Warning…this post contains a few spoilers in The Thirteenth Tale. So if you haven’t read it yet and want to, skip this post until you’ve read it.

I was really excited to read The Thirteenth Tale since the description sounded like just the kind of book I like. Afterall, I’m a big fan of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

There is no doubt that Diane Setterfield’s writing is imaginative,
articulate, and beautiful. I loved getting caught up in the world of
Angelfield and its many characters. And characters they were. I don’t
remember “meeting through reading” such oddball characters that I actually liked. But
Setterfield has a way of enticing you into this world you’d never enter
on your own.

I guess this is where I admit to being a bit disappointed in the
ending. It was the last 50-75 pages that let me down. In the movie Amadeus, there is a scene where Mozart is waiting for a verbal review of his latest
opera from the Emperor and his response was, “It was wonderful…but
there were…ah…too many notes.” To which Mozart was obscenely
offended, and quite understandably so as how could Mozart write one too
many notes?

Setterfield isn’t Mozart. She is a word craftsman and an incredible
story-teller. But I think this particular story could have been 63
pages shorter and a character (or two) less. Then it would have packed a bigger punch. In my humble opinion.

When I finished the book last night (I have done a lot of reading with
Adam draped over my shoulder for his afternoon nap, or out cold on our
bed while I snuggled up next to him. His longer sleeping schedule over
this sickness has given me more reading time than normal…which is how
I already finished this 400 page novel), I looked up a few reviews of
the book. People adored this book. People gushed over Setterfield’s
classic story-telling abilities. So many other bloggers participating
in the Spring Reading Thing
have read it and have loved it (I haven’t heard one negative comment
about it yet in the blogging world). What was wrong with me?  Then
I finally came upon a few reviews at Amazon that I agreed with
completely.

*SPOILER* One reviewer said that Setterfield just didn’t want
the story to end, and I have to agree. I think the “introduction” to
the ghost child…or the revelation of Winter’s true identity…was a
complete let-down. There was no need for a third child. There could
have been a much more clever explanation of how Adeline became the
competent Vida instead of introducing another character to explain the
secret story of Miss Winter’s past. */SPOILER*

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book because Setterfield is
extremely talented, and the story had me very interested for the first
3/4 of the book. I’d recommend it to people because it’s a fun read.
But I can’t say it’s a book that I’ll read again.

If I were to rate it, I’d give The Thirteenth Tale 3 out of 5 stars.

the strong and ugly virus that has wreaked havoc on our
household is the virus no parent ever wants to deal with. based on the
waning and waxing of adam’s vomiting, and the length of his sickness (5
days now), he was diagnosed this morning with rotavirus.

i’m happy to report that after 6 days, sawyer is back to normal 100%. his appetite
is back, his spunky little self is back…i have hope that adam will be
back in no time at all.

but your prayers are still coveted.

i didn’t intend to take a blogging break. it just so happened that vomit and other bodily fluids kinda took over the house and things like 5 loads of laundry, 3 loads of dishes, and 3 hours of sleep per day took the place of writing.

you see those two bookend-boys up there in the blog masthead? sawyer (right) and adam (left) have been slammed with the nastiest stomach virus we’ve ever seen. sawyer is finally getting back to normal, and adam is finally not sleeping 23 hours a day.

but i don’t think it’s over. i’m not going to say, “we’ve survived the stomach bug!” because it’s not over until we’ve all had it, right? well, hopefully not…we’re praying so hard that rowan stays healthy (although he’s bouncing off the walls!) and that kenny and i forgo getting to know our toilet bowl oh-so-well. i’ll let you know how we fair. please keep us in your prayers.

because really, i’ve never seen the life taken out of my boys until this nasty bug made its way into them. it is far worse than last year’s family sickness 2006.

i’ll be back when all the laundry is folded, all the rooms have been cleaned, and our lives are back to normal (hopefully tomorrow!)

parenting is the best. seriously. i can think of nothing else that makes me want to scream thankfulness and praise to God than when i stop and just “behold” rowan, sawyer, and adam.

but when your kid gets sick, you meet a “hard part” of parenting.

i don’t think i’m the only parent in the world who gets a pit the size of a grapefruit in their stomach the minute their child complains of “not feeling well” or begins the every-five-minute puke session. and it’s not because once your kids get sick, you are in for a lot of extra work, and hardly any sleep. the hard part for me is constant worry.

when rowan was 5 months old, he got his first virus – a cold virus with a low-grade fever. but i was a mess. we spent $60 on “cold and fever supplies” at the drugstore to make him get better faster. i prayed that the fever would just disappear, or that i was simply being too paranoid and his warm forehead wasn’t a fever afterall. the virus ran its course, and he was back to himself in no time. and we had a house full of cold and fever supplements to share with the neighborhood. but still, i worried about the next time a fever would hit.

i’m just a worrier. and that’s not a good thing to be when you also put everything in jesus’ hands. this is a struggle for me.

sawyer started puking yesterday at noon, and he puked for 10 minutes straight. this just after a HUGE diaper blowout. i was certain he was exorcising a demon. it just didn’t seem natural to puke for that long. he’s slowly but steadily getting better. today the “action” is less, but the fever is here. and my prayers for health for the rest of the family are being answered at the moment. of course, i’m worrying about him…his little body shaking for lack of nutrition and sleep and his poor diaper rash. and on top of worrying about him, i worry about the other two getting it (or kenny and i!). worry. worry. worry…

the other night, we were all in the living room a few minutes before it was time for the boys’ bedtime. i was at the piano playing hymns from a hymnal-for-piano-dummies (meaning each hymn had no more than two flats or sharps) and kenny pointed out a hymn that i haven’t sung in so long, based on Isaiah 66:12: “I will extend peace to her like a river.” Since that night, I’ve had the chorus stuck in my head…

“Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest, finding, as he promised, perfect peace and rest.”

God knows how much I pray for my little guys daily. (Worriers tend to be pretty frequent pray-ers, too!) So I know that my little family…my little guys…are stayed on Him. I look at that little face of Sawyer under that blanket and I know Whose hands he’s in, no matter what.

And the imperfect worry dissolves into a perfect peace.

please comment with your best advice on cleaning puke from carpets. i mean really cleaning them and not “masking” the odor.

one child sick with the bug, four others in the household (plus one poor weekend guest) to go, i’m sure!

we couldn’t find a local farm that hatched chicks for selling, and a few farmers kenny talked with actually advised us against getting chicks that way. we still felt uneasy ordering our chicks from the big hattery in texas and picking them up at the post office, so we found a happy medium at meyer hatchery which is only a couple hours drive away. i called last week to place an order for our 15 chicks (15!!!) and since a few of them weren’t going to be hatched until mid april, we decided on a pick-up date in late april.
kenny spent a few hours tooling around in his garage last week and built the beautiful brooder where the chicks will spend their first few weeks on a bed of pine shavings, eating organic chick starter and drinking filtered water.

and all of a sudden, i had a nightmare that all of our chickens were going to die before we got them into the coop. you see, we’ve been told by many places that pine shavings are hard to come by these days (something about people not building enough houses???), and i can’t even begin to tell you how hard it is finding organic chick starter. so i have images of our chicks starving, and walking on hard wood, drinking only filtered water. whatever will we do?

we’ll find the shavings, i’m sure…and we’ll start the chicks off with non-organic starter then switch them to completely organic chicken feed and our organic food scraps once they’re outside in their coop. whew. now that i have all that figured out…let me introduce you to our “brood.”

The Araucana will give us olive green or turquoise blue eggs! well, the shell is turquoise, the inside is “regular.”
The Golden Buff is a “favorite” because they’re good layers. and we’re assured 100% of getting all females. (all the other chickens we ordered aren’t “sexlinked” which means we have a 20% chance of getting a rooster with our order!)
The Buff Orpington…our original favorite…we’re told are “very broody” which means they can sit all day on an egg. or a nest. and they won’t like it when we go in to collect their eggs. so we kept them in our order because we still love them.
The Silver-Laced Wyandotte is my mom’s favorite chicken, ever. we ordered a few for her to take care of. she’s so excited, she’s already named them!

in the coming weeks, kenny’s working on the weekends to start coop construction. pictures will be posted and you better believe my camera will be flashing when those chicks are in our possession.

i can’t wait to introduce you to our fowl!

this morning, as we trolled the aisles of the grocery store, rowan looked up at me and said, “mommy, i’m SO happy it’s spring!”

perhaps it was because i told him we were going to buy some ingredients for a special cake we were going to make together to celebrate the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! and any mention of cake, rowan is on-board.

last week, we had snow. then a day of rain. here are a few pictures of what that leaves behind.

at least the snow is melting and not lingering for weeks on end.
the first picture is our back yard, which faces north. the mist is just above the
pine tree-line. the second is of our barn, which faces west -
therefore, a misty sunset. the most important part of these pictures to me is the green in them. since early january, we’ve had snow on the ground, and although that sounds like a lot of fun when you have three young boys, it isn’t when the temperatures are in the single digits, or the youngest of those boys just doesn’t want to be out for much longer than 5-10 minutes. we are ready to get outside and enjoy our yard again!

fortunately, the first day of spring here was 60 degrees. the warm air was so welcomed, and we celebrated!

our “first-day-of-spring” bunny cake…an idea i got from a blog i read sometime ago – i wish i could remember who it was! i wanted to decorate with fresh whipped cream, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries…but that cake will have to wait until mid-summer when those berries are ripe (and in our backyard!). and a walk outside..without bulky, winter coats!

and here is a haiku that perfectly describes the beauty of the transition from winter to spring.

the wait is over! my spring reading thing reading list is…

fiction:
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Recommended to me by my mom. I’m three chapters into it already and am hooked.
Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson. Another book recommendation from mom. I’ve met
people who love it and hate it. I’m eager to make my own opinion.
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris. Mom gave me this one too (see a paterrn here?). She is the author of Chocolat…I’ve
seen the movie, but hadn’t read the book. And if the book was better
than the movie, which is generally the case, then it must have been a
great book.
A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories
by Flannery O’Connor. NOT a recommendation from mom. In fact, Mom
doesn’t like Flannery O’Conner, but I love me some Flannery short stories. I
read a few of these before but not since college and I can’t wait to read them
again…and read some new ones.

non-fiction:
The Mommy Manual by Barbara Curtis. This has been on my wishlist for months and months. Mary at Owlhaven
recently reviewed it positively, so my need to have the book
skyrocketed. It was a birthday present from my mom, and I’m already
a quarter of the way through it. So far, I’m loving it, and every mom
reading this should get yourself a copy.
Sacred Rhythms: Arranging our Lives for Spiritual Transformations by
Ruth Haley Barton. I am cheating with this one. My old bible study in
Pittsburgh is reading through this book, so I jumped in on the study
today (their second week) and picked up my copy. It’s a beautiful
hard-back book that I don’t want to mess up, but I’m sure I’ll be
underlining like a champ as soon as I start to read.
The Liturgy of Motherhood by Kathleen Finley. Anything with the words “liturgy” and “motherhood” or “laundry” in the title has me eager to read it.
The Contented Soul
by Lisa Graham McMinn. This came up as a recommendation for me at
Amazon and after reading a few reviews, I know I need to read this
book. It is how I wish I could live my life…content with the here and
now, not wishing for more. But society yells at us to wish into our
lives bigger and better and flashier.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After I made the list this week, my mom informed me last night that
there is a new Anne Lamott book out. It’s the third in her “Thoughts on
Faith” books, called Grace (Eventually):Thoughts on Faith, and of course, I can’t wait to read it. But it’ll have to wait until I’ve read each and every one of the above listed books.

thanks to katrina at callapidder days for hosting this event (and for making it long enough to make it possible for me to read all my books!)

before i post my “spring reading thing” challenge on Wednesday (it’s
SPRING! in less than 48 hours!) i thought i’d quickly rehash the books from my “fall into reading” challange, also
hosted by callapidder days.

Simply Christian
by N.T. Wright. very good book, but a difficult read for me as he’s
extremely academic in his writing (probably similar to his preaching
and teaching). i tend to be drawn to beautifully-crafted sentences and
his are very pragmatic and to-the-point. which isn’t bad, it just makes
it harder for me to get the point. i guess i need “poetry” in a lot of
my non-fiction as well as my fiction! i owed the Carnegie
Library a bunch of money for keeping it out well past my due-date.

Father Melancholy’s Daughter
by Gail Godwin. i’d read this book before, and if i were to re-write
that book meme i did a couple of weeks ago, i’d change my all-time
favorite book to this one. this is poetry. and tragedy. and a love
story. and full of grace and God and…man, did this book make me cry. also recommended is its sequel, Evensong. i didn’t get around to reading it this past fall, but it’s always so
close to my bedstand that i pick it up from time to time and just skim
a few chapters. i’ll pick it up again, i know it. for the record, i haven’t been able to get into much of Godwin’s other works. these two are her best.

The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. i loved this book…and i didn’t get to read nearly the amount of it that i wanted to (it was also a library-loan). it’s thick and dense, but such a fun read. i love reading books that make me excited to homeschool instead of fear it. i’m currently drooling over her earlier book The Well-Educated Mind.

Simple Hospitality by Jane Jarrell. i never read it because our libraries didn’t have copies and i didn’t feel like purchasing it yet. and Katrina (Callapidder Days) recommended buying a used copy as she wasn’t as impressed with it as she had hoped to be since it didn’t focus on the simplicity of being hospitible. which is something that’s important to me as well (although I do like to spoil my guests!).

Recovered Body by Scott Cairns. again, i didn’t read it because our libraries didn’t have it, and i didn’t purchase it. if you ever come across a copy of any of his poetry books, read them. now THAT’S some poetry.

another book i read along with Simply Christian was Kathleen Norris’ The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work” which also was out a bit too long from the library…i should have just purchased these books! it’s a small book – more like an essay, and i ate it up like…marshmallow Peeps! i never thought of laundry, grocery lists, diaper changes, meal preparation, and cleaning (especially cleaning!) as Holy. but she makes a great case for it. the work of the manager or keeper of your household works on hallowed ground making clean what is dirty and filling minds, souls and bellies of her/his loved ones with knowledge, love, and food. isn’t that what God does for us daily?

i’m excited about my spring list – i even pre-purchased a few used copies of some of my books. the list is longer, but i’m ready for it! i know we have a busy spring ahead of us, but i’m up for the challenge! and i encourage you to get in on it!

spring-clean your mind with a few good books!

now that i’m sure i got your attention over there in Arizona….

today we picked up a box of Cheerios. the name-brand kind, not the store-brand, or the natural brand (although Cheerios is sold in Whole Foods, so “it’s got to be good”). because when it comes to Cheerios…the name brand is the real deal. i just can’t eat, or make my kids eat, a different “version.” it’s like reading cliff’s notes for a shakespeare play. or worse…baking with sucralose.

so we picked up a box of Cheerios because they are adam’s favorite finger food these days. they wrap up a meal well for him…he likes to delicately balance a cheerio that is stuck to the end of his saliva-ed index finger, and pinch it closed with this thumb and s-l-o-w-l-y bring it to his mouth. it’s quite a sight – and very different than sawyer-at-9-months who took a fist of cheerios and jammed them into his mouth like cookie monster (complete with cheerio crumbs flying everywhere).

the boys (and i!) were excited to see eric carle’s “very hungry caterpiller” gracing the front of this particular Cheerios box (sawyer kept saying, “looks like MY book!”). eric carle is donating 100,000 copies of his book The Tiny Seed to the state that answers (and votes for!) the most correct children’s book trivia questions.

so…only those of you who live in MY STATE…go to www.firstbook.org/carle and have fun answering some children’s book trivia (i didn’t get that many correct, but i did find new books to add to the boys’ wishlist) and vote for our state to be the recipiants of his book. we already own this book, and it’s actually a favorite of rowan’s. and the artwork doesn’t disappoint (especially if you’re a fan of carle’s illustrations).

while you’re online, hop on over to carle’s other great cause at www.picturebookart.org. there’s some fun artwork to look at, booklists, and activities.

and no, eric carle or General Mills is in no way paying me for this post. i could only be so lucky.