Widow’s Walk by Robert B. Parker

This spring I read Robert Parker’s westerns;  Appaloosa, Resolution, Brimstone and Blue Eyed Devil and very much enjoyed them but I didn’t see what else he had written until just now.
While I usually avoid murder mystery type books I was feeling brave at the library the other day and picked this up. Same sparse wording, quick reading, dry humor, manly men with brawn and guns defending dumb beautiful women, different setting- same feel.

Note this is not  a good choice for anyone looking for a great female characters!

Would I recommend it? I’m thinking he’s looking like a good overall author but I’d recommend Appaloosa before this one.

High Noon by Nora Roberts

I had previously held out on Nora Roberts. I’m not sure why, just a general distrust of following the crowd and doing what people expect of me. I have a tendency to hold off reading the popular books ’till I darn well feel like it, thank you very much. Inconsequential and silly of me,  but still true.

In any case…

The librarian gave me this one when I was searching for a book recommendation and it’s about what I expected.

Romance, mystery, suspense, hostages, exploding bodies, crazy people, shut ins, lottery winners and happy endings.

Well,  maybe I didn’t expect all of that.

Would I recommend it? Well… I wouldn’t not recommend it. Did I think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread? Not so much. Would I rather read an Evanovich book? For sure. Apparently my murder-mystery-romance book fix runs more to the humorous side.

Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich

I sat down with a piece of left over Christmas chocolate (alright two pieces) and a Diet Coke (so it was really four pieces)  to read a chapter of the new Janet Evanovich book (but one was a coconut one so you can’t count that) and before I knew it I was immersed in rude monkeys, cupcake obsessions and supernatural events.

Next thing I knew the book was done and Clara was awake.

So much for a productive nap time.

Would I recommend it? Only if you like laughing.

Traditions

Back from the long weekend of Christmas celebrations we are tucked back into our cozy house reliving the love and beauty of the season…

Sort of.

We are back, the house is still freezing cold, the laundry is sorted and piled on the floor, the hunting stuff is strewn about, the new toys (for young and old) are piled up waiting to find new homes in the morning, the children have only recently stopped yelling and requesting water, Piper is shivering on the couch under her blanket and worried we might leave her behind again at any moment, and the cat is doing her best to be on top of everything.

John is updating our yearly Christmas Book (one of the best newlywed gifts ever by the way) and I’m doing my blogging thing while a fire is trying desperately to turn our frigid house cozy.

Happily home.

Sort of.

Despite my dubious enjoyment of our homecoming we did have a great long Christmas weekend filled with traditions.

My Dads side of the family is traditional in their traditions. (Is that possible? Lets say it is.)

First we stuff forty to fifty people into one house.

They all bring food. (Can you get more traditional than that?)

There is traditional food like stuffed Vienna bread. (If this didn’t show up I’m afraid my mother would be forcibly ejected from the house until she went and made some.)

And there is not so traditional food. Aunt Jeanie always brings something interesting and new, this year she made Spanakopita. I’m not sure what it was, there was something green inside and I ate it all anyway. It was good, very good.

The next tradition is that we squish everyone into one spot, ask my very Finnish family to have patience, stand still, and do what someone else tells them to while we take a picture. (HA!)

 

Miraculously this seems to work every year. The picture taker puts up with a lot of abuse but the picture does get taken. This year cousin Jack took the picture. (He does that now, if you need a picture you should find him. If he can get this family to hold still and smile he can do anything!)

Then then evening turns into a mass of talking, eating, running kids and game playing.

Can you have a tradition of noise? There is a lot of noise.

It used to be the uncles (five of which are my Dads brothers) would play Scrabble and then another group (headed by most of the five  in-law aunts)  would find the new nosiest game ever (think Pictionary) and see how many dirty looks they could get from the serious Scrabble players.  The last few years I haven’t seen a scrabble board but the noisy games have continued. It  just goes to show, Scrabble is nice but you just can’t make a tradition out of it like you can screaming answers above the din of a noisy house… or something…

On my Moms side of the family the traditions are older a bit more reserved and to be honest, a few of them are decidedly odder.

We eat things called prick headed monkeys. They are much tastier than they sound and involve no monkeys whatsoever.

This year was the 98th year the Connell family ate a Christmas dinner around the same table. (unless it was more, but we can only say 98 years for sure)

Every year Grandpa hangs his ornament on the tree while telling the story about when he “was just this high” it broke and he fixed it with Micky Mouse bubble gum. (It’s still fixed by the way, Mickey Mouse bubble gum has some incredible staying power.)

We cook a pudding that is only mildly edible, light it on fire and than smother it in something called hard sauce to make it palatable.  In the last few years John has been leading the family in singing “Varsity” while the pudding burns.

Finally there is the making of the Christmas cookies. This actually occurs sometime before Christmas, (we are clearly too busy singing and burning things  day of) and is an EVENT. Since it is an EVENT it’s getting a posting of it’s own, stay tuned!

I offer no explanation for any of this other than it is – tradition.

Traditions, love em or hate, you just can’t have Christmas without em!

Hope your Christmases were merry and your laundry piles are small!

Little Christmas Helpers

My little Christmas helpers are sooo… umm… helpful?

Today Ivy was wrapping the present she made for Clara.  Since Ivy has never wrapped anything before I was helping her out. This in itself was sort of a dubious plan. I’m a really bad present wrapper. If you get a nice looking wrapped gift from us it came from John.  Nevertheless we were trying.  We cleared a space on the floor, pulled out the paper, tape and scissors and in a flurry of questions we got to work.  As we unrolled a brand new roll of wrapping paper, (and because if you wait until the 22nd to buy wrapping paper you can get it on sale and get the fancy kind with the squares on the back that you never otherwise would have bought) Ivy stared at all the squares rolling out before her and said:

“MOM, IT LOOKS JUST LIKE A MAP! … Now, Lets see where we live.”

Then we spent a few minutes  finding our imaginary house and all our friends and relatives imaginary houses on an imaginary map.  Ivy couldn’t understand why I was laughing and why on earth I wanted to get back to wrapping a gift when we were having so much fun with our map.

Helpful may not be precisely the word for my Christmas helpers but between Ivy’s involvement in everything, Clara’s tree un-decorating and shooting Rudolph (While I admit to disliking Rudolph it wasn’t my idea. Ivy  suggested the activity and when I questioned it I was told  “He’s a deer”. Hard to argue with such logic… ) it’s been quite a time around here!

We’ve got maps on the wrapping paper and we ate an imaginary Rudolph dinner.

Picture by Ivy!

Yup, Christmas prep. is much more interesting than it used to be, I wonder how I got along without my helpers?!

Why I Love Great Big Sea

After a crabby sort of an afternoon and evening I am positively cheerful. John is home for FIVE whole days.  He brought Makers Mark with him and we watched my new Great Big Sea DVD tonight (thank you Laura and Happy Birthday!). In case you are sadly uninformed of the wonderfulness of the band Great Big Sea, their website can be found here .

My top ten reasons I love Great Big Sea.

1) Their songs involve words like, cheese, gypsum,  and shebang.

2) They have two songs about horses falling through the ice.

3) They play the bodhran, bouzouki, fiddle, tin whistles and banjo.

4) Once I heard them sing acapella with no microphones, (the cheese song no less) awesome.

5) They make mildly inappropriate jokes thorough out their concert while bouncing, dancing and smiling.  I should know, I have seen them in concert eight times.

Should I be admitting something like that?

6) Facial expressions, it’s all about the facial expressions.

7) The drummer can also play the piano accordion and sing U2 songs

8)  Their music inspires dancing, bouncing, clapping and happiness. Despite the fact that I am so musically uninclined that I can not clap along, (pathetic but true) I love it.

9) Ivy has renamed River Driver “the food song”. My singing range is small, I can sing (OK I can try to sing, it’s not always good) some of their songs, this was her lullaby when she was a baby. She may be scarred for life, only time will tell.

Should I be admitting something like that?

10) “From the tropical island of Newfoundland” it’s Great Big Sea.  Go listen and be happy.

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Have I ever mentioned that I forgot books almost as soon as I read them? These little reviews I write, I do them immediately. Except for this one. It’s been a few days, and 3/4 of the way through my next book the details of this one are getting fuzzy already, so I’ll make it short.

Philippa Gregory is one of my new favorite authors.

Her books are excellent.

You should read them.

This one had lots of battles, traitors and people with the same name.

Would I recommend it? Yes.  Look here and here for other books I’ve read by her.

The Rest Of Life

As much as I love the Christmas season, cookies and all, it does have a tendency to push the rest of life aside.  Spending evenings making toys for the girls, writing Christmas letters, baking cookies, it’s all  part of the joy of the season (to get all sappy about it) but it really puts a crimp in the rest of life.  Who wants to sit and pay bills when there are cookies to be baked?  Take the dog for a run when there are presents to be made, ordered and wrapped? Rip out the old carpet when you could be reading Christmas books with your kids in front of the fire? A few days ago we did not move a workshop from one outbuilding to another through eight inches of snow, instead we trimmed our tree.

Through the years we have struggled where exactly to put a Christmas tree in our little house.  When the dog requires a love seat for a dog bed (you think I’m exaggerating with the “requires” but I’m not, she is unbearable without her couch) and the house is small there just isn’t a way to put up a tree without some major rearranging.  Some years we’ve put furniture out into the barn, sometimes we’ve moved things upstairs and one year  I put the tree in the kitchen and moved the kitchen table into the living room. This is something that I’m afraid fell under the “my wife is a crackpot” category in John’s mind but I thought worked out just fine.

This year we’ve tucked our little, lopsided, and very tipsy tree in the corner of the living room opposite the wood stove. Then we tied it to the wall and left all the good ornaments off.  Between Clara and the tipsiness I still fear for the ones we did hang!  It looks very cute there, and full of character.  Lots of character is what happens when you choose and cut down a tree at night with no flashlight, but I digress… This year while preparing to put up the tree I did what I’ve done with the rest of life this season, I shoved it aside. In this case the rest of life was a couch, two recliners, a stereo, the biggest speakers that ever  inhabited this size house, a sewing machine, a chest of sewing supplies, a bin of toys, a basket of magazines, a tub of Christmas lights and a partridge in a pear tree.  I actually took a picture of what my living room looked like and then decided not to post it, it was that bad.  While sometimes I have a little trouble letting the rest of life slide during the holidays I had no problem sitting in my chair looking at my tree, ignoring the mess around me and just enjoying the season for a few days.  Either that speaks of my love of the holiday or my hatred of house keeping, I’m not sure which one. It wasn’t until tonight when I got tired of “taking the long way” through the living room to get to the office door that I finally pushed and pulled and rearranged things into something a bit more practical.

Now that I can walk through my house  I’m going to enjoy my holidays and continue to ignore the rest of life waiting in the wings. There will be plenty of time afterward to come up with plans for those projects that will land me back in the “my wife is a crackpot” category.  For instance I’m thinking we’ll use sleds to move the workshop through the snow… but not until January!Christmas tree

Yum! Yum!

In the middle of lunch today Ivy stood up on her chair, opened her eyes as wide as they would go, smiled her biggest smile, and threw her arms up and down expressively as she said:

“Mom! Clara is learning to talk!!! She said: ‘Yum! Yum!’!”

The only thing better than watching Clara grow is seeing Ivy’s joy in it.

In addition to saying “yum, yum”  she and Ivy went sledding by themselves today.

They lasted about ten minutes and nobody ran into anything.

The morning was a success.

Until Clara fell and chipped her tooth, that sort of put a damper on the fun.

The last toothy grin!

The Silent Sea by Clive Cussler

I listened to this on CD starting when we headed out to Kansas.

Then I discovered that it is very difficult to find time to listen to a book that involves a lot of shooting, fighting and killing when you have little girls in the house.

So I just finished this week.

Good one liners, and humor mixed in with a lot of descriptions of crazy weapons, attack strategies and a modern day treasure hunt – I’d call it a boy book fortunately I enjoy a good boy book every now and then!

Would I recommend it? Not good enough writing that I’d straight up recommend it. Good enough plot that I do recommend it if you are looking for a good dry humor blow stuff up book.