The Spiderwick Chronicles were one of my kids favorite series. Nickelodeon Studios is release the movie this February. The have a top notch website for them film.

We have done some very creative book reports on these books, they just inspire the imagination. We are huge Harry Potter Fans and these books are so much easier to read and not quite as dark. Perfect for the younger readers.

I can't wait to see it!

The Year in Review

Favorite Things of 2007

Favorite Moment: I can never narrow this down to just one.
When my new boss said, "What did I ever do without you?"
Many touching moments with my children.

Favorite Music: I loved Emerson Harts solo album, Daughtry and Foo Fighters.

Favorite Movies: I really liked the Bourne Ultimatum, Knocked Up was funny and early in the year I saw the Illusionist and loved it. Cartoon: Ratatouille.

Most Fun: Taking my son on a quick trip to Chicago! So much fun.

Favorite Tv:: Still love Grey's Anatomy, CSI (original), Pushing Daisies, October Road. Daily Show & The Soup.

Favorite Books: I loved the last Harry Potter! I thought A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction was funny. I liked The 13th Tale. I reread The Golden Compass because it was so good and so well awarded when it came out in the 1990's but after all the crazy religous rants about banning the movie I thought I'd better read it again, NOPE I still love it. Darn, apparently I may have damaged my soul. Please, I can't stand book burnings and movie banners. My motto is watch it or not, read it our not, but shut the h*ll up and let other people enjoy what they like.

Favorite Blogs I don't have as much time this year but I still try and read Finding Blanche, Dooce and This Just In at least once a week.

Pop Culture I think Suri Cruise is the most beautiful baby I've ever seen.

Britney Spears shaving her head....I mean seriously.....wtf!!! And now her little sis is preggers. OMG...Lynn Spears, kiss the motherhood book GOODBYE.

The writers strike has lasted so much longer than I thought it would. I miss my late night shows : (

2007 was a pretty good year! I'm hoping that 2008 will be Great.

Happy New Year!

December

I can't believe that it is December already! I hope everyone has a fantastic holiday season.

Happy Halloween

Peace, Love & Candy!
Happy Halloween

My son made the nightly news. And NOT in the way a mother wants their son too!
Teen Swept Into Water

I mean OMG!!! I get a call at work saying, "Mom, Dylan fell into the water on the way home from school today." I talk to him on the phone for a few minutes and he says he is fine but his backpack, all his books, notebooks, $90 scientific calcuator are toast. So, I naturally RAG ON HIM for the damage.

Then I get home and talk to the neighbor who ran for blocks trying to help pull him from the water and then I have a follow up call from the EMT that was on the scene. Then, my dear son causally mentions that the police also responded. He was carried for a block down the fast moving cement water way and then went about 1/2 block through a tunnel under the street and shot out in the creek near our house.

I no longer care about replacing the school supplies and tennis shoe that he lost!

Makes you thankful!!!

Travel to and From Chicago for under $30!

There is a company called Mega Bus
You can travel from Kansas to St. Louis & Chicago. From Chicago you can go to many cities in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin etc.. If you are patient and can get online to order tickets 40 days in advance you can get a ticket for $1, I kid you not.

I bought tickets for myself and my son from KC to Chicago and back for $30 (total not per person). The bus was nice and new and had DVD players to entertain.

We departed KC at 8 PM and arrived in Chicago at 6:30 AM and spent one whole day just travelling around on the CTA $5 unlimited day pass and had a blast. We departed Chicago at Midnight and returned home at 10 a.m. the next morning (we slept the whole way home so it was great!).

I worried about what type of clientele the bus would have but we had 6 KU and MU students from KC travelling to a wedding in Chicago. It was like listening in on a wild sorority slumber party, my 16 year old son was enjoying it. We also had a group of about 6 French foreign exchange student that got on in St. Louis and then we had a menagerie of ethnic diversity but everyone was very well behaved and respectful. Actually the KU girls were the wildest on the bus, I found this very funny as I thought back!

Our favorite activities were the Hancock Observatory and the Shedd Aqarium.


Navy Pier was lots of fun too, rode the Ferris Wheel and took a harbor cruise. They had great fireworks set to Alice Cooper's
"Feed My Frankenstein" and "Phantom of the Opera".

Can't beat that.

I can't wait to the rest of my film developed.

New Music

My husband and I have always liked an Irish band called Tonic and the lead singer, Emerson Hart, has a new solo album that I really like. He is a really talented songwriter. Check him out Emerson Hart

The song "If Your Gonna Leave" is my favorite.

Check out my Slide Show!

1408

I saw this movie this week and I really liked it. It really builds and totally gives you the shivers. I am a huge John Cusack fan and he is really good in this part.

Not your typical horror movie!

Graduation

As I watched graduation this year and they started to play the class chosen song,
"Time of Your Life, by Green Day" I thought back to my own.



Our song that long ago Sunday in 1987 was "Time to Remember, by Billy Joel". I remember all those words still.


This is the time to remember
Cause it will not last forever
These are the days
To hold on to
Cause we won't
Although we want to
This is the time
But time is gonna change
I know we've got to move somehow
But I don't want to lose you know

Sometimes it's so easy
To let a day
Slip on by
Without even seeing each other at all
But this is the time you'll turn back and so will I
And those will be the days you can never recall

And so we embrace again
Behind the dunes
This beach is cold
On winter afternoons
But holding you close is like holding the summer sun
I'm warm from the memory of days to come

This is the time to remember
Cause it will not last forever
These are the days
To hold on to
But we won't
Although we'll want to
This is the time
But time is gonna change
You've given me the best of you
But now I need the rest of you

Seems like so long ago: all those Friday night football games, the dates, the heartbreaks. Graduation, weddings, babies, jobs and soon the big 40! I'm not sure I'm ready!

Teamwork

The Gators end the season 7-1!



My youngest has played with this team since pre-k and are now in 3rd grade. This was taken this weekend after a great 1-0 win over an older 4th grade team. We were hot, we were tired and we were happy!

Good Times!

Happy 14!

My daughter has turned 14! I wonder if her father and I will be able to survive the next 4 years of drama, boys, high school, drama, proms, drama, did I mention we are worried about the DRAMA. Yikes and know she wants to learn to drive!

I tell myself not to worry, she's an honor roll student with great friends. But, look at her! She looks so grown up, and before I know it she will be!

Love this photo!

My mother gave me a box of photos of my dad that she had in storage.

He past away over 10 years ago after a long illness. I love this photo. I hadn't seen these before. This was taken at the Zebra Club in post WWII Japan. My dad was stationed there for several years in Yokohma. He worked in the officers club.
Love the smile, he looks so young. But, I guess he was according to the date stamp on the back he was only 19 years old.

I'd love to have been able to go through this box with him, to hear the stories behind them.

It's May already?

I can not believe it is May already. The last couple of months have just flown by.

I started a new job, change is always hard! I don't like being the "new person" I am the type of person who just dives head first into whatever I'm doing. It has taken a few weeks to feel like I can start to relax. The new job was a good fit and the timing was good.

The kids are counting the days till summer break. Only a few weeks left!

Long gone, the disney posters.

I miss the days when the bedroom walls were decorated with disney & butterflys. The oldest two girls in our house are in middle school and expressing there own style.
No cute boy band pictures (they are lame,they say) But rock bands cover the walls and original art work from my daughter.

I remember when I put up a Kiss poster in my bedroom, my mother about had a fit! I like to think I am much cooler than she was.

Winter

I had to look twice when I drove by this local fountain. It is so cool, it is hard to see in the photo but it is this light almost fluorescent blue. Water is still bubbling out of the top.

You'd think that would be hiking up some business or the cities water bill! Most fountains are turned off in the winter.

Cool picture though.

Something to Think About

I debated today about if someone can be President without a lot of "experience". Okay, Cheney and Rumsfeld had PLENTY of experience and they have helped Bush (an experienced Govenor) totally screw this country up!

A president needs to inspire and to have good judgement. I think that Obama has proven himself on those counts. I think this blog sums up why I am liking him the more I listen. Blog was by Adam Hanft.

You don't need me to tell you that Senator Obama is a compelling political figure. He is a rock star. But his rock star status is completely at odds with the quiet depth and thoughtfulness that he emanates. When asked a question, he would actually reflect for a moment and answer it directly and frontally, rather than shift into campaign response mode and morph the question into a platform for a parade of platitudes. He was multiple-level refreshing.

What we've re-learned in the last six years -- in the most brutally direct way possible - is the importance of intellectual curiosity, the ability to synthesize, and a high level of bubble immunity in a president. I believe that Obama is in full and dramatic possession of these attributes. And while there are those who maintain that he isn't experienced enough, I would argue that these qualities will not grow deeper after another four years in the Senate. Listening to Obama, I was reminded of the comment that Oliver Wendell Holmes made after meeting Franklin Roosevelt; he said that FDR had a first class temperament and second-class intellect. Obama has both.

This is the first time in fifty odd years that there hasn't been a sitting president of vice-present running for office. The wide-open nature of this race gives it an anything-can-happen quality, a spirit of shared possibility and invention that is creating a genuine national movement on behalf of Obama's candidacy.

One of the subjects Obama talked about was about his vision of a transformative change in the American political landscape. Normally, that would make my skin crawl. But when he talked about this, about moving beyond what has become a resistant structure of calcified grudges and frozen positions, he didn't sound like a politician or business guru spouting New Age claptrap. When he said that one of the statistics that gives him the most gratification is that he has a 55% approval rating among Evangelicals in Illinois, you begin to believe that transformation isn't an abused term but a real possibility.

Despite the comparisons, though, Obama didn't sound like Bobby Kennedy, who had been breathing presidential air his entire life, and who, in the 1968 campaign, would often frame the issues on both a visceral and a metaphysical level. He didn't have Kennedy's coiled, keyed-up, on-the-emotional-edge intensity that frightened as many people as it attracted.

Obama is a decent, brilliant guy who through a series of political accidents now has a clear path to the presidency ahead of him, and is thinking profoundly about what this moment can mean. His meteoric rise makes him, indisputably, a creation of the media. He knows this. But as mediagenic as he is, you never feel that he is cheap enough to cultivate the camera's love of him. He is aware that history is close to being made, but rightly, he doesn't challenge us to step forward and make history with him. Modest, that's a good old Victorian word that came to mind on Saturday.

We are a culture that's shown its willingness to vote for American Idol contestants, to throw videos up on YouTube, to contribute its photos to Flickr, to blog incessantly. This is a kinetic emotional energy waiting to attach itself to a presidential candidate, and as much as the experts are projecting a powerful grass-roots explosion for Obama, I believe that there isn't anyone who won't be absolutely blown away by the tectonic nature of the response.

I am writing this post on a flight from New York to Dallas, and it turns out that my colleague who is sitting next to me went to high school in Hawaii with Obama, knew him very well, and has stayed in touch over the years. He was the only black guy in the school, she reminisced, and he walked around with his Afro and his philosophy books and everyone loved him. "He is so good," she said to me. "What you think he is, is what he is. I'm just worried about what this campaign will do to him."

And that's the question. The hope is that he will do more to the campaign, than the campaign will do to him. We'll see if that's too audacious.

New Music & Book Finds

I love to find new authors and new music groups and my favorite new find in music
is Augustana You may have heard their sound Boston it has had some radio time this year.


I also loved the book The Thirteenth Tale, I was hooked after I read the first few pages while sitting in the Barnes & Noble coffee shop. It was the author, Diane Setterfields first novel, so I was even more impressed.
Below is a review:

From Our Booksellers

It's not often that I would even dare to compare a book to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but The Thirteenth Tale is one that I will. This book is absolutely wonderful. It's a classic gothic tale, with ghosts and a grand house, good and evil and a secret that will have you guessing until the very end. --Sessalee Hensley

The Race is On

Every day someone new is throwing their hat into the 2008 Presidential Election.
I'm sure it is going to be very interesting.

I'm watching these two myself

http://www.barackobama.com

http://blog.johnedwards.com