Brothers and sisters...

Happy Siblings Day to my brother and sister (and brother-in-law, too!) 

You guys are so absolutely positively wonderful and I'm so very blessed to have you in my life!

I thought the following to be rather true of us and they made my think of you :)

 

 

 

 

(No, names mentioned...you know who you are)

 

 

 

 

xoxo

 ~Emma

Bits and Pieces: February/March '18

Hi there!  Remember me??

I haven't a valid excuse, so I shan't invent one...

Instead, I thought I'd give a pictorial account of my adventures/excursions/mischief that has evidently kept me so thoroughly occupied as of late. (Or something like that).

New chapel veils I hope to review soon...

Bacon and puff pancake for Shrove Tuesday....

One of my latest projects I did in February (more on that to come.)

~

At the end February, my brother and I went up to NY for a week to help our sister and brother-in-law move into their new place!  It was a lot of hard work, but also fun to be doing it together.  And seeing my niece was a nice bonus, too :)  Here are some pictures from the trip...

A little sleepy...

Now these, I will have you know, are the best swings ever!!!

Trying for an artistic angle...how'd I do? ;)

 Being silly with her Uncle Matthew!

Part of the view heading home again after a busy week...

Woohoo!

A warm welcome home from the greeting committee!

Homemade Lenten pretzels...mmm

When will I learn to read one book at a time???

Hopefully the last snow of the season!

It is awfully pretty, though...

Benjamin caught being nice for a change!

 

 St. Patrick's Day! Only a few days late...

Okay, so I pinky promise you I'll have a "real" post up very soon!  This has been an especially busy time for me and, as you can tell, life kind of pushed blogging to the back burner.  That doesn't mean I haven't thought of you, though, because I have!  That's partly the reason for the excessive flood of pictures, so I'd have something to share of my adventures!  I hope you enjoyed :)

 Happy Feast of Saint Joseph! 

Always,

~Emma

 p.s. Please let me know if you have trouble viewing any of the pictures, either on the blog or email version, as I was having a difficult time uploading them.

Words, pages, paragraphs

Helloooo,

I love how I always have these spectacularly wonderful ambitions that never quite come about in a timely manner.  It's great, it really is.  Take this post for example, it probably would have been far more relevant had I written it last month when 2017 had just ended and everyone was still interested in what happened during the span of that year.  

Well guess what, I still care.  And because I care, I'm still going to tell you about all the books I read last year! So ha! (If you do not care, I encourage you to discontinue reading this now.)

There, now we may proceed!

 

 (I can only make out "David Copperfield" in this picture, a book I am not particularly fond of, but they all look so pretty! They must be good books, heehee)

You're going to be just amazed when I tell you how many books I read!  It is shocking, absolutely shocking!  You ready?

23!!!!!! (boo, Emma, boooo!)

 One of my go-to quotes, ask my family ;)

I know, not a lot.  Oh well. I don't really know how that happened, I mean, other than the obvious fact I just didn't read many books.  I think I read almost twice that many in 2016, so I'll have to try to beat that score this year!  (Because I know I don't have a chance at beating my brother!)

You might be thinking, "That's still a decent amount of books, Emma, it's okay!"  But here's the thing, a rather large majority of them were school books or picture books.  (What can I say?  I have a thing for rereading Beatrix Potter stories (maybe in accents...)  My dear sister will back me on this.)

  

Anyway, onto the books I read!

I'll spare you the textbooks and such, I don't think they'd be of much interest to you.

 

The first real book I read was "The Hidden Treasure of Glaston" by Eleanor Jewitt.  It was an adventure story set in medieval  England about two boys living in Glastonbury Monastery who search for the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend and uncover many more hidden secrets about themselves along the way.  I enjoyed it!

Also:

• "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte.  If you liked this book, I would like to shake your hand.  If you love this book, we need to talk because you need to tell me what you see in it.  Sorrow, depression, death, wasted lives, more death.  What's not to love, right?

 

• "The Twelve Dancing Princesses"~The Grimm Brothers.  Um...interesting concept.  In a nutshell, *spoiler alert* king hires old (broke) soldier to follow his twelve rebellious daughters around at night to a magical dancing land that they disappear to.  They don't know they're being followed, he tattletales on them to their father, instead of punishing the naughty princesses, the king let's the old (broke) soldier to marry whichever daughter he chooses as a reward, he marries the eldest because "she's closest in age" (ever though I'm pretty sure he liked the youngest one best), The End!  How'd I do?

• "The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck" (my favorite), and "The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin", both Beatrix Potter.  We know those are always good, though!

•  "Weddings In the Family"~Dale Fife.  A sweet story told from the perspective of a little girl about each of her quirky Alsatian relatives' weddings and the hilarity often surrounding each of these events.

• "Lay Siege to Heaven"~Louis de Wohl.  The semi-fictional account of the life of the great Saint Catherine of Siena.

 

• "Number the Stars"~Lois Lowry.  A moving fictional story about a girl living in Denmark during the Nazi invasion of that country and how she helps to save Jewish refugee families escape capture.

• "The Great Gatsby"~F. Scott Fitzgerald.  This.  Book.  Is.  Wonderful.  If you haven't read it, you must do so.  If you have read it, tell me what you thought!

• "The Hundred Dresses"~Eleanor Estes.  I liked this book slightly less than her others, (The Moffats, Pinky-Pie ) but overall it was an enjoyable story.

• "'The Awakening of Miss Prim"~Natalia Sanmartin Fenolerra.  I enjoyed this book more than I expected to initially.  (What can I say, I judge books by their covers.)  If you love "Pride and Prejudice", "Little Woman", and constant intellectual Latin quotations, you will probably love it, too.

• "No Plot, No Problem", Chris Baty's wonderful accompany to doing NaNoWriMo, sooo worth the read!  I actually bought my own copy of the updated version so I'd have it next time around, it was that helpful.

•   "Saint Patrick and the Peddler"Margaret Hodges.  Confession: this was a picture book.  But it was a really good, Catholic picture book!  I read it to a bunch of kindergartners and kind of fell in love with it, the pictures are gorgeous!!  (And it was Ireland, so I mean, there was no way I wasn't going to read it ;) )

• "Black Heels and Tractor Wheels"~Ree Drummond.  (Not as edgy as it sounds, I promise.)  Anybody know Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman?  She's a cook, author, cooking show host, and really funny blogger.  This was a (sort of) dramatic biography of how she, a city girl through and through, met, fell in love, and married her cowboy-husband and all the crazy stories she tells surrounding those events.

And finally...

• "Rifles for Watie"~Harold Keith.  This is my brother's favorite book, he actually read it out loud to me!  I promised him I'd write a special post about it and about the new holiday we invented in honor of it, the NFRD or, "National Rifles for Watie Day".  More on that soon :)

Stats:

In conclusion, (if you stuck around this long) I read,

 23 books in 2017,

4,583 pages,

the longest book I read was "Christ And the Americas"~Anne Carroll, at 440 pages.

And my favorite book was "The Great Gatsby".

So I didn't win my family's reading challenge in any category last year, but I've got dibs for this year!  I'm going to try, at least!

What books did you read in 2017?  Did you have a favorite(s), least favorite(s)?


Always,
~Emma