What are you reading?

    One of my favorite things to do during the summer is to read. (I know, I'm SUPER exciting)  I find reading to be incredibly relaxing and I've always been a nerdy type who loves to learn. You can catch me reading anything from a crime novel to a textbook. So far this summer I have read:

Caught by Harlen Coben
A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick
The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
Sticky Faith by Kara Powell
(Me and My Big Mouse by Ethan Long- I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. It's a kids book and my boys really liked it)
He Who Fears the Wolf by Karin Fossum

    Apparently it's a historical fiction, crime novel type summer. I'm currently reading:
Crash The Chatterbox: Hearing God's Voice Above All Others by Steven Furtick- I'm reading this with a small group of my friends. We've been meeting to talk about the book. It's good but I lose momentum if it is too long between meetings. I am definitely a "read through this book and think about it as I go" person rather than "a little here, a little there" type.

     I'm also reading Columbine by Dave Cullen. If you are not aware, Columbine is a high school that had a school shooting back in April of 1999. Any school shooting is horrific but this one was one of the first ones that really hit home for me since I was just about to graduate with my degree in music education and start teaching. I just started it yesterday and I don't think it's going to be a book I can say that I love or enjoy but definitely one that will make me think. I actually have met the father of Rachel Scott, the first person killed in the attack, and heard him speak to our students. It was painful to read her story and connect it with a person I have actually spoken to and learned about. I am also glad that the author decided to include no pictures in the book.

      There is one book that I started this summer that I put back on my "to read" shelf. After about 300 pages I found that I still was not really into the book. I can usually whiz through a book and finish it, even if it isn't super interesting but this book is really long and I think I just needed a change of pace. I'm also not really connecting with many of the characters. This book is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I really wanted to read it since it's considered a classic. I'll try it another time and see if I become more invested.

     What are you reading right now? What's the best book you have read lately?

Happy New Year!

     Happy New Year! I've seen many more readers from Finland and a few places that I haven't seen before (Serbia, Pakistan, etc) on my blog. Welcome! I'd love to get to know you all. A large snowstorm on the East Coast delayed the end of my winter break so I got an opportunity to stay home a few extra days. Here are some pictures since I last wrote.

 The boys dressed up for Christmas. Sorry the lighting is bright and you can't see how nice the tree looked.

 He was slightly excited with his new tablet.

 David and I and the ornament he made me at school.

 David at Grammy's.

 The boys and their cousin. We took a series of pictures. This is the least awful- and David makes me laugh.

 Tin can robot. I'm sure he'll love putting this together.

 Our most recent snowstorm provided many opportunities for the boys to go play. David is by the telephone pole, buried up to his shoulders. He is throwing snowballs at Tim, whose head you can see on the right and is also in a big pile.  They were having a blast.

The dagger icicles hanging from the house. They were huge.

Resolutions?

    How do you feel about resolutions? Every year, I pretty much make the same ones- get in shape, get the apartment organized, etc. This year, I have read many posts from bloggers about how they picked one word and focused on that 1 word for the entire year. Rather than fail at a list of resolutions, they chose something that would help guide their decisions. I have decided that this is something I'm going to try this year.
     I sat down and considered which word I would choose to focus on. The first word that popped into my head was "Declutter." I have had so much going on this year that I felt kind of frantic for a lot of it. Anyone who knows me well will know that I'm a pile person and frequently my apartment (and my car, classroom, office...life)  gets pretty cluttered because of it. However, declutter does not really have positive connotations in my head so I decided that I would like another one. I decided to go about this in a backwards way. I thought about what I wanted to change and why I wanted those things to change. Ultimately, what were my real goals rather than the superficial ones?
     This year was tough. There were a lot of events that slowed me down to think about life, and quite honestly, there were things that really made me extremely concerned about the world my children are growing up in. (Not like I haven't felt this before, but it was one thing after another this year.) The Boston Marathon Bombings is one of the events that I'm thinking of. After some praying and thinking, I realized that this past month I have been pretty burnt out and anxious. I have let some friendships get weaker, stopped writing, been somewhat content in the messiness and gotten used to feeling stressed and frantic. I have also felt like, since I have not felt 100% myself, I have not been myself in my relationships with people.  So, I'm choosing my word: REJUVENATE.

     Good ol' Merriam Webster defines rejuvenate: ": to make (someone) feel or look young, healthy, or energetic again, 2 : to give new strength or energy to (something)"

   Ironically, as a Christian, I don't think I can rejuvenate myself so one of the major things I'd like to focus on this year is my relationship with God. As Galatians 2:20 says "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." I think if I concentrate this year on strengthening my faith, renewal and rejuvenation will come. 

     There are things I can work on though- getting healthy, making my life less cluttered so I can do things more effectively, investing in my relationships with friends and family and reconnecting with some of them as well. I guess the main reason I decided to choose one word is that I can use the word to help me in my decisions. How often do I say "yes" to things I don't really want to do or things I feel I have to (that aren't actually things I HAVE to) and then feel more overwhelmed?  I actually started considering this in late December. It led to me accepting invitations that I would've turned down normally and resulted in some nice times with friends. My kids are also enjoying me being a little more relaxed. 

     I'll be joining the community at oneword365.com to encourage others and keep myself accountable. I'm sure I'll blog more about it during the year.  If you were going to choose one word for yourself, which word would you choose? What are your goals this year?

 

Mail..

    Speaking of the blog, should I try the 366 challenge again? I will eventually succeed at this. Since writing is a huge stress reliever for me (when I'm not making myself anxious about not getting back to people within a certain time frame), I will continue the challenge. If I don't reach my goal this year I will probably not try again. I will not stress about it. If you don't know what my challenge was, I was hoping to send and receive at least 366 pieces of mail within the span of one year. (That year had was a leap year.)  I was doing fairly well this year and then my laptop broke and I lost track of everything.This also affected my blogging.

     So far I have a letter out to Katherine in Australia and Larry in Minnesota. No mail received yet. NOTHING at all, not even a bill.  If you'd like to send me something, or start penpalling, leave me a message and I will get in touch with you. I would like to get caught up with all of my normal penpals before I take on any new pals but I'm hoping that I can do that fairly quickly.  If you'd like to correspond, please add your address to my postable.  If I see anybody new added, I'll send you a postcard :)

2014 Mail Challenge:

Sent: 4- Letter to Katherine- Australia,  Letter to Larry- USA, Postcrossing card  US-2570859     to Germany, and a US to US postcard swap headed to Washington.

Received: 0