Archives for October 2008

Eclipse

October 27, 2008 by Amy 6 Comments

******************ECLIPSE SPOILERS******************

I don’t have a whole lot of time to write but I did want to get this off my chest before I got so involved with Breaking Dawn. I started Eclipse Saturday afternoon and finished in the car line this afternoon getting Lexi. 48 hours. 629 pages. I’m insane and addicted but what can I say? Oh maybe that Eclipse was SO much better than New Moon. It had me scared for the first few hundred pages. I felt for a time that I was simply reading a History books with Edward and Bella scenes stuck in between. But it got REALLY good towards the end.

One of my favorite chapters was Compromise. It was Edward and Bella’s chapter where they compromise on marriage and sex. I don’t think anything more than kissing happened and somehow I think I was blushing. I liked the idea of the compromise. I liked that Edward pulled out a card and used it to his advantage and ours since it will hurry the process along. I just liked the theme of compromise she wove in there for a time.

It turns out I could handle Jac0b Black. In fact, I could be happy with them together. In fact, don’t tell anyone this, but Edward was quite on my nerves most of the first half. The way he was treating her like a child, well, it was nauseating. Jac0b and her was just so comfortable…and warm together. By the end of the book I almost hoped she picked him. Not quite, but almost.

And speaking of Edward and Jac0b I think my second favorite chapter was Fire and Ice. When they were on the mountain the tent and Jac0b turned into a space heater. The conversation between Edward and Jac0b was completely entertaining. I honestly think at one point a small, audible giggle escaped my lungs I was smiling so hard. And I’m not kidding.

Usually the fight scene/Volturi/history stuff bored me in the first three books but all the writing of Victoria and her army were actually fascinating. I wasn’t trying to speed read through it.

And the end was nice. They’re engaged. Solidly. But poor Jake. I felt bad for the guy.

All in all, if you can get through the history lessons at the beginning, it was WELL worth the read. Definitely my second favorite in the series so far.

Sunday Scripture

October 26, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Boy, I haven’t done one of these in awhile. As you may (or may not) recall I’m going through Beth Moore’s Fruit of the Spirit Bible study with my small group on Saturday morning’s. I’ve been through that before and actually blogged about a few topics. I don’t like to rehash lessons from others’ too much but there is a verse that has stayed with me for two weeks now and I feel like I must share.

In Acts we read of Stephen, a Christ follower who had false accusations thrown at him and who was eventually stoned to death. The actual stoning is covered at the end of Acts 7

54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56“Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.

In her study Beth points out that Christ stood up for this occassion. It was worthy of his effort, time, attention, care and concern. The questions I can not get out of my head…What caused Christ to stand? Was it out of respect? Worry? Praise? How often has Christ stood instead of sat at the right hand of God and most importantly…Have I ever done anything worthy of Christ standing to His feet? My immediate and unwavering answer is a resounding no. But I want that. We all look for God to say well done, my good and faithful child one day. Call me selfish but I want that now. I want to do something for the cause of Christ that makes Him get on His feet. And the cause of His standing? I hope it’s a standing ovation.

Excellent Saturday

October 25, 2008 by Amy 7 Comments

Today was a really great day. Felt very “Saturday-ish” to me. I slept in as long as I could before getting to Bible Study at 9:30. We had a great time talking with one another. That time has really become almost a confessional time between women in very different stages of life including age, marriage, spiritually and motherhood, and it’s so interesting to me to get so many viewpoints in such a small group.

When I got home, I did some ironing before we headed out to Moe’s to eat and Wal-Mart where I picked up books 3 and 4 of the Twilight series and Scott and I also got costumes for the costume party at youth group on Wednesday. I think I’m going to wait to tell you what Scott is going to be until I get a picture of him in it. Too much! As for me, you might guess what I chose…a vampiress. Yeah, I know, I’m lame. I haven’t dressed up for Halloween in 25 years so I thought I’d do a little something this year. The kids are really into costumes and the adults all seem to be jazzed for the party so…I bought a black cape, fangs, red lipstick, cool eyelashes and fake blood and I’ll plan to wear my black dress under the cape. Basically I’m going for the city girl vampiress look LOL.

This afternoon was spent cleaning and a little reading before heading to my parents’ for a little while for dinner. When we got home, J&J came over for some coffee to chat. Scott and J headed over to our youth pastor’s house for the UFC fights tonight so I’m left to read all evening. Oh darn.

All in all, a really great family day.

New Moon

October 25, 2008 by Amy 5 Comments

******************NEW MOON SPOILERS******************

I finished New Moon last night. And honestly? Not nearly as good. In fact, I could have skipped the whole thing. I’m such an Edward fan that I couldn’t handle him not being in the book. As mentioned in my previous post, I just couldn’t handle him leaving. I felt empty and it just wasn’t as good of a story without the two of them. The romance part of romance novel went out the door. Yes, she tried to take you to that place with Jac0b but they never got her there. I would have rather her jumped into it with Jac0b rather than danced around it for hundreds of pages. And then, when Edward finally did come back, it was crazy action and hardly any interaction. I can tell it wasn’t nearly as good just because I had only ONE post-it note marking a good passage and it wasn’t even a quote from Edward or Bella. That’s my new measuring stick…how many post-it notes are in the book at the end!

But, I do realize this book had a purpose to the story. I’m just not so sure she couldn’t have done the whole thing in 100 pages instead of 600. Here are a few things I’m happy we came out of from the book:

We got to know Jac0b. I liked that Bella had him as a friend.
We moved ahead with the werewolf storyline. I did enjoy having a whole new monster to learn about.
Edward left Bella and realized he couldn’t live without her.
Edward asked her to marry him.
The Voulturi forced Edward’s hand on turning Bella into a vampire.
I enjoyed Alice and Bella together.

I guess that is a lot to expect in a few chapters. I don’t know, instead of enjoying every page, I felt like I was always reading to get to the good part and unfortunately there was never a heart-stopping moment like that for me.

2009 Hot Blogger Calendars Available Now!

October 25, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

OK, this is it! Hot Blogger Calendars are now available!! (The one for the men is available too!) The site has up a post with the links to the calendar and some extra behind the scenes photos. Each blogger gets $2 and part of the proceeds go to charity.

Parent-Teacher Conference

October 24, 2008 by Amy 2 Comments

This morning I had my first parent-teacher conference. I was eager to hear what she said since Emma had such a hard time at the beginning of the year. One of her first comments was that I have a social butterfly on my hands. Almost the same words her preschool teacher told me. Which seeing all the problems we had at the beginning was a little surprising. I figured it’d be one extreme or the other. Either she comes out of her shell when she gets in class or she clams up the entire time.

She said she was worried at first but she has adjusted well. Apparently she is the leader of her clique. And yes, apparently, there are cliques even in Kindergarten. She did say that even though she is very social when she is in the comfort zone of her friends, when the teacher corrects her she gets VERY nervous and shakes badly. Also this week she volunteered to read a book to the class and was excited but shook the whole way through. Hmm, sounds familiar.

As for her academics, she is doing well. She didn’t rave and say she was bored and didn’t say she was behind…she is doing “adequately well”. She encouraged her to color at home and label things…even writing stories and making them into booklets. Emma is always coloring or drawing all the time so it won’t be hard to add writing to that.

One of those days

October 23, 2008 by Amy 2 Comments

I don’t have them much anymore but today was one of those days. Where work was as busy as it possibly could be and Scott worked late. In fact, it’s 10:52PM as I write this and I just STARTED jobs at work that are supposed to run an hour or two. I’ll have to stay up and run a few other things after that. It’s been that way all day. So busy that at about 5 when the kids decided they were hungry RIGHT when I had an implementation at work, I was balancing chatting with about 5 people, making creamed peas mashed potatoes and fielding questions from two hungry kids. It was just one of those days.

So I don’t have much to report from today except that I worked and snuck in some reading in between it all. We did manage to get out to Wal-Mart for a quick trip and some ice cream on the way home. I got mine extra big as a treat for myself. I’m sure my scale will beg to differ in the morning.

And speaking of tomorrow morning, I had planned to sleep in a bit since I’m going to be up so late but Emma’s teacher caught me on Google Talk just a few minutes ago (yes, chatting with her teacher at 10:30pm is a little weird) to say she needed to reschedule for earlier. So now I have to be at the school at 9:20. I will still be able to sleep in more than normal since neither of the girls have school tomorrow but not nearly as much as I wanted. Of course, with work so busy I probably didn’t have that luxury anyway.

New Moon and I are getting along better now. It’s still not the same as the first yet everyone tells me to keep on pressing through…so I’m going to take advantage of the quiet here while I wait for these jobs to finish. But I’m not complaining for an excuse to stay up and read…

RIP Desperate Housewives and Private Practice

October 23, 2008 by Amy 3 Comments

I’m done. With both of them. Desperate Housewives and Private Practice. Two staple shows for me are getting marked off the list. It’s not that they’ve done anything wrong really.

The DH five year jump didn’t really hurt them but the storylines they’ve chosen in that jump has. It’s all too close to real life now. I used to like it so much because it was so fantastical. It was ridiculous the way people acted and reacted and what happened to them would NEVER happened to one set of people. But now? It’s just all too close to home and I don’t get taken up with the storylines anymore. Now they’re just broken people trying to handle it like the rest of us. Yes, it works in some shows but not what I watched DH for.

As for Private Practice, I’m a huge Shonda Rhimes fan. I mean, really, she gave me my Grey’s baby. I had high hopes for Private Practice. I wanted to like all these doctors and their idiosyncracies and issues and patients. But I find I just don’t care. I don’t care if Sam and Della are sleeping together. I don’t care that Addison got a date with SWAT guy and I REALLY don’t care that the ped is sleeping with the hospital doctor. I do care a bit about Dell. I’m glad he’s back. But it’s just not enough to keep me watching.

So, sorry, ABC, I’m tuning out. RIP.