Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

And that, folks, is why no review happened on the 29th–by the time I got home from hanging with family, I hurried into my bedtime routine and then hurried off to bed.  As for tonight, well–I’m just poopered.  Tomorrow?  Hopefully?  We’ll see how perky I feel then…

Svetlana Chmakova is quickly moving up my list of graphic novelists to keep track of.  Both my older girlies loved Awkward and now we’re passing Brave around; it started with my 8-year-old, but I picked it up yesterday and finished it just before it was time to turn out my light.

I kind of loved it.

For the first little bit I didn’t actually expect to; Jensen seemed less relatable to me personally, at least at first.   The more I read, however, the more engrossed I was.  I remember being at the edge of a group, worrying about keeping your place and your friends; I remember finding a new group of people unexpectedly, the sheer wonder and joy of it.  I was afraid for a few pages that the school dress code plot line would go places that annoyed me, but the way it was handled was open-ended in a way that worked nicely for the story.  Brave is a book with rather a strong message–a moral to the story, so to speak–but it completely works.  Graphic novels with depth and breadth that are still appropriate for my 8-year-old aren’t as easy to find as I might prefer, but Chmakova has written at least two–AND Crush, another companion to Awkward and Brave looks to be due out this October.  My girlies–and I–will be waiting!

Seriously–the Patricias!  How do they manage to paint the pictures they do with so few words?  Last night I finished Patricia MacLachlan’s The Truth of Me, and it was–of course–beautiful.  Somehow, in 114 pages, we gain a clear picture of Robbie, his musician parents, and his loving grandmother, who is gifted in her own right.  As a parent, I kind of wanted to hate Robbie’s mother at first, and yet MacLachlan never let me do it (even before she gave me the tools to understand her).  As a reader, of course, I just enjoyed.  Her books are short and simply written, but oh, so beautifully!  If you have an elementary schooler like mine, who gravitates toward the emotionally complex–or an animal lover–this is not a book to miss.

This week my family had the opportunity to attend the Jordan River Temple open house–me with the littles Wednesday morning, my hubby with the bigs tonight.  It’s not a new temple, but it’s one of the busiest–likely THE busiest–there is, and for the past year and more it’s been undergoing updates and renovations.  We’ve missed it–all of the other temples in the Salt Lake valley have been busier in the meantime–and it’s wonderful to have the work on it completed; it’s also wonderful, however, to be able to walk through the temple with my children and see the beauty and the peace that are everywhere you look.  Those of our faith make covenants in our temples; we are sealed together as families to be together in the next life as well as this one; and we make covenants as well on behalf of those who’ve died without the opportunity to do it themselves.  We find peace there, and a stillness that our world and daily life as we know it lacks.  We look for spiritual guidance.  Our temples are houses of the Lord.

If you’d like to take a few minutes to focus on peace, beauty, and God’s love, you can find information about our temples here.

I finished Legends of Zita the Spacegirl today–it’s been hanging out in my bathroom drawer–and I did rather like the premise of what happens after the world-saving.  It still moves quickly enough that even the “she might die/get caught/crash” scenes barely have time to impact the reader (the series is obviously geared toward the younger end of its audience), but the story still feels fully defined; it’s a solid sequel.  If you or someone you find books for are interested in easier sci-fi and/or graphic novels, Zita should be on your list.

Okay, that was a short review, but a longer one didn’t feel terribly necessary.  In the meantime, my apple may be gone, but I still have a spoon and an open jar of Trader Joe’s cookie butter; who could ask for anything more?

Last night (yes, a day late) I did an Irish sort of dinner and invited my nephew, who gets stir-crazy when his wife has to work on Sunday and he’s home twiddling his thumbs.  He and I were the only ones who liked the cabbage, and the mashed potatoes got a lot of thumbs middles from the kiddos (my children have potato issues), but cooked carrots are always a hit and everyone LOVED the corned beef.  My oldest gave it “such a big thumbs up that the top of my thumb exploded.”

She’s 11.

Seriously, though, I picked an easy recipe off of the ones my Pinterest search found me, and this Crispy Slow Cooker Corned Beef turned out to be a smashing success.  It was moist, it was flavorful, it was tender–in fact, the only problem was that there wasn’t more of it.  (Apparently I should have gone with a bigger package at Costco, but it was my first attempt at cooking it and I was afraid of tempting fate.)  If they still have it at Costco, I really might grab some more and freeze it for a rainy day.  If you see it on sale anywhere, pick some up and try this recipe–you’ll want to get it into the crockpot first thing in the morning, but it’s so, so worth it!

That’s all I’ve got, folks.  Tonight I scrubbed my tub as well as my bathroom sink and countertop–and then there was laundry.  The tooth fairy did double duty in the downstairs bedroom.  Both of my hymns for tomorrow are more than a page long, and right now, I’m just plain poopered.  I hope you all enjoyed your wearing of the green!

I finished Terri Libenson’s Invisible Emmie tonight, which means that my older girls now get to decide who gets to read it first.  (I used to get a copy for each of them if they were on the same book in a series–it didn’t happen often–but when the book is newer and popular that just feels selfish.  Besides, I don’t need the same book taking up space on two library cards.  My library issues make that, well, undesirable.)  My older girl is feeling emotional tonight, which meant a discourse on how she can’t think of more than one book she’s ever gotten first–her younger sister always grabs it!–except, of course, for the last one.  I’m not so inclined to care, honestly, because Girlie #2 offered that last one to her older sister first, and her older sister’s only a third of the way through a big fat mystery anyway.  I might have to remember who gets this one first, though.  Taking actual official turns really might have to be a thing.

Anyway.  Invisible Emmie was a lovely debut, sort of a highly illustrated novel with graphic novel interludes, about middle school and friends and feeling invisible and learning how to talk to people and speak up for yourself.  It’s beautifully safe for younger readers on higher reading levels–like Girlie #2–and would be a perfect fit for anyone struggling with shyness or social anxiety.  OR anyone that isn’t but could use help understanding people who do.  OR, well–anyone!  If you’ve got a latter elementary or middle schooler, this ought to go over well, especially with girls.  I’m looking forward to Libenson’s next book!*

*It’s apparently due out in May.

You HAVE to buy some at that price, right?  And then bring one of the heads to your friend’s house the next day to try this Slow Cooker Whole Cauliflower recipe?  Well, you do if you’re me, and I have to say, it was pretty tasty.  I added more parsley than it called for (because really, when don’t I?) and she put in more lemon juice because it looked like so very little liquid, and it was really kind of delightful.  Very soft–we used a teeny head, and we probably should have reduced the cook time–but full of flavor.  I’m absolutely going to try this again.*

*Be warned, though–the smell of cooking cauliflower will permeate your house, no matter what your cooking method.  If that’s going to bother you, you may want to plug in your crock pot outside.

Of which, of course, my oldest daughter is one.  I can’t remember what I was doing when Bruce Coville’s Ghost trilogy blipped onto my radar, but it seemed like the kind of thing she’d enjoy.  I therefore put The Ghost in the Third Row on hold at our library, and the rest is almost history–we’ve both read it AND The Ghost Wore Gray, and I just finished The Ghost in the Big Brass Bed on the treadmill and stuck it on her bookshelf on my way upstairs.  All three are fairly short, fast-paced, action-packed, and filled with just enough history to make me want to do a happy dance; they’re not difficult reads, but they’re certainly for middle elementary students and up (unless, I suppose, you have an excellent very young reader who’s really into ghosts and isn’t going to have nightmares after reading about them).  There were a lot of ghost stories like this in the mid-70s to the early 90s, now that I’m thinking about it–Avi’s Something Upstairs, Richard Peck’s The Ghost Belonged to Me and Voices After Midnight, and more that escape me at the moment–stories with just a bit of a similar feel to them.  If you or your kiddos have enjoyed any of those, try these; if you enjoy these, try some of those next.

Either way, you won’t be disappointed.