August Books

A very good account of Andrew Johnson, congress, and the state of the U.S. during Johnson's presidency. I like the author's narrative and I learned very much. 

This "Saga of Churchill" was in my opinion not Erik Larson's best work. (In case you're wondering it would be the highly recommendable Dead Wake.) This one is good but it's long and it didn't really educated me with anything new, dealing mainly with the bombing of England and their government's process of trying to activate the Americans. I felt like Larson was going for the one liner / shock factor / oh-that's-interesting-tidbits so much that the entirety of the book fell under its weight. 

Better Churchill accounts: 

    His younger life - Candice Millard's Hero of the Empire

    The complete Churchill scene - Mary S Lovell's The Churchills: In Love and War. 

As far as better WWII accounts, there are way too many but if you're interested let me know and I'll set you up. 

A Vietnam historical fiction covering two generations (the grandma and the granddaughter, both have their stories) packed with really good information about their struggle for life, the wars and the emotions and heartaches that go with it. Well done.  

Book about the first 6 ships America built. This was rather good and held my interested way more than I thought it would. Highly recommendable.

I have to admit I read the introduction, realized it wasn't about the great Chicago fire as I originally thought, but rather a fire at a children's school and I pretty much decided not to read it. However, the intro suggested it was this fire that changed the rules and regulations for public school regarding fire safety so I pressed on. I got about a forth of the way into it and the kids were jumping out windows, fire consuming them before they could jump etc., noticed I still had about 10 hours of this, and just skipped to the epilogue. I just couldn't go through the horror of the situation. Listening to over 12 hours packed with personal experiences from witnesses about a fire that killed so many children just seemed torturous and not where I wanted my mind to focus right now. 

It was a great book giving me all the knowledge I wanted and more. I sill find myself wishing that an author could write about a president without bringing down all the other presidents around him, but in all other ways the author did quite well with this biography. Highly recommendable.  

*Also, I found this middle paragraph with Hoover's quote prophetic: 

This book on the mother of the Tudor Dynasty was rather good. She lead an incredible life: "married at 10, divorced and remarried to the king's half brother at 12, widowed and a mother at 13, then twice more widowed, a plotter, a prisoner, then mother of a king and the Tudor dynasty." Start young, right? Very interesting and recommendable book. 

This book was full of "I had no idea" history. A few years ago I was introduced to the idea that world wars truly were world wars, including places like Africa and places I didn't even know existed. This book was about what was going on in China during WWII, explaining the history of places like Shanghai, Hong Kong, and what they had anything to do with Jewish refugees. The book was very readable, highly interesting, and very informative.  

I'm not at all certain what I read. While the description on Goodreads sounded interesting, I'm not sure this book followed their description. It did talk about ends of societies and the "why's" and "do we really know what happened" etc. but it ended up on a big, uninvited lecture on the nuclear bomb and how we just shouldn't have gone there. So, not my favorite. 

Apparently from early on we were a mess. And strong personalities, biases, prejudices, and desire for self promotion is not a modern problem. It's amazing the USA has come so far and is still up and running. Good highly recommendable read. 

I really like one of Mitch Albom's fictional works (The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto) so I jumped into this one. Turns out I don't much care for his non fictional writing style. Although I wonder what that says about me considering their subject matter is usually death, love, learning to live life, etc; however I will stick to my feelings and suggest this is an okay read and while I liked learning about Chika and their struggle to fight her tumor, it was not life changing and at times felt like the author was trying to force the tears in his reader.

I don't usually throw my church books in this mix but this read more like history so I thought I'd include it. I have to admit this is not for the faint of heart. If you don't have a strong testimony of the church, this book might somewhat sway you. However, that being said, I think it's good information. I also think it's important to remember that although the gospel is perfect people are learning as we go and we can be very flawed as we go through our education process.  

I thought this was an interesting premise since I don't usually think of Washington and Franklin together. Turns out they were following much the same path and interacted together many times.  Both did much to give us the government as we now know it. I've read a few Franklin biographies but only one Washington and that was a while ago. This book made me want to read another on Washington. As far as the writing, it was mediocre at best but it's still a worthwhile read. 

3rd Grade Begins

Thanks to Covid, Rebekah's 3rd grade 2020 - 2021 school year was going to be different. Early in August the school district sent out three options.

1) back to school as usual

2) the Bridge program - designed for parents who don't feel comfortable going back yet but it's the goal

3) a complete virtual year

We chose the Bridge. It's hard. Rebekah needs to be with kids and have that social interaction. The pandemic has been really rough on her. Having said that we think even the chance of her getting sick would be worse so we'll keep her home. At least for now. 

The day before 3rd grade we had some fun talking about what it would be like and of course I went overboard with the pictures. The Bee likes filters so we did that first. 

Next I wanted a simple 3rd grade photo. I look at that face and wonder how she got so big so fast. Growing up before my eyes.... 

Here yearly back to school interview:

Then she posed by President Nelson's quote. 

That evening we had the traditional back to school blessing with the traditional back to school blessing picture.

I was feeling left out so...

The next day we were up bright and early ready for the day to begin. Rebekah took her stuffed puppy with her for moral support. 

Then everything fell apart. We had a storm that night which carried into the morning and few minutes before we were to log on to her 8:00 am meeting the power went out, which meant internet too. Her chrome book was reloading slow so I tried to get her on my computer and once I was on the meeting link it kept cycling through. Rebekah was in tears repeatedly stating: "Worst - Day - Ever...,"  Don was frantically trying to get her computer to work, I was watching the circle go round and round on my computer. Finally the storm lifted and Rebekah went outside for some air. A few minutes later my computer loaded the meeting and Rebekah's teacher was there on my screen. I holler out to Rebekah and she comes running and her school day officially begins. Ah elearning. Onward and upward! 

Cleaning Mount Rebekahmore

 Rebekah has a tendency to start a project and then put it aside in a to-do pile which eventually turns into a mountain in her dad's office. Every so often I decide this is a battle I need to fight and we go through it, decide what can be recycled, what needs to be kept, and so forth. These are the ones she wanted a picture of - for posterity - but after said picture we could recycle. 

An announcement for a sporting event

She loves gifts

And not sure what this is....

Fashion plates

Girl dancing between trees - not sure why it loaded wrong.... 

Picture frame

Nebula

Space loving girl

Friend day card:

Rainbow Christmas Tree

Basketball and hoop

House in Blue

July Books

Another good example of what historical fiction should be. This novel was about the author C. S. Lewis and his eventual wife Joy. Very well done and highly recommendable. 

Great junior fiction about the life of a refugee. Highly recommendable. 

This was a good collection of the 8 vice presidents who took over after a death / assassination a president. (I expected Ford to be part of this collection but he wasn't "accidental" with Nixon resigning.) There were many instances that made me pause and look things up the information being introduced. Some things I had read, marked, and promptly forgotten; others I didn't know. So, all in all a good book and well worth a high recommendation. 

This is pretty good junior SciFi. Magic, other worlds, transformations, etc. Sounds like there are 4 books but I'm not planning on going onward. 

I was fascinated with this book. It was an audio book but I had my phone map open most of the time as I listened. He writes about the geographical features of each major continent and how the features attributed / attribute to their culture and politics. Highly recommendable. 

Amazing! This is a collection of interviews / discussions set up by the author for members of congress to the intent that they would learn some of the nations history and therefore be better able to service the country. I could listen to some of these authors all day. Interesting, the authors I loved reading were also the authors I was completely drawn in while listening to their interview. 

I'm glad I read it but it was not an easy read. The book was very pro Eisenhower / anti anyone else which was disappointing. I tend to appreciate the information presented in a book much more when the author's politics are ambiguous. It's long and slow going but I learned a lot about Eisenhower, Cold War, early civil rights, the beginnings of the space race, relations with Korea, Vietnam, and the 50's in general. 

I had higher hopes for this work of fiction simply because it had to do with Jane Austen. Basically it's after WWII and the 5 people you see on the cover make a society to try and make a memorial to Jane Austen before all is scattered and lost. There are some good book conversations but nothing that was totally new and interesting. The backstories were only okay however the end did have the Austen flare: one couple ending like Persuasion, one like Emma, etc and so on. 

After listening to these lectures, I tend to think Professor Robert Bucholz is somewhat full of himself and possibly thinks he is hilarious. That being said, the lectures were good and I learned a lot despite the interference of the author. Much of the history was review for me but once he got past the Tudor line I was more foggy and it was nice to have the clarification. I found it interesting that in the late 1600's the king ends up sending those that were revolting against the king / government and religious persecution were sent to the American colonies therefore removing the problem, and yet 100 years later that comes back to haunt them. 

This was listed under historical fiction and it had historical moments but basically it was a romance - a clean romance, but still a romance with the theme of finding love again. It's also listed under Christian but there wasn't a whole lot of preaching except she prayed for help a lot. So, not great but not bad. Served the insomnia read purpose. 

More July

I'm pretty use to this look coming from Rebekah these days: 

However, I still get this ever so often so it seems to somewhat work out:

The other day I came across this picture. Rebekah in kindergarten, on a swim full of boys, smiling and waving like she's having a great time. 

Sleeping angel: 

Rebekah drew a picture of uncle Michael and Pepper - she's pretty accurate with those huge ears on Pepper. 

And speaking of dogs, Rebekah really wants a puppy. Really really bad. So she finally got creative. 

Taking her for a ride. 

Playing under the tree. 

Don just caught a fly. It was pretty awesome. 

One day I woke up ready to mow the lawn, but God had other plans. I was actually pretty grateful. It came down pretty hard and pretty long.

So I made a pie instead. Peach. My friend ordered peaches from Georgia from the Peach Truck. I got half a crate of peaches. And they were so good. 

We've been working on cleaning out the old to make room for the new. One of the things we came across was Rebekah's 2015 Halloween costume. I suggested it might be good for her nephew Henry. Rebekah looked sad and went to try it on one more time. She came back and said, "bad news mom, it still fits!" 

Oh, and we celebrated grammy's birthday! Angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream. 

Rebekah made a card.

We bought her a mug with a picture of Rebekah and grammy eating ice cream together. It came late so we didn't have it for the celebration. Actually I just gave it to her without remembering to take a picture. Ah well. I'll remedy that as soon as I can. 

Summer reading ended. Here's my "badges" and points. 

Here's Rebekah's:

More snack time with the Chester Bester. 

And then there was the day I noticed Rebekah's foot was HUGE! So I measured it with mine and yep, she's gaining on me. 

We made crafts with the Perler Beads. A bee for The Bee. 

Rebekah made a mask of her own. Have to admit I really like it. 

Bikes rides with dad:

Oh, and the garden! 

Crazy shaped zucchini. 

And things I made out of the garden: Caprese pizza with fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella (which is wonderful, however fresh mozzarella is not simple to store, nor does it store well. Good to know for the future.)

And my favorite (thank's to Mel's site) Piled High Zucchini Pizza. 

Utter bliss. 

Rebekah found this mini spiderman for her cousin Abby. 

And she used her money to buy her little girl a new outfit. 

I continue to enjoy the sunset. 

I have a great view. Sometimes my mind continually runs with all the scary things that might happen but it helps to sit and be quit and know that God is in charge and has my personal welfare as well as those I love who are connected to me in His hands. 

And last but not least, the other day I hugged my little girl and asked her if she would always snuggle the mama. She replied: Of course! Even if I have to look down while doing it. So, with that I picked her up (which isn't as easy as it once was), snuggled her close, and took a picture. Now that's mama talent.