some great books

I have read so many good books lately that I wanted to keep track of some of my recent favorites.

The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein

Told from the dog's point of view, it's the story of the dog, nearing the end of his life, and his owner, a race car driver living in Seattle. They believe the Mongolian legend that a dog who has learned all he can will be reincarnated in his next life as a human. He learns many things from his owner's passion for race car driving and relates them to life. There are some depressing things that happen in this book and I'm usually too sensitive to enjoy sad stories, but this one was so very good that I have to recommend it anyway. Rated PG-13.

The Help - Kathryn Stockett
This story is about African American maids during the early 1960s.  The main character realizes that they are treated very differently from how the white people are treated, so she decides to write a book about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Very well written and thought provoking. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie!

       
Divergent - Veronica Roth
Here's the blurb: In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
Very exciting read!


Matched - Ally Condie
Is also a young adult fiction novel set in a dystopian future. Here, couples are given what they eat, put into a profession, and even matched to their future spouses by the government. The main character, against all odds, is matched to her childhood best friend, but when she views his information microchip also sees another boy's face flash on the screen for just an instant. This causes her to consider the unthinkable: rebelling against the predetermined life The Society has in store for her. LOVED IT!


        
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
This book is written as a collection of letters. The main character is a writer living in London after World War II. By chance, she receives a letter from someone who lives on Guernsey, one of the Channel islands between England and France which was under German occupation during the war. She begins to correspond with him and a group of his literary society members, falling in love with the people and the island itself. It took me awhile to get into this book, but the characters are so interesting and believable that I got sucked in to it and loved living in it's world. 


Of all these books, this is the one that I would strongly pressure everyone to read! It was so wonderful that I immediately set out to read everything by the author, who I found died before the story was even fully edited (thus the listing of two authors) :(  These characters still feel very real to me. I may have to just read it again!

Christmas Eve through New Year's

Faith came down with the stomach bug from Christian on the 23rd and by the 24th was still not up to participating in our Christmas Eve Extravaganza. Buddy chose to be a wise man this year with Alaura as Mary and Noah as Joseph.

Eric was the angel, way to rock that costume!

The kids woke up at 5:50 a.m. Christmas morning, but followed the rule and waited until 6 to get us up and start opening gifts and stockings.

Dusty got some toy mice from Santa!

The kids didn't have much to open because they both wanted an iPod Touch from Santa. We told them that they were way too expensive and the only way that could happen is if we sent all the money we were going to spend on presents to Santa Claus and all the money together would be enough. To our surprise, they both agreed to that! Well Santa surely came through:

But Tony couldn't help but overspend and get a family gift, as well--the Kinect system to go with our X-box (it reads your motion with a camera and it's like the Wii, but without using controllers) and some games for it.

After a few hours of playing with their ipods and eating a breakfast of bacon and eggs, we got ready for church.

After church we went to my mom & dad's where we were deluged with fun gifts.

Then to Braegger's for even more!!

Unfortunately, Tony started feeling sick and ended up with the stomach flu from the kids--terrible Christmas gift, by the way! We hurried home and got him to bed. While the kids played with their new stuff, I started the miniseries of Pillars of the Earth which I had recorded on our DVR a few weeks before.

Tony mostly slept through the episodes I watched that night, but the next day he really got into them and we watched all nine hours of it! It's a story, set in the 12th century, about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, England and the soap opera of what goes on in the people's lives. We really enjoyed it!

Over the next few days Tony recuperated and I helped Buddy with some of his gross experiments from the "Doctor Dreadful Food Lab" toy he'd gotten from my mom. Here we had just made gummy bugs.

Tony was all better by New Year's Eve and we went to his mom & dad's to party! It was just our family + Zach this year over there with them, but we enjoyed our Chili's ribs just the same. We played lots of games (Faith's favorite being Catch Phrase), made lots of noise, and watched the ball drop.

Happy New Year!! We're all excited to see what 2012 brings.

I wanted to include pics of our ornaments for this year. We just started a few years ago getting a new ornament each year, but because of illness and just slacking, we didn't get one before Christmas. We went through the sale stuff at WalMart on January 5th and there wasn't much left that was any good, but I kind of liked this chapel ornament and it reminded me of our miniseries, so we got it.

The kids also wanted these doggy ones for their trees in remembrance of Crumpet.

8 months out

Last Monday was my 8 month mark from my weight loss surgery so I thought I would post a progress report. I'm excited to announce--I'VE LOST A TOTAL OF 120 POUNDS!!! I finally got some sexy boots for the first time since I was a teenager :)

Weight loss has definitely slowed down, but I'm still plugging along. I started going to a personal trainer every week and have been working on toning and strength. I love that seeing her is no extra cost and provided by my surgeon's office!

Here is a month-by-month breakdown of my weight:

Make a graph

And my progress picture (click to see a larger version):

I feel amazing and have recently noticed how much better I sleep at night and how much more I can move. This is truly the best thing I have ever done for myself! I still would like to lose 25 more pounds, and then comes the real beast: maintenance. I know it will be a constant struggle, but I have amazed myself so far with my lifestyle change and never want to go back. I feel like I'm getting close to the "me" I want to be :)

December happenings

On December 3rd we went to our ward Christmas breakfast. There was hash brown breakfast casserole, bacon and sweet breads, then the kids got to decorate sugar cookies. It was fun except I had mistakenly called the event "ward Santa breakfast" for weeks, so the kids were really disappointed when the expected visitor didn't come!

We did two crafts, a Christmas train caboose at Lowes, then these snowman napkin holders at Home Depot.

Shortly after that, we had to get over to the Festival of Trees where Faith did an amazing ballroom dance performance. Afterward we enjoyed some of the activities and crafts.

The kids were starving by this point, so we drove over to Chick-fil-A for some lunch and the kids played for over an hour at the play land. We went back to the festival to finally check out some trees!

This display in honor of someone's dog they lost this year made me cry thinking about my Crumpy-Dump.

Unfortunately, after his already long day, Christian had had enough and went into meltdown. We only got to see a few of the gorgeous trees and then had to get my Buddy home.

On Dec 5 they came around the neighborhood fixing cracked sidewalks and curbing. We had several squares of our sidewalk ripped out and replaced a few days later. Christian was fascinated by the machinery and even secured several broken pieces of concrete as souvenirs (??).

On the 8th Buddy built marshmallow dudes (there is a candy cane spine in this one) and decorated them with frosting and colored sugar sprinkles. He took a whole bunch of pictures documenting his process, which is absolutely adorable!

On the 9th Ann came over with her kids for a play date. I had some sugar cookie dough waiting for the kids to roll out, cut and bake. They did such a cute job! I didn't make up any frosting, so they got creative and ate the cookies with raspberry-peach freezer jam.

That night Faith did a ballroom performance at somebody's ward Christmas party,

then we met up with Tammy and Zach at Panda Express for dinner. Afterward, Tam took the kids for a sleepover.

The next day Tony and I got to do some Christmas shopping without the kids (woo hoo!) and then picked them up late that afternoon from Tri City Nursery. They were having a holiday open house with free face painting, hot chocolate, cookies, visit with Santa,

and real reindeer.

On the11th after church we set about making rosette cookies. I had remembered making them with my Grandma Quinn and had asked her for the set of irons and recipe. They are a bit dangerous since they're deep fried, but I still let the kids help and we had some fun.

We brought some to my parents' for everyone to try, especially my grandma!

Tony had the day off on Dec. 16th, so he, Christian and I went and ate lunch with Faith at school. We got her out 20 minutes early (because they have early out on Fridays at 1:25) and went to the movies! We saw the new Muppet movie, but Buddy had fun with this display:

After the movie, we toured Ogden's Christmas Park and I nearly froze to death! It was probably not even that cold, I just get cold easier these days.

We then had dinner at a favorite that we hadn't visited in a year--Lee's Mongolian. It was amazingly delicious! The best part is that they even went back to their original egg rolls!!! Instead of being in an egg roll wrapper, they are battered and then deep fried.

On the 17th Faith had her winter ballroom dance recital at Clearfield High. Here is one number where she didn't have a partner.

She was so cute and did such a great job! I think she was especially darling with one of her partners, Kyle Lortz, who's in her school class and in our ward. My mom & dad and Tammy came, but Larry had been in the hospital for a severe intestinal virus so he and Lana missed out.

On the 18th Christian passed an exciting milestone, he lost his first tooth! He is the exact opposite of Faith, who waits until the poor thing is hanging by a tiny string and then makes her dad pull it. Christian noticed that it was loose just a few days before and was trying to pull it out himself! Tony told him that it had to loosen up more first, but if he would push it back and forth then he would lose it sooner. While our home teacher was over, Buddy finally almost got it out and had his dad pop it out! Such a handsome, toothless little guy ❤

On Dec. 22nd we invited Ann and her kids over to do a Christmas craft with us. Unfortunately, when I stopped by Michael's Craft Store on the way home from my personal training appointment, Christian thew up all over their floor while I was in line to buy googly eyes. Buddy was so upset, but even more than feeling sick or embarrassed, he was throwing a fit because I didn't get the google eyes! Luckily, his dad picked them up for us that night and we made our felt finger puppets without the fun companionship of our friends. We were glad not to share that Christmas gift of tummy flu that just kept giving with our family!

On the 23rd I baked all day and got some yumminess out to the neighbors. We had differing amounts of the goodies, so every plate was unique, but this is the sum total of what I made: wreath cookies, microwave salted caramels, reindeer peanut butter cookies, snowflake rosettes, soft ginger cookies,  fudge, sugar cookie bars, and brownie peppermint cookies. I was so proud of how everything came out! Too bad I can't eat any of the delicious junk--I just have to keep telling myself "nothing tastes as good as thin feels"...