Archives for 2016

Friday Favorites: End of Summer Edition!

Friday, August 5, 2016

Friday’s are normally my favorite day of the week except when school starts back today! All teachers in my system report back today and kids don’t come until Wednesday. So depending on what time you’re reading this blog, I’m either getting ready for school or sitting through a training on dyslexia. #teacherlife One thing I am excited about today is getting to be with all of my teacher friends again 🙂

Today I’m linking up with Andrea to show you a few favorite moments from this past week!

When possible this week, I’ve really tried to soak up the fact that I could do absolutely nothing during the day. Catching up on the Real Housewives of New Jersey while covered up in a blanket (and reading blogs) was definitely a favorite moment!

It rained one day while I was home and it really made me think about how much I love rainy days. Actually, let me clarify. I do not like rainy days when I have to get out in the rain and be somewhere….like school. But I love rainy days at home and I wanted to capture my last rainy summer day at home!

Okay, so this may not be a favorite, but I definitely had one of those moments where I forgot I had clothes in the dryer when a freshly washed load needed to go in the dryer. So instead of letting these run a little more to get the wrinkles out, I placed them on the bench to let the others dry. After taking the other load out of the dryer, I put these back in and didn’t fold them until yesterday. Anyone else have those moments where you are unmotivated to fold any clothes?

Beautiful sunny mornings working on my study through 1 Peter are a favorite. If you’ve never done a Jen Wilkin study, you must! It’s intense, but I have learned so much.

My best friend lives too far from me, and we are still dreaming of the day when we can live in the same town again. Until then, we’ll schedule random weekdays to eat lunch and catch up. So thankful for her friendship!

I love receiving snaps from my husband! I was unable to go to a doctor’s appointment with him, so he snapped me to let me know where he was eating a snack after his appointment ha! Life with him is a favorite!

Excuse the cleavage in this picture (my sister pointed that out to me), but getting back into running and training for a half marathon that’s in December has been a favorite (sometimes ha) this summer!

I babysat this cutie and his baby brother last night–always a favorite! We played on Snapchat and his favorite was being a puppy!

July 2016 Reads

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Since we vacationed in June, I had WAY more free time in July to read. And because of that, I basically read one book a week! Check out my reviews below to see my thoughts on all four books.

How the post is organized: I will post a review from Amazon and then my thoughts will be in italics below the review.

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

Birdie Cousins has thrown herself into the details of her daughter Chess’s lavish wedding, from the floating dance floor in her Connecticut back yard to the color of the cocktail napkins. Like any mother of a bride-to-be, she is weathering the storms of excitement and chaos, tears and joy. But Birdie, a woman who prides herself on preparing for every possibility, could never have predicted the late-night phone call from Chess, abruptly announcing that she’s cancelled her engagement.

It’s only the first hint of what will be a summer of upheavals and revelations. Before the dust has even begun to settle, far worse news arrives, sending Chess into a tailspin of despair. Reluctantly taking a break from the first new romance she’s embarked on since the recent end of her 30-year marriage, Birdie circles the wagons and enlists the help of her younger daughter Tate and her own sister India. Soon all four are headed for beautiful, rustic Tuckernuck Island, off the coast of Nantucket, where their family has summered for generations. No phones, no television, no grocery store – a place without distractions where they can escape their troubles.

But throw sisters, daughters, ex-lovers, and long-kept secrets onto a remote island, and what might sound like a peaceful getaway becomes much more. Before summer has ended, dramatic truths are uncovered, old loves are rekindled, and new loves make themselves known. It’s a summertime story only Elin Hilderbrand can tell, filled with the heartache, laughter, and surprises that have made her page-turning, bestselling novels as much a part of summer as a long afternoon on a sunny beach.

Because Shay is my favorite blogger ever and since she’s always posting about reading Elin Hilderbrand, I thought I would give her a try. I went to my local library and it only had 4 Elin books. I read the inside cover of each and The Island seemed to be the best one. Y’all. This book might be my favorite Elin book ever! Once I got about 1/3 of the way in, I couldn’t put down the book. I carried it with me everywhere, and ended up staying up way past midnight one night to finish. I loved that this book had 4 different points of view and each chapter was told from one character’s POV. My favorite was Tate, and I would love it if Elin wrote a book picking up with Tate’s life after this book!

The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand

48-year-old Nantucketer Dabney Kimball Beech has always had a gift for matchmaking. Some call her ability mystical, while others – like her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man – call it meddlesome, but there’s no arguing with her results: With 42 happy couples to her credit and all of them still together, Dabney has never been wrong about romance.

Never, that is, except in the case of herself and Clendenin Hughes, the green-eyed boy who took her heart with him long ago when he left the island to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist. Now, after spending 27 years on the other side of the world, Clen is back on Nantucket, and Dabney has never felt so confused, or so alive.

But when tragedy threatens her own second chance, Dabney must face the choices she’s made and share painful secrets with her family. Determined to make use of her gift before it’s too late, she sets out to find perfect matches for those she loves most. The Matchmaker is a heartbreaking story about losing and finding love, even as you’re running out of time.

This is the 2nd Elin book I read last month and it was okay. The ending was unexpected (not what I would picture for a beach-read), and the plot wasn’t very exciting. I would definitely recommend The Island over The Matchmaker.

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser Dorrie Curtis. It’s a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mom in her thirties, to drop everything to drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati. With no clear explanation why. Tomorrow.

Dorrie, fleeing problems of her own and curious whether she can unlock the secrets of Isabelle’s guarded past, scarcely hesitates before agreeing, not knowing it will be a journey that changes both their lives.

Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship. They are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son’s irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her.

Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family’s housekeeper–in a town where blacks weren’t allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle’s first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.

I picked this book up at Target one night while I was browsing their book aisles. It was located in their book club section, so I thought it had to be good, right? I was right! I really loved this book! First of all, I love any book that has a love story (which is why I love every Nicholas Sparks book ever written). And secondly, I loved that this book took place in the early 1900s and had an interracial relationship–after all, I wholeheartedly believe that the Gospel is for everyone regardless of color! This book took place present day and in the past and had two different storylines with one main character–Isabelle. It was really sad to read that there were laws preventing interracial marriages in the early 1900s. I highly recommend this book!!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

I read this book because it’s my book club book for August and I wanted to get it read before school started back. And let me tell you, if it wasn’t for my book club, I would have put this book down and moved onto something else. Amazon says that multiple agencies have named this the best book of the year, but it wasn’t for me. It switched between multiple points of view within each chapter, so that made it hard to keep up with in the beginning. The narration also felt very emotionless and dry. Basically, not my favorite this month.

What’s a book that you’ve read recently that you’ve enjoyed?

Linking up with Jenn today!

Weekend Recap!!

Monday, August 1, 2016

Happy Monday, girls! I have missed y’all and I am so glad to be back! Lots of things have happened over the past few weeks, and I’ll definitely be filling y’all in this month.

But for now, I want to review this past weekend! Can you believe it’s already August?! Sadly, today is my last Monday off of work, and it’s back to school I go on Friday! (And I’m so not ready haha!)

Onto this past weekend…

FRIDAY

I did nothing picture-worthy Friday during the day, and honestly I forgot to take pictures, too. That’s what happens when you take a blogging break and aren’t going around taking pictures of everything you do ha!

I did laundry, cleaned, and read. I told Dustin that I wanted us to have an at-home date night that night, so we ordered pizza and watched The Big Short on Netflix. It was a fantastic movie!! I learned so much–and it was also a little infuriating to see what big businesses/banks get away with. If you’ve watched it, what were your thoughts during the movie? And did you understand everything?

Side note: Our TV isn’t picking up Netflix, so we’re forced to watch it on the laptop #firstworldprobs

SATURDAY

As I was leaving the house to go on a run Saturday morning, D was already up and working at stripping and sanding the last chair for our breakfast table. We bought this set off of Craigslist before we got married. Before we moved into our new house, he stripped, sanded, and restained the table and 5 chairs from a cherry to a mahogany –I still needed the 6th chair to do my grad school homework at the old apartment! So a year later, he finally gets to the very last chair!!

And since I still wasn’t in the habit of taking pictures, after running I met my little sister at Kroger to do some shopping for our older sister’s going away party that was mid-day Saturday. We had such a great time with family and are really going to miss Stefanie!

We stayed at Rachel and Nick’s house talking after the party was over and got home later than we had expected. Our Saturday night went like this….