vacation – Page 3 – Peaceful Reader

Sweet Baltimore

Enjoying the sunny backyard of friends in Hobart, IN

After a day and a half staying with friends near Chicago we boarded a plane at Midway and flew to Baltimore to spend time with my gracious in-laws. Usually when we fly to Baltimore we drive the hour to Silver Spring without stopping but this time my husband was determined to visit two places; Lexington Market and Edgar Allen Poe’s grave. Luckily both places are downtown Baltimore and within a few blocks of each other.

Lunch Time Stop

Teenage Boy with his Soft Shell Crab Sub

Adult Cold Brew with my Crab Cake

Handsome Husband with Poe

20 Questions-I answered them all…

(My kids playing by Lake Michigan)

Rebecca at Lost in Books hosts 20 Questions and I was featured waaay back on June 24th-right in the middle of my Michigan camping vacation. Read my answers to her interesting questions by clicking here. Her questions really made me contemplative about how everyone comes to reading from different places but how similar we all become with our faces tucked behind a book.

Reading on vacation

I had a lovely Spring Break. I finished Wildwood Dancing before we left for Chicago (review to come), I read Just Listen by Sarah Dessen on the trip and on the ride home yesterday I got half way through Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes. It isn’t a massive amount but I did also enjoy my children, see my step-daughter in a play (She Loves Me) at Northside College Prep and visit with one of my oldest friends, Barbara and her lovely family. Barbara gave me back Jitterbug Perfume, which I had lent her and now I think I might need to go back and reread it as she said she needed a dictionary to read it…

We got home yesterday after picking up the dog at the kennel (which was not the doggie retreat it advertised and unpacked the car from out four day trip. You would have thought we had the kitchen sink in the station wagon. There is something about driving that makes our family pack anything we think we might need in that four day period. I love pulling out the bag of activities my daughter took along but never bothered to use. I love that we carted along Elizabeth, her AG doll, who spent the entire vacation in the car. I made some comment to peaceful girl about Elizabeth not having a very exciting road trip-never leaving the station wagon-her retort is “She’s a doll, mom!” Mmmhmmm…a doll who needs her own wardrobe, bedroom set and accessories, interesting!

I think I’m excited about Health Care Reform passing although I’m not sure. Yes, I do want health care reform but truthfully, I wish I could have written the bill myself. It would have said something like this …”If you do not have quality, affordable health care for you and your family then you may purchase health care from the US government public option. Public Option just gives us a good alternative to the rip-off insurance companies out there who keep upping the price of insurance with no extra benefits involved. I would have thrown in something about small businesses using the public option as well because they need to be competitive in today’s market.” It would have been about a paragraph long instead of the 100 page long document I researched online. Part A, Part B, Part C…to much filler.

In other current news I have been listening to The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, which is 17 discs long. I love the story and am anxious to get back to listening to it on my drive back and forth to work. I’ve had to renew it 3 times from the library (an ipod would help) so that both my husband and I can finish it.

How is your first day of Spring?

Ooh-La-La-Spring Break

Okay, this is where I would like to be spending Spring Break. It looks relaxing. I would have a book in my hand, of course. Instead we are heading into Chicago-still exciting-but not a pool with real palm trees! I have a stack of books in front of me to review so I guess I should start there.

I started reading gossip of the starlings by Nina de Gramont one morning at the breakfast table. I was riveted…didn’t want to go to school (rarely happens) and I continued to read long after my granola was gone. I tucked it into my school bag and headed off for the day, hoping to read a few more chapters over lunch.

The story:

As soon as Catherine Morrow transfers in to Esther Percy School for Girls, Skye Butterfield
chooses her as her friend. Even though Catherine is at Esther Percy to turn over a new, clean leaf, she allows Skye to take control. Catherine has the connections and Skye has the typical burning desire to try it all. Skye’s father is a famous senator and even though, she loves her father, she can’t help but see all the hypocrisy surrounding their family life. This mixture of feelings pulls Skye in all different directions and seems to steer her down the continual wrong path. Catherine introduces her to coke but its Skye who needs to keep doing it and who discovers a variety of other drugs along the way. She also gets several teachers in trouble and has an affair with her English teacher.

My thoughts:

After the initial thrill of reading I was disappointed in the overall topic. I got tired of Skye running the show. I got tired of Catherine constantly accepting and excusing her friend’s behaviour. Catherine, in this same, drug-filled year, is attempting to place at the National Horse Show and hold on to her own friends and family. There were parts of the book I enjoyed and while I see it as probably pretty accurate boarding school behaviour (any high school for that matter) I found it to be too over-the-top, which made me just want to shake Catherine-hello-can you just say NO, just once. I enjoyed the relationship between John Paul and Catherine-good young romance but beyond that I found nothing to connect to in the story.
Confessions of a bibliophile review

2.5/5 peaceful stars

YA Fiction

Another road-trip

Off we go for another summer trip, this time to Ely, MN where my extended immediate family will be gathering to celebrate my mother’s 29th:) birthday!! My three brothers, two sisters-in-law and their five children (all under the age of seven) except for my 17-year-old step-daughter will be convening at a cabin there for the next five days. See there is Ely way up there, next to Canada. While I’m that close I could go check out there health care system (kidding, M. Moore already did that). I am looking forward to spending time with my family, reading, cooking, and playing with children. Hopefully, it will be warm enough to swim every day in the lake. Everyone in my family loves to read, cook and talk politics. Luckily, we are mostly of the same party so that leaves out one thing to argue about! My three brothers all had children later in life…about the same time I had J. so all the kids will be playing together happily! Of course, the only other girl cousin is only 7 mos. old bu J. will deal. She can run with the boys, then play dress-up with the real baby!

I am taking books to read but do not know if I will have time to blog or if I can borrow someone else’s laptop as mine is still not functioning. Right now I have so much packing and house-cleaning to finish I can’t even think of the books packed away in my duffel, waiting for me to read. Does anybody else clean their house before they leave for a trip? My fourteen-year-old thought I was crazy when I said I would be vacuuming soon! By the way, he won’t be joining us in Ely as he is heading off for two weeks in Alaska with another set of grandparents!

Safe travels for everyone!
p.s. notice the new peaceful reader look!! I learned a little about
rewriting HTML code this morning!!
Peace!

Thanksgiving

Now I feel a little guilty…not over how much turkey I’ve eaten, because I didn’t have any…but that my last post was almost a week ago! I have been having a lovely Thanksgiving at my brother’s home in Deephaven. We have had great food, wonderful wine and great company. Our four children have played well. Watching the three little ones chasing each other around outside in makeshift Star Wars costumes was a big highlight!!
We also took a trip into the city to see the Minneapolis Children’s Theatre presentation of The lion, the witch and the wardrobe, which was stunning. I love children’s theatre!!
ahhh, there is something wonderful about relaxing with close relatives and sharing lots of mashed potatoes!!

South Dakota

We’ve already taken our one big summer road trip vacation and it was great. We traveled across the state of South Dakota, site-seeing along the way. We saw the Corn Palace in Mitchell, a great Sioux museum in Chamberlain and of course, Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse carving, which was fascinating even though it wasn’t finished. Even as a work in progress it has an extensive museum attached and was very informative and the kids loved it and well, isn’t that what we are aiming for when we set off on these long voyages in the station wagon!! It certainly isn’t the fancy motels or the screaming in the back seat. At the Crazy Horse museum I purchased a book called Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog. Combining work with play I read it throughout the rest of the trip. Very good read about how our ancestors continued to be cruel to our original Native population through the 60’s and 70’s. Of course, most of us really smart people already knew that but this book helped me see just how senselessly cruel we were and are still probably. I of course grew up wanting to be a Native American…I wanted to belong to a tribe…I loved our family trip to Pipestone. And now I know that at the same time I was wanting to be an Indian, Indians were being subjected to awful abuses on their own small reservations. I recommend the book for anyone who wants to learn more about the Sioux Nation history including Leonard Peltier.
With all my ramblings I didn’t even get to all the fun we had in Denver, CO for the second leg of our journey!!