Books Read in 2011

January

Wuthering Heights

 Saving CeeCee Honeycutt 

 Die Trying

Ella Minnow Pea

Little Bee 

Magic Study







February

Room

 Linger

Fire Study 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

 Pollyanna

On Becoming Babywise 





March

Let the Great World Spin

Rebekah 

 Gift From the Sea

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie










 The Great Gatsby

Crescendo 






April

The Lost Saint

Keeping the Moon 

Dark Life 

 Physik

 Matched

 The Maze Runner

How to Be Lost






May

From a Distance

Austenland

Fallen

City of Fallen Angels 






June

Incarceron






July

Something Borrowed

The Road






September

Sapphique






November

Drought






December

TheWeed That Strings the Hangman's Bag 

The Scorch Trials

At the Cabin

My family has instituted a new tradition of getting a cabin over New Year's Eve. It's so much fun, and something that I look forward to every year.

Unfortunately, this year, Josh's job had him on call 24/7. I was just going to go up without him, but he was able to get New Year's Eve off until 1am on New Year's Day. If I had the chance to spend it with him, I was going to!! Since I had already volunteered to do breakfast on the 31st, I headed up with the kids, bright an early, to stay for a few hours and make breakfast. I ended up having to go into Heber with my mom, (we both needed internet connections and internet at the cabin wasn't working), so I wasn't even at the actual cabin for very long. But I gotto spend some time with my mom, and Abbi stayed behind to play with her cousins.

I'm already looking forward to next year - when hopefully we can be there the whole time!!

Book #36 - The Scorch Trials

The Scorch Trials
James Dashner

Blurb: Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end. No more puzzles. No more variables. And no more running. Thomas was sure that escape meant he and the Gladers would get their lives back. But no one really knew what sort of life they were going back to.

In the Maze, life was easy. They had food, and shelter, and safety . . . until Teresa triggered the end. In the world outside the Maze, however, the end was triggered long ago.

Burned by sun flares and baked by a new, brutal climate, the earth is a wasteland. Government has disintegrated—and with it, order—and now Cranks, people covered in festering wounds and driven to murderous insanity by the infectious disease known as the Flare, roam the crumbling cities hunting for their next victim . . . and meal.

The Gladers are far from finished with running. Instead of freedom, they find themselves faced with another trial. They must cross the Scorch, the most burned-out section of the world, and arrive at a safe haven in two weeks. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.

Thomas can only wonder—does he hold the secret of freedom somewhere in his mind? Or will he forever be at the mercy of WICKED?(From Goodreads)

Opening Sentence: "She spoke to him before the world fell apart."

Length: Medium - 360 pages

Notes: I actually liked this book better than the first, and I really liked the first!!  It was really hard to put down.  Dare I say that I'm enjoying this series as much as The Hunger Games???  Can't wait for the next book!

Random quote: “No. I kind of accepted it, in a way. That saving you was worth losing what we might've had.”

Recommend: yes

Have you read this book? Share your feelings!

Christmas Eve 2011

This Christmas season has been so weird - with Josh up in Salt Lake and the kids and I with my parents. We are trying to make the best of it - I guess it will just be a Christmas to remember!!

 The day started off with tradition - breakfast at IHOP for my mom's birthday. This is one of the things I look forward to the most every Christmas Eve!!

During the day, Abbi and I made some cookies to leave for Santa. Abbi is becoming quite the cookie maker and quite the helper in the kitchen!!

That night, there was cake, ice cream and presents for my mom.  Happy, happy birthday!!

After cake and ice cream, the kids, Max and I headed up to Salt Lake. Josh was on call, so we got a hotel room (one that let us have Max, and one that had 2 beds!). By the time we got there, it was already pretty late. My mom had a little tree that she let us borrow, so we set up the tree and set out the stockings so that Santa would be able to find us. And then, of course, the kids didn't want to go to bed. Eventually, Abbi fell asleep. It was a pretty long night with Easton (which ended up with me holding him most of the night, and leaving around 5am to drive around to try to get him to sleep better.) But at least we were all together as a family!! (And hopefully we'll never have to spend Christmas in a hotel again!) :)

A Holiday Ride Down the River

Trying to get into the Christmas spirit, Tami's family, Janell's family, and Abbi, Easton and I bought tickets to go on a Christmas cruise down the Provo river.  It was cold out, and we had to wait awhile for our turn.  But we spent the time chatting and singing Christmas carols.  The boat was quite full, and we were pretty packed in there, but it was fun to have done it.  I'm not sure we'll be making this an annual Christmas activity, but it was fun to do once!!  (Pictures taken on my phone - my hands were too full of kids, and we were so packed on that boat that I'm not sure I would have even been able to get my camera out if I had brought it!)

Book #35 - The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Alan Bradley

Blurb: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths—separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads.

Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces’ crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop’s Lacey’s deadliest secrets.

Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What of the vicar’s odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there’s a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson’s assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?(From Goodreads)

Opening Sentence: "I was lying dead in the churchyard."

Length: Medium - 364 pages

Notes: 3 1/2 stars. It would have been 4 stars, but it didn't really get going until halfway through the book. I love this series, though, and will be reading the next!

Random quote: “If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.”

Recommend: yes

Have you read this book? Share your feelings!