Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Christmas Newsletter 2008

We are early for a Christmas newsletter but with our upcoming move we wanted to get our new address and phone number to you and figured we might as well include the annual newsletter.  After living in our townhouse since February 2003, we felt we needed something with a larger yard to meet the needs of our energetic little boys!  At the end of August we found a lovely detached home on a cul-de-sac in Burlington.  The purchase went very smoothly and our prayers were answered when the very first person who saw our townhouse put in an offer and bought it!  We move on October 31st.

The baby theme continued this year with little A being born in June to K’s brother D and his wife C.  Another special occasion we marked was that K’s niece R turned 13 and we blessed her with a “Bar Barakah” ceremony, celebrating her passage from childhood into adulthood.  Each family shared special memories of R and presented her with a Scripture verse.
 

DS1 turned 4 in July and continues to be a very energetic little boy.  We are homeschooling him this year and he is learning steadily.  He is very interested in reading, knows the alphabet inside out, and is already reading several sight words.  He has begun counting into the teens and seems to understand the concepts of addition and subtraction.  His creative skills are also blooming as he paints recognizable items and tries out the piano.

DS2 turns 2 on November 9th and has lots to say!  He comes across as a bit shy and is very affectionate. Homeschooling seems to be rubbing off on him as he recognizes the alphabet and tries to sing the alphabet song.

J continues in the role of Inventory Management Associate at H.D. and has done a lot of learning with the implementation of a new ordering system.  He is becoming somewhat of an expert in this area and is frequently asked for input.  He plays a key role with the boys, being home with them pretty much every night while K is at school or work.  K is now in her second year of part time studies, working on completing her Masters of Information Sciences.  In June she transferred from the Central Library to a branch and is finding that gives her more opportunity to practice her reference skills.

In July we enjoyed a visit to K’s family in another province to celebrate her cousin’s wedding.  We also billeted two international students for the 4th year.  Last year’s German student returned and was joined by a student from France.  In August we traveled to Hershey, PA for J’s cousin’s wedding and were able to meet up with the whole extended clan.  It was a true reunion, complete with souvenir t-shirts!  From there we continued on to World’s End State Park for our annual vacation with J’s family.

We are looking forward to spending Christmas and New Year’s in NJ this year as we haven’t done so since before G turned one!

Wishing you every blessing as you head into the Christmas season!


Saturday, June 28, 2008

Books I have read

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

  The ones with the asterisk are the ones I've read.

* 1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
* 3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
* 4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - just the first one
* 5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
* 6. The Bible
* 7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

* 11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - the complete works?? that's a bit much!
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
* 21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
* 22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
* 29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
* 30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
* 33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
* 34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
* 36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
* 40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
* 46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
* 48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
* 49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
* 54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
* 68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding (saw the movie)
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
* 70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
* 73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
* 75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
* 81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
* 85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
* 87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
* 89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
* 91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
* 98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
* 99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Let's see.... that's 31 out of 100.  But I've read SO many more!  According to Facebook's Books iRead, I've read 257 - lots of kids books in there though.


Posted on an old blog  Jun. 28th, 2008

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

You know you're a library geek when...

... you look at your phone number and wonder what that is in Dewey. As in, if your number begins with 286 you know you're in "Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Adventist churches"

oh the joys of procrastinating writing a research paper...

and I really want to figure out the last 4 digits but just don't have time... the suspense is going to kill me...

Posted on an old blog Apr. 1st, 2008

Friday, March 21, 2008

what would you do...

"What have you done or what do you plan on doing if you ever lose your child?"

 "we" (= dh) lost our 3 1/2 DS at our very large (warehouse sized!) church a month or so ago.  I was in the bathroom and DS1 got away from dh and when I came out we couldn't find him.  First thing I did was head to the doors to make sure he wasn't being taken away by a stranger, or leaving on his own.  Then walked all over the building, went up to the 2nd floor balcony that overlooks the main floor and looked all over.  Was in a complete panic.  Finally dh found DS1 coming out of the bathroom. DS1 had gone into the ladies' looking for me then into the mens'.  I cried and told him how upset he had made me, dh had a good talk with him.

What I have done:
- make sure DS knows our real first and last names as well as his own
- told him if he gets separated from us at church to go back to where we normally sit.
- I can usually describe what he's wearing and have a fairly recent photo in my wallet.

When my nephew (6? 7? yo) goes to birthday parties on his own my sister puts a note in his pocket with her name and phone number on it.

Posted on an old blog Mar. 21st, 2008