It’s
finally here! The balls are swooshing,
late night practicing, team dinners cooking, and basketball shoe buying. We are the Imelda Marcos of basketball shoes
around here. And I thought girls
were supposed to be the big spenders, it’s the boys and their NBA swag and JackThreads socks. I guess crazy socks are what’s
in on the basketball circuit, so I'll ignore the kangaroo and
giraffe feet. So now a senior
and seventh grader basketball schedule is being thrown into our myriad
of activities, but this just adds to the fun, the on the go, never-ending chaos. How do I capture the insanity on this year’s Christmas
card? I love sending unique
non-traditional greetings, and planning to make a DVD movie case for this year's
Christmas card. Not sure if we should
go with an action packed movie or something like A Griswold Family
Christmas? I’ll explain later how my
first idea was shot done, literally!
And
ouch! When did a college dorm start costing as much as a house payment? We are thrilled that our oldest son is
receiving college acceptance letters, but the price of campus housing is
unreal. Every freshman needs to have
the college dorm experience after leaving the nest. After all, I wouldn’t be the same person
today if it weren’t for experiencing the Chitwood dorm life @ Texas Tech. Aside from the R A pouring our wine coolers
down the sink and the 3 a.m. fire evacuations due to flaming pizza boxes being
thrown down the trash shoot, it was a great way to meet people and connect with
Raider land. But I’m assuming
college kids aren’t doing stupid things like that today? Um okay mom, keep living in your delusional
world. But hopefully thinking, if he takes
the basketball scholarship route not only will it save us a little money, but keep him
so busy he won’t have time to be a part of dumb, not so well thought out
activities. One can hope right!
No
Place
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
Jangle: A Big Fish Story
Turkey Trouble
Thanksgiving
At The Tappleton’s
This Never Gets Old
But for tonight, I’m getting the chance to hang with the oldest and youngest and watching Monsters University.
In prepping
for our hill country Thanksgiving I gave into the Duck Dynasty craze and bought the family camo shirts and personalized
duck calls. No were not hunting, just thought
we needed a little duck in our life.
I made a camo cake and announced that we were going with a Duck the
Halls Christmas card this year. The cake
looked funky and was a big hit, but can’t say the same excitement was there for this theme choice, so back to the drawing board I go.
I found this cake mix @ Wal-Mart?
It’s Ace of Cakes & worth the extra pennies!
Our camo and duck calls will still be put
to good use in the woods this Thanksgiving, and I'll sneak in a few
pictures. Were sure to keep all the deer
and other wildlife away, but maybe I can talk the family into a polar bear dip in the
freezing river. Just kidding, they think
the water is too cold even during the summer.
And it is, the water @ Blue Hole holds a 68 degree constant water
temp. Brrr…
So what are your Thanksgiving plans - to put up lights, watch the big game, Christmas
shop? Were keeping it simple and
going to the Wimberley Christmas village, town square shopping, and
hopefully a visit to Santa. Not sure what happened
with my six year old, but last year she would have nothing to do with Santa! But hopefully now, she’ll sit on his lap long enough for me to get a picture! Anyway, I wish you a Happy & Blessed
Thanksgiving, and will get back with you on the Christmas front soon!
The Good Reads
Ms. Taffy wins a pig
on the radio station, but soon realizes it’s not the sort she expected to add to
her collection. And can she manage a
growing pig and her cats in a tiny apartment? Through zany and clever trial and error
attempts from her neighbors, a solution is reached. A compassionate swine story, but I do have to
interject on the truth about pigs.
Do you remember last
years pig posts where my daughter joined FFA and we got roped into buying not
one, but two pigs? The only real suitable
place for a pig is a farm because they’re smelly, destructive, noisy, carry
mites, and without proper exercise can get unruly. Sorry to take the rose colored glasses off
this story but in case you were thinking a pink curly tailed pig is just what
you need, it’s not! I apologize for the
bias review, but even my reader thought the people living in the
neighborhood would take the pig during the night and turn it into pork
chops. That’s what we did, and now have enough pork
to get us through a Zombie apocalypse.
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
By Brown, Peter
Tiger Gone Wild!
This charming tale is no different than Peter Brown’s other loved books, like Creepy
Carrots and Children Make Terrible Pets.
Tying to shake it up a bit and going through a mid life crisis, this
Tiger’s had enough status quo. He wants
to run wild, but in doing so begins to miss companionship. Amusingly, on his return, his uptight
friends have also gone a little wild. Don’t we all feel the need to release our
inner tiger now and then? Grrr…eat that
this shimmering orange tiger discovers when
you open the door and allow others to be themselves, positive things can
happen. As they say, a tiger cannot
change his stripes after all.
Our Librarian Won’t Tell Us Anything!
By Buzzeo, Toni
A
library guru, nut, fanatic, or whatever you want to call me I always enjoy life
lessons coming from the library. Mrs.
Skorupski the librarian won’t tell the students anything, but instead has them
do the required tasks themselves. Delivers
that we learn best by doing, but the writing was tedious with too much unnecessary
detail. My reader stuck with it though
wanting to see what would be dangling from the librarian’s ears. Spiders, bees, what will she wear next?
Jangle: A Big Fish Story
By Shannon, David
A smooth tale of a
story, that’s so famous, fisherman have been talking about it for years. Jangle’s the legendary fish is more than you
can imagine and you’ll love this boy’s underwater adventure, and better yet his
choice in the end. Beautiful watery
illustrations with jangling lures from the fishes' mouth will “catch” you
by surprise. Always been a David Shannon fan,
but this one more than others captures a valuable lesson. One green fishing tackle box you just
gotta open.
And there it you have it,
her very own Jangles.
Turkey Trouble
By Silvano,
Wendi
Oh no, turkey is in troubled and will go through lengths not to end up on
the Thanksgiving table. Will Farmer Jake
be fooled by his disguises and eat the rooster instead? Ding, Dong! ... Pizza’s here, so it looks like
there will be another year for this turkey. Loved how the clever bird
uses his resources, and my little reader enjoyed matching the garden veggies to
the pizza topping. “The pizza is a flat
pumpkin, don’t you see it?” Pairs great
with our home books, Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving and Sometimes It's Feathers.
And here’s one turkey in disguise that you
might find on an episode of Duck Dynasty.
Yes, it’s Si with his tea glass.
Who woulda' thought?
Thanksgiving
At The Tappleton’s
By
Stuller, Judith
Everyone
in the family is responsible for a part of the Thanksgiving meal. But through a series of unfortunate events
one by one they loose their assigned foods.
After learning it’s not about what’s on the table, but in your heart
they feast on delicious Liverwurst sandwiches and pickles. My first grader thought because they were
wolves, they were going to invite the goat milkman over and eat him for
Thanksgiving.
We just
watched the Thanksgiving Charlie Brown and my reader connected that the wolves in this story didn't have a "regular" Thanksgiving dinner just like in a Charlie Brown's
Thanksgiving. She’s going with
the toast and popcorn over the Liverwurst.
_______________________________
Twenty years from
now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the
ones you did do.
So throw off the
bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade
winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream.
Discover.
