Saturday Snapshots 5-16-15 Last Week was a Work Week.

To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at Melinda's blog. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

 We spent last week helping our oldest granddaughter and her husband get their condo in Ft Collins Co ready to sell. That included finishing the laminate flooring, painting of the kitchen and living room and master bedroom and walk in closet. Above is my DH and youngest granddaughter working in the kitchen.

Packages of flooring and tool boxes in the middle of the living room. 

DGD and family slept on the floor and in a pack 'n play in the baby's old room. It did not get painted. 

Step ladder at the ready for painting the nearby wall. 

Staircase upgraded and with a new finish. 

Baby J.  had a nap. He was sooooo good, spending nearly a whole week in a construction zone. My job was to play with him, take him to the park and for walks and generally keep him out of the way. Whew, was I tired when we got home. Chasing a 20 month old is a "lot of work"  :).

He was happy to play in Great Grandpa's tools. I spent lots of time in "distraction mode". If you have experience with a budding "terrible 2's" you understand what I mean. 

Only minimal reading was done, At the end of the day, we were too tired to do much reading. So I am still reading "Our Lady of the Lost and Found." It is informative and fun.

On the trip down to Colorado and back, we listened to Storming Heaven by Dale Brown. We are still listening now that we are home. It is a 14 CD set.  I have not read Dale Brown before, but he is one of  Mr. Busy's favorite authors. It is OK, very airplane language heavy and this story is about a terrorist in a plane. Very spooky, written in 1994, but it brings back memories of 9-11.

Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy ( and tired)

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday - Our Lady of the Lost and Found

 First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is hosted by  Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea. It is a chance to share the first paragraph or two of your current read. It can even be the first paragraph of a book you hope to begin soon.  Today I am sharing the first paragraph of : 

Our Lady of the Lost and Found
Diane Schoemperlen
Penguin Group 2001


Signs

Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs. In the week before it happened, there was a string of unusual events that I noticed but did not recognize. Seemingly trivial, apparently unconnected, they were not even events really, so much as odd occurrences, whimsical coincidences, amusing quirks of nature or fate. It is only now, in retrospect, that I can see then for what they were: eclectic clues, humble omens, whispered heralds of the approach of the miraculous. 

I am already at the 7th chapter of this book. I am enjoying it so far. It was in a box of "please take one of these" from a member of my book club. When I asked her about it, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "It wasn't bad" .  Not a glowing review, but I like the way it is written (first person) and I like the language. Would you pick it out of a box or from a shelf? Would you keep reading?


I may not be back home by next Tuesday. We will be helping our granddaughter get her condo ready to sell, not sure if she had disconnected the internet yet. My phone is only 3G so it need WiFi too. We will see. Until then,



Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Saturday Snapshots May Flowers are Here!

I'm linking up with Melinda's Saturday Snapshot meme with some proof of Springtime in Wyoming. The flowering crab tree pictures were taken by me and  the tulips are in a friend's yard and she said I could share her photo. 

 Flowering Crab Apples trees are blooming all over our town. This picture was taken Tuesday as I was walking to my book club gathering. I got to be up close and personal. The pink ones are just starting to show color, the light ones first and then the dark pink ones. By next week or maybe even tomorrow ( it was 70 degrees today) our town should be ablaze in pink and white.

Some yards have tulips too.

These are in the yard of a friend. 

I'm sure we will see more and more May flowers as the month progresses. Next Saturday we will out of town, in Ft Collins CO, visiting our daughter, youngest GD and helping our other granddaughter and her husband get their condo ready to sell. It will be a busy 5 days, with Mother's Day thrown in.  I think we will celebrate our two GD 's May birthdays as well, while we are all together. 

I should have lots of pictures to share after that adventure. 

Stay Happy and Stay Busy

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

North of Beautiful is the story of Terra Cooper, high school senior who can't wait to graduate and leave her small town for college. The problem is her mom doesn't want her to go, her mom needs her to deflect the anger and cruel treatment from her father, and her father absolutely thinks she only needs to go to local Western Washington and refuses to allow talk of any other location.

This story is well told, and interesting in that all the chapter are named for mapping terms or cartography references. Chapter One is called Fate Maps,  there is on titled Here Be Dragons, and one titled Orienteering for Girls.  Another thing you need to know is that Terra is tall, blond and fit, but she also has a port-wine birthmark. That birthmark influences her whole life.

I loved that fact that this book was not dummied down for the YA genre. There are words I had to look up and words that were new to me. I hope that young people reading this book, take the time to look up the words that are new to them. The author does a good job of using the words in sentence structure that allows us to sort of know their meaning and in that way learn a new word. But I found the research of the words helped my understanding of the story too.

Terra makes an extraordinary discovery, that the Land of Beautiful is traversed with love, with acceptance and with understanding. I recommend this book for most of my friends, my husband however would not be a fan. Not enough action for him and way too many emotional thought provoking themes.

I gave it 5 Happy Hands! 

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Join us on Wednesdays to highlight words found while reading or even while listening. Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog gives us a place to share these Wondrous Words.

From North of Beautiful by Justine Chen Headley.

This is a YA novel. I wondered as I read it if the wondrous words I found there would also be words that the YA age group would know or wonder about. I don't have my finger on the pulse of 15-19 year olds. So I would welcome the input from anyone. here are a few of the words I found.



stigmata: a stigmata plural : bodily marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Jesus and sometimes accompanying religious ecstasy

" How they'd comment offhandedly that sometime their birthmarks bled spontaneously, stigmata without any hope of redemption."


chagrin: noun - distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure

               intransitive verb - to vex or unsettle by disappointing or humiliating

"His chagrin turned into a full smile"


cartouche: noun-a scroll-like ornament or tablet, esp. as an architectural feature
on Egyptian monuments, an oval or oblong figure containing the hieroglyphs of the name of a ruler or deity

"I had yet to sign a single piece of my work, had never thought myself worthy of a cartouche, never claiming my creations."


inured: transitive verb - to accustom to accept something undesirable

"It was as she had become so accustomed to disappointment , so inured to people reneging on their promise, that she expected setbacks, heartbreak."



froment: to cause or try to cause the growth or development of (something bad or harmful)



" His lips thinned, reminiscent of Dad and his quiet fromenting rages.


Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

I haven't played along in awhile, but here is the beginning and the "56" of my current read. If you want to join in, go to Rose City Reader and link up your Book Beginning and then share your page 56 or 56% at Freda's Voice.  There you will find a myriad of other bloggers who have shared their Book Beginnings on Fridays and their Friday 56. Fun!!

 Prologue

1979

Fifteen-year-old Winona Grey stared out at the waterfront ranch that had been in her family for four generations, looking for something that had changed.



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pg 56

Dad grunted something unintelligible and got up from the table. Without looking back, he headed into his study and closed the door behind him.

Winona sat there, irritated once again  that she'd let herself expect something from him. Gratitude at the very least.


I may be one of the few people who haven't read this book. I have read other of her titles, Firefly Lane, On Mystic Lake, Winter Garden, Night Road, so I am pretty sure I will enjoy this one as well.

For the next week or two I am going to concentrate on reading the titles I need to finish the Mega Mix Challenge II on Goodreads. You can check my progress HERE.

There are 6 books I need to read to complete the challenge. They are: Wildflower Hill, True Colors, Fifty Shades Freed, Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Cat Trick or The Three Kitties That Saved My Life, and Fire on the Mountain.

And then there will be life getting in the way too I am sure.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Wondrous Word Wednesday - Word of the Day

I haven't completed a lot of reading in the last several weeks. Still ahead of my goal to reach 60 books read this year, but not moving very quickly. I did complete the graduation quilt for my DIL and a small Christmas themed table topper that I started in October.  This week I will use the Word of the Day from my email from Merriam Webster.  You can join us at Kathy's blog, Bermuda Onion's Weblog and share your wondrous word for the week. Maybe you found more than one, that's OK too.


quidnunc:  a person who seeks to know the latest news or gossip, a busybody

"To spend time with a book in order to read scandalous revelations about real-life people is not an elevated or honourable thing to do, but it appeals to the gossip-sharing quidnunc in all of us." — John Walsh, The Independent (London), July 22, 2003


We are having company this weekend. Mr Busy's 3 nearest siblings are coming to help clean out the storage shed in which all of the remaining furniture and some extraneous stuff was placed after her death nearly a year ago. No one was able to do more than a small bit of clearing out at the time. Now they are coming from SD and Montana to help him complete the job. We will have fun after the work is done I am sure. 


Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy