Unbroken

For September we will be reading Unbroken by: Laura Hillenbrand. The question now is do we meet on the 7th or push it back a week since this is the Friday just before Labor day. Let me know so we can all be on the same page.

Schedule

So here is the most up to date schedule. Please comment or email me if you want to sign up.
(Remember new day and time, first Friday each month @ 7:30pm)

9/ 7:30pm  Book: Unbroken by: Laura Hillenbrand( Piper Prach?) Hostess: ??

10/5 Book:   ______________ (Carol Mitchell) Hostess:_____________

11/2 Book: The Art of  Manliness: Classic Skills & Manners for the Modern Man by: Brett & Kate McKay(Riley Walker) Hostess:_____________

12/7 Book: A Christmas Carol (text online) by Charles Dickens Hostess:_____________
        
1/4: New Year's meeting: We will meet to fill up the 2013 reading calendar and hostessing duties. No book as we will be just recovering from CHRISTMAS

2/2 Book: Ella Minnow Pea by:Mark Dunn(Ashley Glissmeyer) Hostess:_____________

The Pioneer Woman: Food From My Frontier

Thank goodness that the world has Ree Drummond. This woman is A-MA-ZING and so is her food! I love that we were able to get together and review (eat) her recipes.

Thanks so much to Stacey Selle for hosting and making the Pesto Pasta.

Martha made the Fruit Pizza. (She advises that this recipe would be better as two pizzas.)

Carol made the Knock You Naked Brownies, luckily no one was knocked completely knocked naked. ;)

Kris made the Chicken Enchilada Soup and I made the Shepherd's Pie...SO yummy.

We also had a new member come. We would like to welcome Nicole Hansen to our group.

Can't wait to see you all next month.

PLUTO

I am so sorry that I missed discussing this book. I LOVED IT.
What a brilliant way to help us all learn about how a=hard it really is to be a scientist. I an sure that this discussion was amazing, especially with Kris leading it. Thanks to her for choosing such a fun read. Do you all remember Jenny Hahn? Well she reviewed Pluto on her blog and I just thought that you would all like to read her review....HERE I hope you enjoyed this nerdy yet fun book as much as I did.

Meeting Ree

A picture is worth a thousand words:

What an amazing woman! I wanna be Ree when I grow up!

Pioneer Woman in Denver

(NEW cookbook)

Last August we had the privilege of tasting some of the recipes for the Pioneer Woman's (Ree Drummond) first cookbook. WELL....Ree now has a second cookbook coming out AND he has a book signing tour coming to DENVER (Littleton to be precise).
The book signing will be here:

Denver

Saturday, March 24 @ 4:00 p.m.

Tradesmart

8500 West Crestline Avenue

Littleton, Colorado

Ree will be signing any books, new and old, and I am so excited to get to go! For more info click here

Ree has other books too.....Stacey & Martha reccomend:

I'd love to get my hands on this one too:

So if you wanna come give me a holler and we can ride together!

The 5 Love Languages

Our next meeting will be Friday, 6 April 2012, 7:30p.m. We will again be at Aimee Worland's home- thanks Aimee :) Stephanie Madsen has chosen The Five Love Languages by: Gary Chapman

This book has long been on my to read list, ever since college when I was studying Marriage, Family & Human Development @ BYU.  I find the ideas presented in this book intriguing and worthy of consideration.

Other interesting sites on the Marital Relationship:

The Gottman Relationship Institute (developed by Dr. John Gottman)

Strengthening Marriage Site (recommended by a therapist in Parker ward)

Hopefully we can take the time to come and discuss even if we don't get to read it.

(Did you know there is a test that tells you what your love language is?)

Dear Wormwood

Oh what an amazing discussion we had on The Screwtape Letters this month.

 Thank you Julie for this great choice & Aimee for hosting.

(Image from the play Screwtape Letters)

It is so refreshing to hear such amazing women to discuss the weightier issues of the world with such great knowledge and a gospel context. To have your insights enlighten us and enrich us was a perfect evening.
Tara thank you for your pages of notes and scriptural references. Julie thank you for your personal context and perspective as you lead us in this great discussion. I am certainly going to be re-reading this more frequently.
It was lovely to have Tami Lyman with us for the last time and to have the moms to be and others we have missed so much there. (Those of you were unable to attend were still sorely missed)
We can't wait to see you ALL next month.

(Clip about the Focus on The Family Recording)

We discussed how brilliant C.S. Lewis was in his writing this piece of literature and how timeless it really is. We also discussed Lewis' life and other works. Jack, as Lewis nicknamed himself, has many notable works and went from ardent atheist to dedicated Christian.

I mentioned two movies that I absolutely love about Lewis' life.  They are Shadowlands:

and  Beyond Narnia

Hear Lewis in his own words:

The works of C.S. Lewis: here

Are you Hungry?

On March 23rd the Hunger Games Movie is arriving in theaters. After reading these riveting books it will be exciting to see how the directors have interpreted Suzanne Collins' work.

SCREWTAPE

Just next week we will be meeting to discuss The Screwtape Letters by:C.S. Lewis at Aimee Worland's home

I LOVE this book. I LOVE Lewis. I hope that you can all gain the same appreciation for this amazing piece of literature.

I actually just found this recording of audio theater by Focus on the Family where Andy Serkis (Golum in The Lord of the Rings movie) gives voice to Screwtape and it is BRILLIANT!

I sent my parents to the play in Salt Lake in January.

Rules by: Cynthia Lord

Well our book for February was RULES by Cynthia Lord. What an insightful read into the mind of a twelve year old girl who is dealing with not only puberty, friends and all the normal stuff but she has an autistic brother and parents that may seem a bit out of touch.
It is no wonder that Cynthia Lord won the Newberry award for this, her first book.
Her rules were great and made the story insightful and fun to read/listen to.  Lord allows us a look at the life of a family with a child that has autism. If you have not had the opportunity to read this book I suggest you take the time. I listened to it in the car and read it too.
Here is a more detailed synopsis:
This is the story of Catherine, a twelve-year-old girl who loves art and longs for a friend.  Catherine is the sister and often-babysitter for her autistic brother, David, and she often has a hard time fitting in with her classmates because of David’s behaviors.  She works hard to help David be more “normal,” specifically by giving him rules to live by that most people take for granted.  Her best friend is away for the summer visiting her father, so Catherine is excited when she learns that the family moving in next door includes a girl her age.  She spends most of her summer days helping her mother with David, visiting the clinic where David receives occupational therapy, and hoping that Christy, her new neighbor, will not be scared off by David’s differences.  At the clinic, Catherine befriends a wheelchair-bound boy named Jason who ”talks” through a communication book he keeps with him at all times.  The story somewhat predictably comes to a climax when Catherine must choose whether or not to invite Jason to a community dance when challenged to do so by Christy, who doesn’t know about David’s disability.  

World Book Night

So have you ever heard of World Book Night. It sounds fascinating and might be a way to make our book club a bit more philanthropic.

There is a registration form but it might be kind of cool to do. It is April 23rd here in the US and in the UK.

Let me know your thoughts.

The Little Prince

(Disclaimer: OK, so I picked the book before reading all of the comments on the blog so if we want to postpone this book until later that is fine with me. It is only about 112 pages- give or take because of illustrations. I am attaching a hyper link here of the entire book in .pdf form)

I first read this book in French class at BYU so re-reading it in English would be interesting. Plus that was about 14 years ago. Before this first exposure I had never even heard of this story. Now, however, I have seen the movie and also the opera on PBS and I know that there is a ballet too. Obviously The Little Prince has been a popular piece of literature for years and now we can find out why.

Tiger MOM UPDATE

So Amy Chua recently had a follow-up article to her book that we recently read. Martha's daughter, Meghan, was kind enough to pass it on...Just click here

It is quite fascinating and I hope that you all enjoy!

2012...Ready or NOT

So hear we are ladies the new year is fast approaching and we need books. Our schedule is quite bare and I am a bit flummoxed as to what to do about it. Should we got to meeting every other month? Should we combine with another book club? Should I make assignments?

Our numbers are low and although that doesn't really bother me I miss you when you aren't there. Some of us work and others of us have husbands who travel like crazy or whose work/church schedules are insane. We have members moving and others having babies. Life moves forward and book club becomes less of a priority.

PLEASE let me know what you would like to do.... I love book club but my life too is crazy with other priorities taking center stage.

If we don't have a book by the first of January I think we may forego book club for the month.

December Bookclub

Our book for December is Christmas Jars by: Jason Wright. We will be meeting on Dec 15th @ Kris Tolman's home at 7pm. Bring a Christmas treat to share.

We need volunteers to host and choose books for next year. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sign up... Unless you all want to read textbooks like I am right now.

Any book, any genre, any length... We could all pick a favorite Dr. Seuss book to share; or favorite picture book... I am serious now.

Choose a book or we will all be learning about Human Anatomy. :)

Tiger Mother

Amy Chua

So are you a tiger mother? Reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother made each of us look at how we mother and how culture affects our parenting. Certainly being a full blown "tiger" isn't the goal of most of us but certain attributes are worthy of praise.

Pushing your kids to acheive their goals---good thing.

Turning down birthday card because it's not "perfect"--not so good.

Having high expectations-- good thing.

Torturing yourself and your kids for the sake of results--not good.

Although we may feel that some of the attributes of the Tiger/Chinese Mother border on abuse I am pretty certain that they may perceive things that we do as bordering on neglect.

If nothing else Amy Chua's observations opened our eyes to the differences that make the Tiger parents successful.

Thanks so much to Martha Taylor for choosing this book and to her daughter Meghan also. Thanks also to Heather Staples for being such a gracious hostess.

ROOTS & Pavlova

So this is the yummy dessert that Tami/Tammy Lyman made for us tonight. Sad you missed it? You should be. Thank you so much for hosting.

With fall break we only had 4 tonight but I am so glad that those of us who were able to attend were able to discuss this amazing book. ROOTS by: Alex Haley is an amazing tribute to ancestry. To be able to have this view of the human family from the African-American perspective is such an amazing thing to be able to enjoy. To see how important family is, was and always will be and to know that years of research went into this volume is awe inspiring.

I am so glad that this book exsists to teach us about what life for African-Americans has been like for generations. Being an outsider I will never truly know but to gain an understanding is my responsibilty so that I can be more understanding to those around me.

ROOTS is a phenomenon that spurred the genealogical juices throughout the world. It certainly is intriguing to think about why and how our ancestors arrived here. Understanding this allows each of us to better appreciate what we enjoy today.

I hope that if you did not get a chance to read this book and cross it off your literary bucket list that you will at some point. It is one that I will certainly encourage even my children to read as they get older.

A Joyful Mother of Children

What a great conversation we had the other night. How wonderful you ladies are is inspiring! (I know that we are all better because we know each other and learn from one another.) Missed you that couldn't make it. Julie thanks for a great book and Jill thanks for being a great hostess!

Richard and Linda Eyre

Recap: As we discussed this book we came to appreciate Linda Eyre and her wisdom that holds true to this day. What a breath of fresh air it is that we can try and fail and it is OK. The advice that is contained within A Joyful Mother of Children obviously gave hope to those of us struggling and made us pause and recognize that over all we are doing a great job.

Her idea of "Sunday Sessions" (discussed here) was helpful to some and intimidating to others. We also liked the idea of "Five Facet Reviews" where parents discuss how children are doing in five areas: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually. This is done with both parents on a monthly basis.

Other topics that we discussed included the idea of "selective neglect" and age appropriate expectations. It is obvious that all of us, no matter how many children we have, 0-9, or even more, that we want to be the best mothers possible for the children that we have within our homes. We want to love them when they drive us nuts. We want to be in love with the fathers of our children and we want to be full of joy. Not every moment or even every day will be full of joy but when looking back hopefully we can each look back and have allowed time to soften the hard days, and the painful days.

We also discussed other ideas, blogs and books along these same lines. Some of these, plus more, can be found below:

Richard & Linda Eyre's website

Article on Allowance by the Eyre's

71 toes (Shawni Eyre Pothier's blog)

The Power of Less

How To Talk To Your Kids About Sex

I am certain that I am forgetting something but if I do please leave a comment so that we can all have the information.

Next Month: ROOTS by: Alex Haley. We will be at Tami Lyman's home.

Pioneer Woman Cooks

So the consensus is that we need to do a cookbook every year.

Oh my stars in heaven was this amazing! Ree Drummond is a genius! Tara & Randy are the perfect hosts with the ideal location for a book of this genre! And the company was stellar!

(Kris if ever we have had a good idea this ranks at the top!)

For those of you who couldn't make it we missed you so much and can't wait to see you next month- or sooner.

We were glad that Stacey Selle could join us too. She has read Ree's book about her love story and I think that maybe she should pick that for us to read- wink, wink.

(Ree also has a book for kids and is working on her next cookbook as well as a new Food Network Television show. What a busy gal- oh and she home schools. )

For those who couldn't make it we had great conversations about the recipes, TREK, picking up roadkill(you will have to ask Tara & Randy about their awesome stories),

ranch life, kids, and FOOD! We discussed PWs (Pioneer Woman's) Photography skills and her obvious joy for her life.

(Just to top the night off I hit two raccoons on the way to see The Help. It was hilarious considering the prior conversation. (Poor coons)

To conclude here is a bit of what we did/ate

Julie made the stuffed mushrooms. (No one can eat just one.)

She also made the raspberry pie. De-lish!

Stacey made the peach crisp w/ maple cream sauce

Jill made the BBQ meatballs. I gotta make me some of these.

Carol made the Pistachio Cake. She even improved on it with icing and sprinkles!

Kris made the French breakfast puffs & the Tomato-Basil pizza

Tara (& Randy) provided non alcoholic sangria, Potato Skins & Rolls w/ homemade

raspberry jam. Drool!

I (Katie) made the Beans & Cornbread.

Now if I only could get to her ranch next weekend, she is doing a pie making day at the ranch.