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Preserving Camping Memories
Our first camping trip of the season this year was on Mother’s Day weekend. We decided, kinda on the spur of the moment, to go to Yakima (about 3.5 hours away) and connect with our niece and her family who live over there. Yakima is in the high desert part of Washington State, known for its orchards and wineries, but…
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An Uplifting Project
Ever since he was a teenager Lyle has been a “shade tree mechanic” on the side, performing maintenance on our cars and doing occasional repairs for friends and family. Now that he has adult daughters and nieces with their own cars he has been spending even more time in the garage. (Not really under a shade tree.) His brother Loren…
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Review: The Memory House
Rachel Hauck is a popular author among readers of Christian fiction and with good reason. Her books are intriguing and relatable. The Memory House is no exception.
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Of Bookshops and Long-Lost Cousins
When I grow up I want to be a writer. More specifically, a novelist. I really do. I know I’ve been saying that for awhile but I’m still working on it. I haven’t always wanted to be a writer, though. When I was younger my big dream was to own a bookstore. I never had the capital for that, and…
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The Promise of Spring
It’s been a weird winter in our part of the country. December and January were relatively mild with not much snow and moderate temperatures. Instead we had winter all at once for the whole month of February with record-breaking snow fall and single digit/teen temperatures. It seems like the change to Daylight Saving Time last weekend may have flipped the…
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Louisa May Alcott
It’s been years since I’ve read Little Women. To be perfectly honest, it never was one of my favorite novels, though I really wanted to like it. I mean, Jo doesn’t end up with Laurie… and Beth dies… what kind of happily-ever-after romance story is that? The Musical Three years ago, while we lived in Colorado, my friend Heather invited…
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10 Favorite Book Series for Girls
I learned to read independently when I was 7 years old and I’ve pretty much had my nose in a book ever since. This week when a friend asked for some series book recommendations for girls ages 8 and 10, my mind went back to my family’s weekly library visits in the 1970s. I can’t remember if our public library…
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Upcoming Book Reviews
I am so excited about all the books I have piled up to review in the next few weeks! I hadn’t realized there were quite so many until I sat down to compile this list, but once I broke the books down into genres I can see that it’s totally doable. I mostly post my reviews on Amazon and GoodReads,…
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The Shepherd of the Hills
Last summer I scored a stack of somewhat battered vintage books at a thrift store. Do you remember the lovely copy of Tennyson? Here’s another treasure I found that same day. This 1907 copy of The Shepherd of the Hills still has the original dust jacket. It’s tattered and fragile, but it’s amazing to me that it has been loosely wrapped around…
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Reading Goals
I guess I don’t need to tell you that reading is a lot easier than writing, do I? For me, reading is somewhat like breathing. I don’t “make time for it.” I don’t “discipline myself to read.” It just happens. Writing, on the other hand, does take discipline. And time. And thought. At this season of my life time seems to…
