Have a New Kid my Friday

A couple of weeks ago I had had it with Jared's fits.  Did I just hear you gasp in surprise that my sweet angle boy throws fits?  Well he does.  And he rocks at it.  Since Ryan was born...well lets be honest...since I was about 7 months pregnant with Ryan I was too tired and my body hurt too much to be much of enforcer. (I knew I was going to pay for it but what other choices did I have?)  And After Ryan was born I am ready for things to return to "normal."  As in when I said something they did it.  (mostly) So I turned to this book.  I had heard about it a few years ago and I guess I was holding the idea to read it for  now.

It is a great book.  a quick read with easy ideas to follow through on.

I feel like it has given a little extra push to hold to my guns and to see that there are simple ways to make big changes.  Like keeping my cool, walking away, and not discussing certain things.

I am far from perfect.  I wish I was a little closer to it.  But it this parenting stuff is hard.

This book covers a lot of issues and will be a great resource to turn to...in fact I just might be doing that during nap time :)  At the end he covers specific areas that we as parents deal with from lying to sucking thumbs to tantrums to clothing choices.  Each chapter is a new day of the week building on the previous day until BAM Friday when kids become perfect. 

It also made me feel like the issues I have with my kids really aren't that bad...he puts in some parent examples and man alive some people have really awful kids.

Then again someone might look at my kids and say the same thing.

Anyway this is a great book for anyone with children.

Grade: Must read over and over and over again.
*I was reading this while reading Sister Hinkley's books "Glimpses."  I highly recommending doing that. 

making a small change

HA...you thought this was a book title huh? 
WRONG.

I am going to change the way I grade these books I read.  Instead of using letter grades I am going to use phrases I am also going to put the "in a nut shell" at the top of the page rather than the bottom....that is if I remember to (which I do not promise I will ever).
Such as:

Awesome
Read it now!
Awful!
What a waste of my time
Worst way to spend my free time
I loved it
Made me smile
Loved, but don't tell anyone
the bees knees
I can't wait to read it again

And so on.

I think the grading system really isn't allowing me to put in a few simple words what or if I liked it plus it is boring.  Come to think of it.  I bet if teachers used this system rather than grades it would be so much more fun to get papers back....unless you the poor kid who gets his graded paper back with "What a waste of my time" in red ink on the top.

Happy Reading.

Glimpses

I was given this book a few years ago, and I every now and then I would sit down and read a page or two and enjoy it but I never took the time to just sit and read it from cover to cover.  I am glad I finally did.  I have loved every page and getting to know Sister Hinkley a little better has been delightful.  What an amazing lady...I hope I can be a little more like her.
This book doesn't really follow her life from birth through death, but instead focuses on certain areas of her life and character.  For example some of the chapters include Mothering, optimism, Faith, sense of humor, and so on.

With each chapter I thought of ways that I could be a little bit better as a wife, mother, and daughter of God.  I have always loved Sister Hinkley and now I do even more.

This is a book I will revisit often, to be uplifted, taught and reminded.


GRADE: A+

The Wedding Day

I suppose there comes a point when I need to realize that a free book on my Kindle is free for a reason.

IT STINKS!

Thus us is with this book.  It is about a bride who finds out at the alter that her fiance cheated on her.  She runs away, spends some time mourning it all, picks the pieces back up and becoming her dream job: a wedding planner.  She becomes a new woman and discovers herself.  Pretty great huh?  Yeah until she snubs a nice guy and goes back to her cheating fiance.  Who pretend to be someone else and hired her to plan her own wedding AGAIN. 

Is it just me or is that stupid.  I do believe the next book I read on the Kindle I will be buying.

Grade: F

The Marriage Pact

Since I spend about an hour wide awake in the middle of the night with Ryan...okay lets be honest I spend far more than that since the little stinker wakes up too often. ANYWAY since I am up I am reading...kind of sleeping. I choose to read this book simply because it was free on my kindle.

It is about a 30 year old woman who hasn't done much with her life or education except float from temp job to temp job. She finds herself in Texas temping and fell for a rich older man who was married. AWFUL I know. She kicks herself over and over...as it would have he dumps her and she runs away home to her old college BFF who she made a Marriage Pact with. (thus the title). If they were both unmarried at 30 they would wed each other. They get engaged and since we all can assume this isn't really the best reason to get married they run into some tough spots during their engagement especially when nasty married cheater man shows up again. That is what the story is about.

It is a forever long book. I can't stand it when authors give way to much information about things that don't matter and too much back story. ugh. I also didn't think so much of the book would be about the cheating business. I hated that part. I think that might be why I never cared for any of the characters. Well, except for the main characters fathers. They were good men. Anyway...I wouldn't suggest reading this book. It isn't dirty...which was nice. It was just long and mostly boring. But then again I was reading it at 3 in the morning...and then again at 4 and then 5 and then sometimes 6. So what do I know.

Grade: F

Ireland Rose

What a nice story this turned out to be. I got for free on my Kindle and sometimes those free books can be...well for lack of a better word AWFUL. But they are free and worth trying.

By the end of this book I wasn't madly in love with it, but I didn't hate the fact that I spent my time reading it either. I wanted to know what happened to the characters in the book and although I could predict who fell in love with who I wanted to know how and when that all took place.

Ireland Rose is a young teenage girl in the late 1800's her parents decide they want to return to their beloved homeland (Ireland) to die. But they want their daughter to remain in America to live a better life (interesting right?). So they ask a wealthy man who owed them a favor to marry their young daughter. This is where to story starts.

The poor girl has everything she could ever want, except to be in love. Over time her husband dies, she falls in love with serving in an orphanage, and a young pregnant girl enters her care leaving her with a baby that carries a HUGE secret as well. Oh the drama. I kind of felt like the author (I really enjoyed her style of writing) got tired at the end of the story and just ended it quickly. It felt like BAM it was over.

It is a sweet story and 100% clean which is refreshing. Although I am a little on the mediocre side of things I will look for other books by this author and read them (if they are free or in the library).

Grade: C+

Water for Elephants

I have already returned this book and for some reason once I do that I feel like I have lost the ability to right a good review. Weird. I think it is because I like to check to make sure my facts are right and things are in order.

This was a terrific story. It starts off with an elderly man in an assisted living home. His body is well on it's way to not working very well but his mind is still pretty sharp...until recently he seems to be forgetting things and slipping into the past.

The circus has come to town and has set up across the street from the old folks home and this sends (oh shoot I forgot the main characters name...see I need the book) into the past and thus the story unfolds about his time in the circus. It is such an interesting story to read about. I know nothing about the circus of those days and about the era that this takes place in (the depression). More than once I had to force myself to STOP reading since Ryan had fallen asleep and if I didn't go to bed I wouldn't be able to get up with him in a few hours.

It is interesting that I have this fantasy that people in this time were all very virtuous and chaste and lovely. Men were gentlemen and women were ladies. And I am always disappointed when I learn that just like today there are some real losers among the gentlemen and ladies. It is the same with this story. There are some people who are crude, rude and vulgar. As a result there are some foul words (some bombs) and some sexual scenes. Awful I know. They are mostly in the first half and they have little to do with the story. So if you think one of those nasty scenes has started skip to the next page and know you didn't miss anything important.

It is a great story. I think I will watch the movie...at some point in the future although I am a little nervous to watch something with Robert Patteson (the vampire guy). We will see.

GRADE: B (for language and those scenes).