It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve Been Reading
I didn’t read a ton last week because I was working on finishing Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing. I hope to have it done in a couple of days and then I can return back to some of the books I’ve been reading.
I took a break from Fellowship of the Ring but am anxious to get back into it this week.
I have been reading Death of a Poison Pen by M.C. Beaton. It’s a Hamish MacBeth Mystery.
Now, in some ways, I’m not sure what I think about the book because there is a lot of head hopping between characters – like how old books were written (you know, where the author tells you what everyone in the room is thinking all in the same scene) and I don’t know that I love Beaton’s writing but I’m caught up in the mystery and I can’t put the book down when I start reading. I need to know who killed the postmistress and the school’s head teacher!
I have a feeling Beaton’s writing will grow on me and I’ll read more by her. I won’t read the most recent Agatha Raisin books that they put out with her name on them, though. I picked one up and it was awful. I don’t think she wrote it at all since I think she was in her 80s when it came out and put out right before she died, actually.
She is the author of two very popular mystery series in the U.K., including Hamish Macbeth (my friend Erin says the show on BBC is nothing like the books, just a warning) and Agatha Raisin, but under her real name Marion Chesney she also wrote a ton of historical romance novels. She has also written under the names Ann Fairfax, Helen Crampton, Jennie Tremaine, and Sarah Chester.
There are 34 books in the Macbeth series and 30 in the Agatha Raisin series. There are also books related to the series and a couple were written with the help of someone named R.W. Green after she died.
Yes, I have been reading Wikipedia. Why do you ask?
The Husband is reading Victory City by Salman Rushdie.
Little Miss and I are reading The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Treasury before bed. She loves it and I don’t really but I’m reading it for her sake. They are cute little stories about parents trying to get their children to do the right thing with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s help, but they are a bit bizarre and silly too.
The Boy is reading his history textbook, and his science textbook and listening to Fellowship of the Ring.
What’s Been Occurring
Last week was a pretty relaxed week but I rambled a bit about what has been going on in my post yesterday.
Today we are recovering from a visit with Little Miss’ friends. I say recovering because they played full force yesterday – spending most of their time on the trampoline – not because it was a bad visit.
We probably won’t visit my parents because my dad is having hip pain after being adjusted by his chiropractor. He’ll have to call the chiropractor tomorrow and tell him that something was not adjusted right at all.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched An Affair to Remember for the Spring of Cary challenge Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing.
The Husband and I also watched a Poirot and a couple of Brokenwood Mysteries and a few Newhart episodes.
This week Erin and I are watching Holiday with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.
What I’m Writing
I am writing the last chapter of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing either today or tomorrow and then I will begin self-editing the book and rewriting, etc.
The Husband turned me on to Nate Smith this week and then I also listened to Warren Zeiders. Both are country artists but not the garbage we hear on the radio today, thankfully.
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
I hope to be back next week with blog posts I enjoyed this week. I didn’t take note of the ones I read this week and I am also behind on my blog reading because of homeschool and working on the book. I hope to get back on track this week. We will see how it goes.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been Reading
It took until around Chapter 9, but I finally got into Fellowship of the Ring. Or it finally picked up, whichever. I mean, I guess I liked it before then but a character I remember from the movies showed up around Chapter 9 and that’s when things started to really pick up. Now I’m moving through it much faster and would love to be able to finish it by the end of the week, but I’m not sure I will. I have enjoyed listening to it some of the time on Audible and reading it part of the time. Friday night I sat on the back porch and read a couple of chapters of it, which took quite a while since the chapters are so long.
I also started reading Death of a Poison Pen by M.C. Beaton. It’s a Hamish Macbeth Mystery and takes place in Scotland. It’s a much lighter read than Fellowship of the Ring so I’m using it to break up the old style of Tolkien’s writing but I will probably focus on FOTR this week because I do want to know what happens. Yes, I did watch the movie but I sort of glazed over after hour two and got a bit lost. I’d rather read it.
I finally gave up on Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery. It was terribly depressing and I once heard a reader say life was too short to read a book you don’t enjoy so I finally put it back on the shelf. I’ll try some of the other books in the series at another time.
Little Miss and I are reading On The Other Side of the Hill by Roger Lea MacBride. Some nights we are reading The Miss Piggle Wiggle Treasury.
The Boy is reading Fellowship of the Ring.
The Husband was on vacation this week and even with taking kids to appointments, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, and helping to take care of a sick dog he managed to read six books and start a seventh.
The books he read:
The Infernals by John Connelly
Out of Range by CJ Box
The Scared Stiff by Donald Westlake
Bye-Bye, Baby by Ace Atkins
Number One is Walking by Steve Martin
Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron
The one he is reading now: Don’t Ask by Donald Westlake
What’s Been Occurring
I wrote yesterday about our drama last week with Zooma the Wonder Dog. You can read about it in this post.
You can also see some of our photos from the week there but I will share a few here too.
What We watched/are Watching
Little Miss and I found two other Mary Berry series on Tubi on the Roku this week so we watched those episodes throughout the week.
I watched My Favorite Wife for my Spring of Cary feature with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and decided it was not my favorite Cary movie.
An Affair to Remember is up for this week.
The Husband and I watched Oceans 11 this week. The original with the Rat Pack etc. That was some ending. Whew.
We also watched a super creepy episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Dick York from Bewitched. Yikes. He was a very good actor and very underrated.
We also started Carefree with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but both had to head to bed for some sleep so we will finish it later.
I also watched a few art videos and a couple of YouTubers this week but had to take a break from the YouTubers as some of them grate on me because after a bit they all start to sound the same. They talk about the same books and wear the same clothes and skip in the same fields and it is starting to get a bit weird. I’m sure I’ll still watch a few of them, including Forgotten Way Farms, which is different from all the other “Young Woman Reading Cottage Core Style Books and Filming Herself Wearing Old Clothes and Skipping through A Field of Flowers.”
What I’m Writing
I worked on finishing Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing every day this last week and hope to have it finished this upcoming week. You can pre-order it here:
It is coming out July 18th now instead of June 20th.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been reading
I am still reading Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie because I worked on my book a lot last week instead of reading it. I hope to finish the book this week.
I am also reading Meant to Bee by Storm Shultz, a short romance novel. I plan to have that finished today.
The Boy and I are reading Fellowship of the Ring and we are not reading it as quickly as I think we should so this week I am telling him we need to set aside an hour a day for each of us just to finish it. Not an hour straight but maybe half an hour here and half an hour there. I hope to finish this book before the end of the school year, which will be June 3 for us.
Little Miss and I have been slow readers lately but I really would like to finish The Place of the Big Read Apples by Roger Lea MacBride this week and move on to something else.
What’s Been Occurring
I wrote about what we did last week in yesterday’s post. I mentioned that our temperature was close to 70 yesterday and was going to drop into the 30s overnight and it did, sadly. Yesterday we went outside without coats and today I woke up to snow on the ground. This week is supposed to warm up some, but not yet too close to 70.
This coming week the kids have classes – gymnastics for Little Miss and bass lessons for The Boy.
Little Miss usually has gymnastics on Saturdays but this past week she had an Easter egg hunt instead so we are making up her class tomorrow.
The bass lesson will be The Boy’s first and it’s about a 45-minute drive north so I am enlisting the help of my dad to take either Little Miss to her class or The Boy to his.
What’s planned for your week this week?
What We watched/are Watching
I was so excited this week when my friend Erin from Still Life, With Cookie Crumbs, told me she was watching a Youtuber I like. I was excited because I had lost this YouTuber in my list of subscriptions and it was driving me crazy! Little Miss sometimes watches kids’ shows on YouTube and she will subscribe to anything she watches so I had hundreds of subscriptions, many of which I did not want, and I could not find Forgotten Way Farms or remember it’s name! When Erin reminded me of the name I was so happy. Why was I happy? Well, because my life is a little sad and sometimes I enjoy an escape in videos that are fairly light, mundane, and calming.
This vlogger records her everyday life and cooks and has a very soothing voice, so I enjoy watching her. I am fairly certain I shared her on the blog before but when I went back to find the video I had shared to remind me of her channel name, I couldn’t find it.
Now that I found it again, I have the notifications set that it will tell me every time she posts.
This week I also watched Darling Desi who has now moved from Utah to Connecticut but still vlogs about cottage core-type stuff and fluffy books she reads.
The Husband and I didn’t have as much time to watch things this week but we did watch the final episode of the first season of Miss Scarlet and The Duke. We are behind because there are three seasons of the show.
We also watched Yes, Ministerwhich is a British sitcom from the 1970s and is very witty and funny. Sometimes it is too witty because I don’t even get it. It’s sort of an elite comedy with references to politics that go right over my head at times.
The man who stars in Yes, Minister played the vicar in a Miss Marple episode I watched once and started to rewatch recently. Luckily, I didn’t watch the end of it because it is now the book I am reading and I’m not sure if the show will keep to the book or not. The issue is that now when I think of the vicar, who is the narrator of the book, I picture and hear the actor from Yes, Minister.
This week I’ll be watching Houseboat with Cary Grant for my Spring of Cary feature and will write about it on Thursday. Go ahead and jump in if you want to.
What I’m Writing
I’ve been mentioning that I have been working on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, which I hope to release June 20th. This will be the first book in a new cozy mystery series.
I worked on the book a lot this past week, which gave me less time to write blog posts.
I have started to offer paid subscriptions to my newsletter and I will be offering the chapters for this book as I write them to paid subscribers on Substack.
However, I will be setting up subscriptions for longtime readers of my blogs that allows them access to this feature for free. If you are someone who has been following me for a long time and would like a sneak peek of this first book, send me your email through my contact form and I will add you to that exclusive subscriber group. I’ll start offering the chapters later this week.
I only wrote two blog posts this past week on the blog:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I’ve pulled out the mugs and the electric kettle and the new jar of honey for you! I also have a couple different teas to choose from – peppermint, cinnamon, elderberry, peach, and a lemon chamomile mix. I also have a sleepy-time tea but it’s the afternoon so I would hold off on that until this evening.
Which tea can I get you?
And can I offer you one of the cupcakes Little Miss made with her grandparents yesterday? They’re unicorn colored so lots of pink and light blue and some purple inside.
What kind of snacks do you like on a Saturday afternoon while you are reading or relaxing (if you’re able to do that)?
I like to munch on dried cherries from Aldi and sometimes I pour milk over frozen blueberries. The milk crystalizes around the blueberries making a cold, sweet treat. This snack isn’t the best thing to have when it is cold out, but I still eat it when it is cold.
So, how was your week? Ours wasn’t super busy until Friday, thankfully. Part of that was because Little Miss was recovering from her sinuses trying to adjust to the weather change. We thought it was a cold last Saturday but based on the fact none of us got it (and I get everything she gets) and she has this reaction to the weather change at least once every year, if not twice (since Pennsylvania likes to toy with us and have it be warm for a couple days, then cold, then warm, then cold and … you get the idea), we are now pretty certain it was because of the weather.
On Friday, The Husband and I had a date afternoon. We visited a library near us that was having a huge book sale, attended a groundbreaking The Husband had to take a photo for his job as a small town newspaper reporter, and then had lunch at a cute little restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
I didn’t find as many books as I hoped I would at the sale, but I did find a few classics I had been wanting to read.
I was most excited to find Little Women because I have been determined to actually read it this year. I also picked up A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park by Jane, and A Red Badge of Courage. For the non-classics, I picked up the Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers and a Hamish Macbeth Mystery.
The restaurant was very small and cozy featuring rustic décor.
I kept taking photographs of the walls and set up. The food was delicious and delivered on simple paper plates, which I’m sure saves them a lot of money.
After we left there The Husband showed me the outside of the little village’s tiny library but didn’t let me go in. I think he figured we have enough books right now. Next to the library are the cutest little houses that were built for seniors. I don’t know what has happened to me but when I saw the library I said, “Oh! It’s so cute!” And then when I saw the little houses I said “Oh! They are so cute!”
I looked at The Husband and said, “Good grief! What has happened to me? Why do I keep saying things are so cute?”
But, well, they were cute. So there.
No April Fool’s jokes here. Spring is indeed taking its time to get to Pennsylvania and I am a bit impatient. We haven’t had much more snow but the other night we had snow squalls and freezing temps, it rained all day yesterday, and today it is supposed to get up to 68 and then drop fast to 27 after thunderstorms! It’s nuts but this is Pennsylvania weather, I guess.
I am writing this with our windows open to soak up the warmth and sun before it all goes to Hades in a handbasket around the time my son goes downtown for his job, which is only a couple of days a week for three hours a day right now. He was so excited to get the job, though. He went around town a few months ago putting in applications but not receiving any calls back.
He received a call last week from the owner of a local deli/diner/restaurant, asking if he would like to work part-time as a dishwasher.
Our town is super, super small if I haven’t told you before. The census says there are 600 people in our town, but I question if it is even that many. I guess there could be since we have a large apartment building in town. That small size means there are only about nine businesses in town and part of them do not hire anyone under the age of 18.
The Boy doesn’t have his license yet, but he is studying for his permit.
The Husband took Little Miss to an Easter egg hunt today. It was funny because the weather forecast said it would be very rainy and windy today as storms move into the area. About two hours before the egg hunt was supposed to start, though, the sky opened up and it became a beautiful sunny day with hardly any clouds at all. It looks like the sun is going to stay out until after the hunt is all over, which is good for the little community that holds it because The Husband says they go all out and put a huge effort into the hunt, even offering other activities afterward.
Little Miss’s friends live near the little town it is being held in so she will be able to see them. (As I write this I have received a text from The Husband and apparently one of the friends is coming home with her. I’m guessing The Husband caved into that request because he had a bad night of sleep last night and is delirious.)
As we look ahead to spring maybe, someday, possibly coming to Pennsylvania, Little Miss and I have already decided we want to try our hand at a garden again this year. Wish us luck because she and I both often get excited about such things in the beginning and then lose interest as the months go on.
As I wind down here, I thought I’d mention how I’ve been feeling a little guilty lately about that rant I had on here about dentists a few weeks back. I know dentists can be good people – but then why aren’t they? *cymbal clang* I’m kidding, of course. That last part just popped into my head, and I had to write it down even though I really know there are good dentists. I’ve just had some bad experiences and that’s tainted my view more than a bit.
Tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends I will share what I’ve been reading and about some ideas I have for my newsletter (there will be a new feature I’m going to offer, but am a bit afraid to do so), and also about some Youtube channels I am watching and what else I watched during the week.
Let me know what snacks you are enjoying this fine Saturday and what tea you are drinking – or whatever other beverage. I’m sure we will all be drinking cooler beverages as the weather warms up soon. I mean, if that little rodent in Punxsy ever stops holding spring hostage!
If you are a regular on this blog, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as many blog posts as I sometimes do.
Part of that has been due to a lot of stress in my life, but part of the reason for me writing less blog posts is that I am working on a new book series.
This series will be a cozy mystery series called The Gladwyn Grant Mysteries.
The first book in the series is called Gladwyn Grant Gets Her Footing.
I’ll tell you more about Gladwyn in the coming weeks but for now, I do have a description:
After being laid off from her job as a librarian at a small college, Gladwynn Grant isn’t sure what her next step in life is. When a job as a small-town newspaper reporter opens up in the town her grandmother Lucinda Grant lives in, she decides to take it to get away from a lot of things – Bennett for one.
Lucinda has been living alone since Gladwynn’s grandfather passed away six years ago and she isn’t a take-it-easy, rock-on-your-front-porch kind of grandma. She’s always on the go and lately, she’s been on the go with a man who Gladwynn doesn’t know.
Gladwynn thought Brookville was a small, quiet town, but within a few days of being there, she has to rethink that notion. Someone has cut the bank loan officer’s brakes, threatening letters are being sent, and memories of a bank robbery from the 1970s have everyone looking at the cold case again.
And what, if anything, will Gladwynn uncover about her new hometown and her grandmother’s new male friend?
Find out in Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, the first in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.
Here is the planned cover:
I have not yet decided if I will share this story as a serial on the blog or not. I’ll let you know in the future if that is going to happen. For now I have set the tentative release date as June 20th.
I had hoped to release the first three books in the series about four months apart, but I’m not sure that will happen since I am also working on some other projects. The Gladwynn books will be shorter than my previous books. They will be clean, but not strictly Christian fiction. There will be a Christian overtone here and there since Gladwynn’s late grandfather was a Methodist minister.
A Biblical fiction story I am also working on will, of course, be Christian Fiction. I do not have a release date for that one.
If I didn’t have enough going on, I am also writing a book that will come out in August of 2024 and is entitled Cassie. It will also be in the Christian Fiction genre.
I am very excited for Cassie since it will be part of a multi-author project called The Apron Strings Book Series and it will follow twelve women and a recipe book that connects them all. Each book will focus on a different woman from a different era from 1920 to 2020.
My decade is the 1990s and my character, whose stage name is Cassie Starr, is a popstar who has hit her 30s and isn’t as popular as she once was. With no jobs coming her way and her record label dropping her, she heads up at the behest of her sister to help their mom with the family farm to table restaurant. While there Cassie will find out her mom’s health is not as good as she thought it was, that her feelings toward her father isn’t as resolved as she thought and that the owner of the local vegetable farm that supplies her mom’s business with food isn’t as annoying as she once thought.
I have not forgotten that I still have a fifth book I have promised and want to write to close out The Spencer Valley Chronicles and I will get there at some point. The final book will be the story of Alex Stone and his relationship with his father, as well as his continuing relationship with Molly Tanner. It doesn’t have a title yet.
So that is my writing update for now. I’m sure it will change in regard to timing and titles, etc. as the months go on.
Do any of the projects sound interesting to you? Let me know which one you are looking forward to.
My blog is mainly for rambling (hence the title Boondock Ramblings) and not for promoting myself, but I decided to share today that all three books in the Spencer Valley Chronicles are on Kindle Unlimited or are available for purchase on Amazon (in ebook and paperback form).
Also, Shores of Mercy will be on sale on January 31, but you can pre-order it today, HERE for $1.99. Read below for descriptions of each book.
In addition, I am developing some paperback journals to sell and you can find links to them below:
Upcoming will be a quote journal and a praise and prayer journal. I’m really having a lot of fun designing these.
If you have not read my fiction books or know what they are about, here are the descriptions of each of them and a link to them:
A Story to Tell
Can she find a new life of her own, without losing all that she already has?
Blanche Robbins is 17 in 1957 and feels like her life is going nowhere. It’s certainly nothing like the exciting lives of the characters in the books she reads.
When Hank Hakes begins paying attention to her and asks her to run away with him, she sees the offer as a ticket to a new, more exciting life away from her rural upbringing.
The decision sets into motion a life Blanche never expected or wanted.
Can Blanche open her heart again after it failed her once before?
Five years later Blanche Robbins could still vividly remember the moment she broke Hank Hakes’ nose with her foot after he broke hers’ with his fist. She could still hear the sick crunch of bones under her heel and still clearly see in her mind his glazed eyes before they closed.
Blanche knew if she didn’t remember how Hank had beat her, she might let her walls down, leaving her son and her vulnerable again. She wasn’t about to let that happen. That’s why she didn’t like the idea that her best friend might be trying to set her up with J.T. Wainwright. Blanche wasn’t about to let anyone break down the walls she had built around her life and heart, walls to protect her — but more importantly – her son.
Two books in one. The story of a young girl and her tumultuous journey into adulthood. A journey mixed with heartache, hard lessons, but also faith and joy.
A Story to Tell
Blanche Robbins is 17 in 1957 and feels like her life is going nowhere. It’s certainly nothing like the exciting lives of the characters in the books she reads.
When Hank Hakes begins paying attention to her and asks her to run away with him, she sees the offer as a ticket to a new, more exciting life away from her rural upbringing.
The decision sets into motion a life Blanche never expected or wanted.
A New Beginning
Blanche doesn’t know how to let down the walls she built up during the mistakes of her past. As she forges a new life and looks back on heartache, now with her son, she bristles when her best friend, Emmy, suggests Blanche meet Emmy’s cousin J.T. Wainwright.
She isn’t interested in a romantic relationship, not after her last experience. She built walls around her heart for a reason. To protect herself and, more importantly, her son.
Will the desire to change their lives bring two people together and will the Tanner family be able to save their family farm?
Molly Tanner thought she’d be further in life by now, but, no. At the age of 26, still living on her parent’s dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania, wondering if there is a life for her somewhere other than little Spencer Valley. While wondering, though, her family faces financial struggles, her best friend falls into a deep depression, and her brother’s best friend starts acting weird around her. Weird as in — is attractive Alex Stone flirting with her?
Alex has his own challenges to face, mainly facing past demons that make him feel like he’s not worthy of the love the Tanner family has already shown him, let alone the love of the woman he’s fallen for while working side-by-side with her in the barn each day.
Can she forgive him for what he can’t forget? The last year has been a whirlwind of trials and triumphs for the Tanner family.
With injuries, near foreclosures, and a family tragedy behind them, Jason Tanner, the oldest of the Tanner children is facing his own struggle after his longtime girlfriend, Ellie Lambert, overhears the secret he’d planned to tell her himself. Now, in addition to trying to keep his family’s dairy farm sustainable during a hard economic season, Jason is dealing with the heartbreak of Ellie’s decision to end an almost 10-year relationship.
In an effort to bury his feelings, he throws himself into his work on the farm and into volunteering with Spencer Valley’s small volunteer fire company, where tragedy strikes the foundation of his faith during an already vulnerable time.
Ellie has her own challenges to face as she tries to navigate a time of life where her expectations have been turned upside down and shaken out. As she copes with the decision to walk away from her relationship with the man she saw as her best friend, her flighty, less responsible younger sister shows up to further complicate an already complicated situation.
Can two women figure out their chaotic, confusing lives together? And how will the men in their lives fit in their journey?
Liz Cranmer feels trapped in a prison of shame. Now a single mother at 27 she feels like the whole town, especially her church-going parents, view her as a trashy woman with no morals. That’s not how she used to think of herself but — could they be right? And if they think that, then what does God think of her?
Ginny Jefferies, 53, has hit a few snags of her own in life. Her husband, Stan, barely acknowledges her, her job as the town’s library director has become mundane and stagnant, and her youngest daughter is having some kind of identity crisis. Pile on the return of a former boyfriend and you have the makings of a potential midlife crisis.
There was a time in Ben Oliver’s life when his career was more important than anything — including his girlfriend, Angie, who he walked away from when she told him she was pregnant. Even before that night, he’d been drinking too much, but after that night, the drinking got worse.
That was four years ago. Now he’s sober and opened a law office half an hour from where he grew up. He’s stayed away from Angie and the little girl he never met because he believes their life will be better without him, but when her family moves back to the area and her parents ask him to be involved in his little girl’s life, his past catches up with him.
Judi Lambert has battled her own demons and is now fighting for her sobriety. She wants to kick her party-girl lifestyle to the curb and she’s well on her way. Not far into the journey to get her life back on track, though, she’s forced to relive a traumatic experience with a man she’d once thought was simply her ticket to a good time.
When Judi and Ben’s worlds collide, can they work together to get their lives back on track? And can Judi work to help Ben get Angie and his daughter back again?
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What’s Been Occurring
I’m starting a new feature on Saturdays where I’ll ramble more about what’s been going on generally in my life. You can find this week’s HERE.
In that post I rambled about the snow we received this week, the snow we might get this week, and some other fairly innoculous stuff.
Here are a couple extra snow photos that I didn’t share yesterday. The kids went out (at my urging) to sled since there was a fine layer of ice on top of the snow. The result was a couple of injuries so it might not have been my best suggestion. The sled was very hard to stop. Oops.
What I/we’ve been Reading
In yesterday’s post, I ranted a bit about the book Little Miss picked out for me a week ago during the local library book sale. She picked it off the shelf so at least I don’t own the book now. I really thought the book was going to be a good one and for the first several chapters I had a hard time putting it down. Eventually, it became a bit wandering and tedious, though, and then, out of the blue, in the 21st chapter of a 23-chapter book, the author dropped two fairly minor swear words and then the big one. Fudge, but not fudge, as the narrator says in A Christmas Story.
It was so bizarre. I mean I was happily skipping along, though getting a little disturbed by the darkness the book was starting to throw at me, and then boom! The bad guy dropped the word and it was just completely out of place. It was like serving vegan food at a biker bar, or biting into a piece of chocolate, swallowing it, and finding half a worm. I told a friend it was like reading a sweet Miss Marple book and then all a sudden she just turned around and said, “Well, f-it, I’m over this sweet stuff,” and walked off the page and out of the book. Okay, I didn’t exactly say that to my friend, I added a bit more for this post, but it was close.
Needless to say, I will not be reading any more books by Leslie Maier. I don’t need any more nasty surprises.
This week I am back to Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon (and hopefully spelling Shepherds right since I have been spelling that three ways lately thanks to writing too much lately and burning out my brain – or because I’m stupid. One or the other.). I actually never left Shepherds Abiding, as I have been reading a chapter here or there for the last couple of weeks to drag the book out for my enjoyment.
I had a bit of a breakdown this week when Little Miss had a cup full of water on our table for her art project and I knocked it over and it spilled down the table and onto my hardcover copy of Shepherds Abiding, crinkling many of the pages in the process. At first, I was upset at Little Miss, but quickly realized I’m the adult who one, allowed her to have the water on the table and two, had left my copy of the book on the floor. Why was it on the floor? I can’t remember, honestly, but I think it was because I was doing schoolwork with her and laid it down and – who even knows. I do stuff like this all the time.
So the book is a bit beat up, but I can still read it. I also have it on Kindle, but for Christmas, I like to read actual books because I am a book snob at times.
If you have never read Shepherd’s Abiding, it is the eighth book in the Mitford Series, and here is a brief description:
Millions of Americans have found Mitford to be a favorite home-away-from-home, and countless readers have long wondered what Christmas in Mitford would be like. The eighth Mitford novel provides a glimpse, offering a meditation on the best of all presents: the gift of one’s heart.
Since he was a boy, Father Tim has lived what he calls “the life of the mind” and has never really learned to savor the work of his hands. When he finds a derelict nativity scene that has suffered the indignities of time and neglect, he imagines the excitement in the eyes of his wife, Cynthia, and decides to undertake the daunting task of restoring it. As Father Tim begins his journey, readers are given a seat at Mitford’s holiday table and treated to a magical tale about the true Christmas spirit.
I hope to listen to The Mistletoe Countess by Pepper Basham this week, as I stole The Husband’s Audible credit to buy it. We have Audible for a few months, but may have to get rid of it in February because everyone keeps raising their prices and it’s getting to be a bit much.
Little Miss and I read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson this week and absolutely loved it. This is a book that was read to me when I was in elementary school and has stuck with me all these years, even though I only had it read to me that one time. This year while looking for Christmas book ideas for Little Miss, I spotted it on a list of suggestions and had planned to order it on Amazon. Then, in an effort to conserve money for Christmas, I delayed order it. I was so excited, however, when I went to the book sale at the library and found an old copy of it!
The story was as hilarious and touching as I remember it and I even found myself crying at the end, after laughing for just about the entirety of the rest of the book. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor and find a copy. It is a children’s book but it is so well done that it is entertaining even for children.
Here is a description:
This year’s pageant is definitely like no other, but maybe that’s exactly what makes it so special.
Laughs abound in this bestselling Christmas classic by Barbara Robinson! The Best Christmas Pageant Ever follows the outrageous shenanigans of the Herdman siblings, or “the worst kids in the history of the world.”
The siblings take over the annual Christmas pageant in a hilarious yet heartwarming tale involving the Three Wise Men, a ham, scared shepherds, and six rowdy kids. You and your family will laugh along with this funny story, perfect for independent reading or read-aloud sharing.
Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys Herdman are an awful bunch. They set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s toolshed, blackmailed Wanda Pierce to get her charm bracelet, and smacked Alice Wendelken across the head. And that’s just the start! When the Herdmans show up at church for the free snacks and suddenly take over the Christmas pageant, the other kids are shocked.
It’s obvious that they’re up to no good. But Christmas magic is all around and the Herdmans, who have never heard the Christmas story before, start to reimagine it in their own way.
I just learned this week there is a movie and I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere, but someone put it up on YouTube 8 years ago so I think I’ll check that out this week.
The Husband is reading Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders
Little Miss and I are reading Paddington At Large because we can’t remember reading it before. For homeschooling, we are still reading Children of the Longhouse.
The Boy is stuck reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because I am an evil, evil homeschooling mom. Bwahaha!
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched It’s A Wonderful Life (again) as part of the ‘Tis the Season feature I am doing with Erin of Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. You can read about that HERE.
The Husband and I also watched a couple more episodes of Brokenwood Mysteries, because it’s so good.
I watched part of A Christmas in Connecticut and then felt uncomfortable with it and abandoned it part way through.
I also watched a couple videos by Darling Desi, one of which you can find here:
We watched the first episode of Season Three of The Chosen Sunday night and will watch the second tonight.
You can watch it on their YouTube channel for 72 hours and then you have to watch it via their app. Seasons one and two can be found streaming on Peacock and Amazon and I believe Netflix now.
We got interrupted watchingA Man Called Ove the week before last and never got back to it until last night. It’s a really good movie. This is the Swedish version and it’s available on Amazon. This is not the Americanized version that will be coming out with Tom Hanks. I don’t think that version is necessary when the Swedish one is so well done. If you do watch it, please make sure to have some tissues and be prepared for some sweetness and some heartache.
I hope to continue with the Christmas themes this week by watching a couple other Christmas-themed movies/shows. When I found The Best Christmas Pageant Ever on Youtube, I also found that someone had uploaded A Walton’s Christmas and The Christmas Box with Maureen O’Hara. I think I might add those to the list for this week.
I plan to watch The Shepherd, which is part of The Chosen series, as well before Christmas. You can find that here:
What I’m Writing
Today I’ll be finishing the last chapter of my Christmas novella, Beyond the Season, which I am sharing here on the blog in chapters. It finishes up Tuesday and then I’ll post a link to a Bookfunnel file of the full story.
This week I listened to this on YouTube a lot while finishing my Christmas novella.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I finished Love and A Little White Lie last night after working on it for a few weeks now. It didn’t take me this long because it was bad, but because I kept getting interrupted by writing projects, books, or just the everyday weirdness of life.
I will be honest that I almost bailed on this book part way through because the one character was so annoying to me and because the middle dragged a little bit. I really wanted to reach into the book and slap the one character. He was so whiney. Argh! But the book was really worth finishing because the writing was so good, the main character was so complex, and many of the supporting characters were loveable.
In case anyone reading this is interested, here is the description:
There’s a lot of irony in hitting rock bottom After a heartbreak leaves her reeling, January Sanders is open to anything–including moving into a cabin on her aunt’s wedding-venue property and accepting a temporary position at her aunt’s church despite being a lifelong skeptic of faith. Choosing to keep her doubts to herself, she’s determined to give her all to supporting Grace Community’s overworked staff while helping herself move on.
What she doesn’t count on is meeting the church’s handsome and charming guitarist. It’s a match set for disaster, and yet January has no ability to stay away, even if it means pretending to have faith in a God she doesn’t believe in.
Only this time, keeping her secret isn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Especially when she’s constantly running into her aunt’s landscape architect, who seems to know everything about her past-and-present sins and makes no apologies about pushing her to deal with feelings she’d rather keep buried.
Torn between two worlds that can’t coexist, can January find the healing that’s eluded her, or will her resistance to the truth ruin any chance of happiness?
I am finishing a book for an author friend this week (By Broken Birch Bay by Jenny Knipfer) and then I plan to focus on Christmas books, including Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon, America’s Favorite Christmastown by Dawn Klinge, and A Highland Christmas: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by M.C. Beaton. If I can find a paperback copy, I’d also like to read some of Christmas with Anne by L.M. Montgomery, if it is a real book and not just some knock-off Amazon thing. Has anyone heard of it?
Little Miss and I are reading Paddington before bed and Children of the Longhouse by Joseph Bruchac during the day.
The Boy is reading Sea of Monsters, which is a Percy Jackson book and yes, during the week I am making him finish The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Husband is reading Kagan The Damned by Jonathan Maberry.
What’s Been Occurring
This past week we had a good school week during which I actually felt like I had fun, even if the children didn’t.
We didn’t do much else during the week, other than visit my mom on Thursday and grocery shop on Friday. Our shopping trip was delayed by an issue with the van that I thought was going to cost a lot, but turned out could be fixed by my dad dumping three quarts of oil in the engine. In other words, I don’t pay attention to the lights on the dash of my car.
This week’s weather was a mix of mess, wind, and cold. Still no snow, which was fine with me.
This next week we don’t have a ton planned and if it’s going to be as cold as it has been, I am fine with that too.
What We watched/are Watching
Last Sunday, The Boy and I watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles while The Husband took Little Miss to a train ride with Santa.
Later in the week we watched The Three Amigos, an old movie from the 80s with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase.
It is a movie I used to watch with some friends of mine, probably when I was 9 or 10 and it was so weird and funny to watch it again all these years later. There was at least a couple of off-color moments, but for the most part the movie is clean.
The movie is about three actors who portray a trio of heroes called the Three Amigos in silent movies. A woman who is looking for someone to rescue her town from an evil man who is terrorizing it sees the movie, thinks it is a newsreel and sends them a telegram, asking them to come save her town. The telegraph operator decides to edit the telegram so she can afford to send it and, unfortunately, the actors think they are being hired for an acting job. Hilarity ensues from there as “they” say.
During the movie, there is a scene where Martin Short and Steve Martin sing a song called “My Little Buttercup,” which I had forgotten all about until it started. I used to sing the song to my mom and dad after my friends and I watched the movie and they would laugh so hard because I looked so ridiculous. I’m leaving it here for your viewing pleasure.
Little Miss’s impression of the movie: “Nope. Too much fantasy. Not enough reality.”
Sigh. If you knew what movies she watches, you’d really laugh at that comment.
There is a scene in the movie where the villain has a discussion about the word plethora and what it means. As I watched it I remembered that this is where I learned the word and from then on kept finding ways to use it in sentences. I still find a plethora of ways to use the word in sentences. Get it? I still find a plethora – yeah, okay. You get it.
Anyhow, later in the week, I started to watch You’ve Got Mail then realized that I don’t really like that movie because the two main characters are lying to their boyfriend and girlfriend and chatting to each other behind their backs. It is essentially a movie about cheaters, even if parts of it are cute.
I clicked off that and saw The Bookshop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and then realized something I didn’t realize before. You’ve Got Mail is based on this 1940 movie.
As usual Hollywood is not original because I also started to watch A Man Called Ove this week and it is a Swedish movie that is being released in the U.S. under the title A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks. From what I can see, the American movie has been recreated frame for frame. I enjoyed what I did watch of A Man Called Ove, even though I would consider it a dark comedy and those aren’t usually my thing. I stopped it because I decided I should watch something a little happier since I was home by myself. I plan to finish the movie this week.
Anyhow, back to The Bookshop Around the Corner – it’s supposed to take place in Hungary, but only one person has a Hungarian accent. The rest either have New York accents or British ones. Besides that odd glitch, it is a very good movie about a man who is writing to a woman and later learns that the woman is someone he actually knows in real life.
I very much enjoyed the movie and was glad I watched that instead of You’ve Got Mail.
Also this week I watched The Muppets Christmas Carol as part of the ‘Tis the Season Cinema with Erin from Still Life with Cracker Crumbs and Katja_137 from Breath of Hallelujah.
They both had such interesting posts about the movie. I loved how Katja_137 threw in so much trivia about it, including an edited scene I didn’t even know existed.
I’ve been working on a short story that I will start sharing on the blog Friday and run for 12 days after that. It will feature the characters from Spencer Valley, including Molly, Alex, Robert, Annie, Franny, and maybe a little bit of Jason and Ellie and Matt and Liz.
Here is a little sneak peek for those of you who might like to read along:
Cold bit at Robert Tanner’s skin, stung his lungs, and made him wish he could stay inside under a blanket with a warm cup of coffee. Instead, he stepped further into the cold, pulling his winter cap down further on his head.
Between the house and the barn snow swirled wildly, darkening the sky and making it feel like dusk instead of late afternoon.
Inside the barn it was warm, and he was grateful for it, even if his arrival did mean he’d have to start cleaning out the cows sleeping area and preparing the second milking of the day.
Truthfully, his mind was far away from the tasks of the day. His thoughts were consumed with another project he hoped to have complete by Christmas – a gift for his wife of 30 years.
I have not been slowing down and listening to anything except for some worship guitar music while I write. I hope to remedy that this week and listen to some more music. Some nights my daughter and I listen to the family hour on our local Christian radio station, which features Adventures in Odyssey and other Christian radio dramas from 7 to 8 p.m.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I have been reading a collection of Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton and have been enjoying them for the most part. The third one I read went off on a weird ramble for several pages that had nothing to do with the story I thought but these were written in the early 1900s so I cut Chesterton some slack.
I have also been reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain with The Boy for school and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe with Little Miss.
I’ll probably start a new fiction book this week, but I’m not sure which one yet. I have a few I’ve read the first few pages of an am liking so I just need to pick one. The Seven and a half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has caught my attention so far.
What’s Been Occurring
This past week Little Miss and I were both surprised when her little friends who moved to Texas a year and a half ago, came back to stay.
Little Miss had a blast visiting with them during the week. We were still able to finish schoolwork but it was pushed off to the evenings to they could play together.
The friends are signed up back into school now so we won’t have our school days interrupted as much.
She was able to visit with some other friends yesterday.
We didn’t do a lot last week other than school. We had been doing game nights once a week with my parents but I had congestion and they were doing other things most days so we will have to have a game night another time.
The weather was oddly warm all week and then today it dropped into the 40s and it is literally downhill from here. It’s like we were in spring and then drastically plunged into winter. Our sinuses are definitely going to suffer even more this week. As I was writing this actual snow started to fall. Yuck.
What We watched/are Watching
This week I watched light and fluffy stuff including a couple of Hallmark movies even though I am not the biggest fan of Hallmark movies. I do like the movies based on the short-lived show Signed, Sealed, Delivered which follows a group of employees in the Dead Letter Office of the United States Postal Service. The premise – of them solving mysteries surrounding lost letters or packages — is a bit far fetched but the overall stories are uplifting and encouraging.
Earlier in the week I watched The Man Who Invented Christmas as part of the ‘Tis the Season Cinema feature Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I started this week. We are watching Christmas movies from now until the week before Christmas. Next up is A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong which you can find here on YouTube:
This special was on the BBC and is part of a series of specials and shows about a theater group who is always messing up or somehow ruining their shows with misspoken words or mishaps.
What I’m Writing
I didn’t share much on the blog this week other than the last chapters of Mercy’s Shore (Shores of Mercy).
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
