Books I read in 2012

cov	title	author	avg rating	rating	shelves	date read	date added
	Walk Two Moons	Creech, Sharon	3.91		read [edit]	Dec 20, 2012 [edit]	Dec 21, 2012
	Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship	Caldwell, Gail	3.84		read [edit]	Dec 16, 2012 [edit]	Dec 21, 2012
	Digging to America	Tyler, Anne	3.46		read [edit]	Dec 12, 2012 [edit]	Dec 21, 2012
	My Life Next Door	Fitzpatrick, Huntley *	4.12		read [edit]	Sep 2012 [edit]	Sep 25, 2012
	The Scorpio Races	Stiefvater, Maggie *	4.08		read [edit]	Sep 2012 [edit]	Sep 25, 2012
	Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness	Jurek, Scott	3.91		read [edit]	Aug 2012 [edit]	Jul 14, 2012
	The Fault in Our Stars	Green, John	4.55		read [edit]	Jul 16, 2012 [edit]	Mar 29, 2012
	Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen	McDougall, Christopher	4.31		read [edit]	Jul 12, 2012 [edit]	Jul 14, 2012
	The Night Circus	Morgenstern, Erin	3.99		read [edit]	Jul 08, 2012 [edit]	Jul 07, 2012
	An Abundance of Katherines	Green, John	3.90		read [edit]	Jun 17, 2012 [edit]	Jun 18, 2012
	Heaven Is Here: An Incredible Story of Hope, Triumph, and Everyday Joy	Nielson, Stephanie	4.23		read [edit]	Jun 2012 [edit]	Jul 23, 2012
	Pathfinder (Pathfinder, #1)	Card, Orson Scott	3.98		read [edit]	May 16, 2012 [edit]	May 16, 2012
	When You Reach Me	Stead, Rebecca	4.07		read [edit]	Apr 28, 2012 [edit]	Apr 28, 2012
	Belong to Me	Santos, Marisa de los *	3.82		read [edit]	Apr 22, 2012 [edit]	Apr 22, 2012
	Unforgettable	Ellsworth, Loretta *	3.68		read [edit]	Apr 15, 2012 [edit]	Apr 19, 2012
	Peeled	Bauer, Joan	3.57		read [edit]	Apr 02, 2012 [edit]	Apr 03, 2012
	Sundays at Tiffany's	Patterson, James *	3.62		read [edit]	Apr 2012 [edit]	Apr 03, 2012
	Crossed (Matched, #2)	Condie, Ally	3.56		read [edit]	Mar 24, 2012 [edit]	Feb 18, 2012
	Rachel & Leah	Card, Orson Scott	3.83		read [edit]	Mar 07, 2012 [edit]	Mar 14, 2012
	Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry	Skenazy, Lenore	3.93		read [edit]	Feb 25, 2012 [edit]	Jan 03, 2012
	Peace Like a River	Enger, Leif	3.93		read [edit]	Feb 22, 2012 [edit]	Feb 27, 2012
	Ender's Shadow (Shadow, #1)	Card, Orson Scott	4.23		read [edit]	Feb 10, 2012 [edit]	Feb 27, 2012
	The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3)	Turner, Megan Whalen	4.40		read [edit]	Feb 07, 2012 [edit]	Jan 13, 2012
	To Kill a Mockingbird	Lee, Harper	4.21		read [edit]	Feb 04, 2012 [edit]	Jan 03, 2012
	Out of My Mind	Draper, Sharon M.	4.34		read [edit]	Jan 31, 2012 [edit]	Jan 03, 2012
	Major Pettigrew's Last Stand	Simonson, Helen *	3.83		read [edit]	Jan 28, 2012 [edit]	Feb 01, 2012
	Red Glove (Curse Workers, #2)	Black, Holly *	4.08		read [edit]	Jan 28, 2012 [edit]	Jan 30, 2012
	Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide	Kristof, Nicholas D.	4.35		read [edit]	Jan 24, 2012 [edit]	Feb 01, 2012
	Stuart Little	White, E.B.	3.80		read [edit]	Jan 15, 2012 [edit]	Jan 16, 2012
	Room	Donoghue, Emma *	3.94		read [edit]	Jan 13, 2012 [edit]	Jan 03, 2012
	The Queen of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #2)	Turner, Megan Whalen	4.25		read [edit]	Jan 08, 2012 [edit]	Jan 13, 2012
	Little Blog on the Prairie	Bell, Cathleen Davitt	3.63		read [edit]	Jan 07, 2012 [edit]	Jan 07, 012

 

Looking back at this list, I know there were probably a few I missed (in fact, I see that I forgot “Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, which was a five star book), but things definitely slowed down in October and November, when I was always editing photos.  I am happy with my five star ratings – I still look back those books as the ones that impressed me the most and stuck with me most.  My most surprising five star book of the year was “The Scorpio Races.”  I don’t know if I could even explain why I hold it in such high regard, but the author, Maggie Stiefvater created such a strong mood and setting with her writing.

For more in depth reviews of some of these books, here is a blog post I wrote last summer for my cousin Olivia’s blog, Gnome Sweet Gnome.

So did you read any of these books?  What are some “five star” books that I HAVE to read in 2013? Please share!

It’s a new year

We had a New Year’s Eve party at my house last night.  My sister was here with her family from Missouri (staying with my parents), and my brother Levi came down from the mountains with six of his kids on Sunday and stayed with us.  Yesterday my nieces Lettie and Ruby helped me get ready for the party.  We filled up seven balloons with slips of paper stuffed inside, and wrote “6:00,” “7:00,”  “8:00”…all the way til “12:00” on each balloon. Each slip of paper had an activity written on it for that hour, and each balloon was popped at the appointed time.

6:00 – Glow-in-the-dark hide-and-seek (played upstairs with glow necklaces for everyone).  This was a huge hit and they played for almost the whole hour.

7:00 – puzzles from Dollar Tree – again, the kids did this for almost an hour

8:00 – a fire outside.  Once it was lit, most of the men were out there for the rest of the night

9:00 – Just Dance

10:00 – Board games .  I got to play a rousing game of Apples to Apples Junior with a very emotional/sleepy Gabe.

11:00 a slideshow I had quickly prepared that day with a picture from the last year of everyone present (I think I missed Roy though, and myself)

12:00 We watched the ball drop and then all of the kids fell apart at the seams by 12:30

It was such a fun night, with pizza provided by my Nana, and sooo much other junk food that we were still munching away all day today.  I think only three out of the 17 kids fell asleep early and for the most part they were so busy having fun all night long with their cousins.

I have some firm resolutions this year – very specific goals about very basic gospel principles I need to just buckle down and DO.  After a month of no blogging and feeling a nudge to return to blogging with more earnestness for a long while, I am ready to get serious about that as well.  My goal is to blog at least four times a week.  I find it hard to blog when I am need to be editing photos, but I don’t think I will have many  photos to edit in the month of January, so maybe I can get into a better habit while things are dead.

So friends and family, a totally unoriginal question for you – Have you made New Year’s resolutions?  Do you like the New Year or is it depressing for you?

Christmas Day 2012

  Around 5:45 am, I heard the boys laughing and talking in their bedroom.  Our Christmas morning rule is that you can’t come into our room until 6 am, but of course that doesn’t keep them from waking up at 4:45 or so and anxiously watching the clock and listening for their brothers to wake up too.  At about 5:58 they ventured into our room.  Carina had been nursing back to sleep, but as soon as they came in, she was ready to party.  Chad checked to “make sure Santa came” and then the kids lined up, youngest to oldest and then galloped downstairs. 

After presents from Santa, we opened the rest of the gifts and it was a good, happy morning.  All the kids were pleased with their gifts for the time being – the jealousy and Christmas let-down came later.  We were all beat by lunchtime, and everyone took a nap. 

That evening we went to my parents house for dinner with all the Charlotte Jeppsons.  We had the cousin nativity with a little program organized by Bobby and Sabina, and a piñata.  As always, it was a delicious and fun evening, and as always, I felt very blessed to be able to spend Christmas with so much of my family.

                                          

Christmas Eve 2012

We changed our Christmas Eve traditions this year.  In the past, we have always gotten pizza.  Since we have started eating vegan most of the time at home, we have noticed that every time we eat pizza (which is still at least once a month), we just don’t feel too great afterward.  We always wanted to do something as a family to focus more on Christ.  So we decided to have a bread feast and talk about how the bread represents Christ and his atonement for us.  Chad picked up three loaves of yummy bread at Panera Bread yesterday morning right around the corner from his office.  We had a couple of soups (from a mix, for maximum Mom-ease), and Chad talked about Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.  Then I talked about Christ’s love for us, we sang Our Savior’s Love, and had a nice candlelit dinner. 

After dinner we moved onto another new tradition. We have always opened up one present on Christmas Eve, but this year we made them “Secret Santa” presents.  We all drew a name of someone in our immediate family at the beginning of the month, and we became that person’s Secret Santa.  It was so much fun for Chad and me to see the kids thinking up the perfect gifts for their person.  Yesterday I had everyone fill out a survey about their person and we took turns reading the answers and tried to guess who the person was before they got to open their gift.  The survey had a lot of questions aimed at saying nice things about each other (I am a sneaky mommy), and there were smiles all around as each one was read.  Here is Colin reading his about Chad – he said so many nice things about what a fun dad and good provider Chad is.  His gift to Chad was a key chain he made with the names of everyone in the family, and some truffles.  I am SO happy with this new tradition – it was the best part of Christmas for me.  Seeing Gabe and Ollie hug sweetly after Gabe’s kind words and thoughtful presents to Ollie, and seeing Ollie think about his little sister when he chose her name…..I get a little teary when I think of it. 

After the presents we drove around to look at lights and to deliver my parents’ presents.  When we got home we opened up new pajamas and took the requisite pictures.  Notice the pink necklace Carina has on?  Oliver made that for her and she loves it.

Then it was the nativity story and bedtime!! All the kids were asleep by 8:30.

Choose the Right

Every year, all the of "Primary" children (ages 3-11) at church present a program to the congregation.  They sing songs and each have a little speaking part.  It is always a fun and touching Sunday.  This year's theme has been "Choose the Right"  so the presentation was centered what it means to make good choices and how we do it.

This year's program started off with a bang.  Ollie had the first line, and as he made his way to the podium, another little boy in his class started throwing a fit because he wanted to say his line first.  Everyone in the congregation always sincerely loves to see what will happen when you put 50+ children up there together and you could hear chuckles throughout.  The boy had to be restrained while the other kids in front of him spoke, and then he calmly stood up tall in front of the microphone and said, "I can choose to be reverent."  Laughter erupted with that line.

My second favorite (entertaining) part came later during one of the songs.  Ollie stood with his class at the front row of the raised podium area whenever it was time to sing.  By the time they were four or five songs in  he had dropped all attempts at singing and either sat there with a glazed look or smiled at me with all his might.  As they sang "The Wise Man" with hand gestures (beating a fist on a flat palm to show the wise man building his house on the rock), I gave him my best stage-mom grinned and gestured at him to do the actions.  He started mouthing the words with a huge mischievousness grin and wide eyes, then pointed to himself, pointed right at me, and made a motion like he was snapping a twig.  I laughed out loud and he beamed at me from the stage, eyebrows raised.

My favorite serious moments were hearing them sing a beautiful arrangement of "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus"  and hearing the Primary President speak of her love for the children. I loved hearing Gabe and Colin stand confidently and say their lines, so old and mature. I am so so grateful that my kids have so many wonderful and loving adults in their lives to teach them to make good choices, love their Savior, and love their neighbor.

Saturday night with the Colemans

Oliver, Carina, and Gabe are in bed. I know the little ones are fast asleep, but Gabe might possibly be laying in his bed, eyes open, with the blanket pulled up to his neck, as he does until he falls asleep. Or he may be finding a way to sneak and read the new Magic Treehouse book he bought today.

Colin is up later than usual, working with Chad to type up a project that is due next Tuesday about the North Carolina economy. We know he won't have much time on Monday because he has piano that day, so today has been get-it-done day. He is getting goofier by the minute and needs to go bed, and Chad needs/deserves a break!

They are using my laptop, so I typing this on my phone, waiting. Then I will edit photos as long as my tired eyes allow. I have three photo sessions waiting to be edited, and having that much pile-up makes me very uncomfortable.

Chaddy and I will probably catch up on some TV while I edit. Exciting times.

Chad and Colin just informed me that there are 138 "Colin Colemans" in the US. I think they officially need to get off the computer.

Election Night 2012

I took the kids with me today to vote. I didn’t want to wait ‘til Chad got home in case the lines were long, and I heard via facebook that there there were no lines around 2 pm, so I rounded them up and headed over. As soon as we got out of the van, I saw Bobby and Sabina pull up with all of their kids. It was a quick process. My kids had lots of questions to add to the many other questions they have had about voting over the last couple of weeks. Sabina was voting for the first time – she became a citizen since the last election, so I snagged a picture of her.

Now Chad and I are chugging Diet Dr. Pepper and sitting in front of the TV, bundles of nerves. I don’t think either of us have ever cared this much about an election, and I gotta tell you, I don’t like caring this much! I am supposed to be editing photos and planning preschool (for tomorrow)….I have SO much I should be doing right now, and I can’t. I think I am going to have to watch some Parks and Recreation on Netflix to get my mind off of it for awhile. Leslie Knope for President!

How about the rest of you? Are you staying up late or making yourself go to bed?

October Instagrams