Summer Fun 2011:

I started this list last summer and thought it would be fun to look at again this year.  So, I updated and reflected on all the fun we have already had and the things I would like to do in these (hate to say it) end-of-summer days.

X-camp at Branbury   

__-bake bread

X-July 4th parade and festivities

__-family parties—including Nora’s 85th

  __-try fishing

__-make a book with J

__-see a Circus

__-start losing weight instead of gaining it

XXXX-SWIM SWIM SWIM (lake, river, pool, pond; anywhere and everywhere; as much as possible)

X-swim lessons for J

__-a class for me? sewing?

X-Addison County Field Days

__-make something out of wood 

X-summer soccer for J

__-new, healthy foods

X-pick strawberries, raspberries, and blue berries

X-BEACH!!!!! (I wrote this at the beach actually ;-)

__-put food by—freeze and can fruit and veggies

X-veggie garden

__-ORGANIZE HOUSE!!

X-donate lots ’o stuff

X-hike (here behind our house and other places)

__-read my own books

X-festival-on-the-green

X-boat ride

X-Selma visit

__-Visit museums (Shelburne, Rokeby, Echo)

__-Invite more people over here

__-crafty projects

__-less TV (which means ending my habit of turning the TV on for J while I take my shower . . . yikes)

__-go to a baseball game 

X-hang out with J and friends at his school

__ -visit state parks and historic sites

X-stay home and do “nothing”

X-girls night out

__-Echo lake?

X-craft nights with my crafty ladies

X-catch up with old friends

X-plant some flowers 

__-ride a horse

__- PROJECTS with J: crafts, learning, nature . . .

X-read lots with J, and visit the library every week

Food favorites

I am LOVING this granola—so simple and incredibly yummy.  We just finished our first batch yesterday and plan to make more tonight.  I dream of someday kicking boxes out of my kitchen, and would especially like to get rid of all over-priced, over-sugared, over-commercial, over-processed cereal.  I made it with (using what I had on hand) only sunflower seeds for seeds, chopped walnuts instead of almonds, everyday whole wheat flower and vegetable oil, Dole mango juice, and of course our very own maple syrup. 

Also making me very happy is baking bread!  I go through phases with this, as it isn’t always the best for my waist line, but it sure is enjoyable.  My grandmother makes bread often and gave me a copy of her go-to book:

It is so easy and yummy.  I make the Light Whole Wheat bread.

Cookbooks are sort of a passion/obsession of mine, and I am very happy (thanks Bob!) to finally have a whole bookshelf dedicated to my collection.  However, I collect so many that I still have lots to discover.  Here are some of my other current favorites:

• The Fanny Farmer Cookbook
• Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Sienfeld
• First Meals by Annabel Karmel

I also very often use allrecipes to find recipes, enjoy watching the PBS cooking shows, and get lots of cookbooks out of the library.

Today for fun in the kitchen Joseph and I made bird “muffins” (just peanut butter and birdseed mixed together and frozen in muffin tins and hung outside) and SNOW ICE CREAM.  We still have some kinks to work out with the bird muffins (they fell of their strings the first time so are in the freezer again for another try), but the snow ice cream was a big hit.  It was incredibly easy and fun.  All you do is fill a bowl with snow, mix in some sweetened condensed milk, and a tiny bit of vanilla.  Joseph really wanted chocolate so in his bowl we added cocoa powder.  I am sure we will be doing this again.  It received many thumbs up and lots of Joseph-style enthusiasm.

     

We love playing in the kitchen!

Roger

Lately a few happenings have particularly reminded me of my grandfather, Roger Shattuck.  Roger was and still is one of the most important people in my life, though he passed away five years ago.  He was such a singular and brilliant man I feel unable to briefly explain him here and now.  So, I have decided not to try.  Also, most of you, my dedicated and limited audience, knew him quiet well.

I have recently picked up the habit of calling Joseph by his first and middle name when the emphasis is needed, as in “Joseph Roger, do not pee there!”  I also heard a fun commentary on NPR about a school in Milton that is incorporating an extensive study of proverbs into it’s upper elementary curriculum.  As scary as it is to use the word curriculum with any relation to Roger (he had very definite and strict ideas about what did and did not qualify as a curriculum) I do remember him often speaking of the wisdom and importance of proverbs.  Not only does the idea of making use of them in a school setting appeal to me, I also realized that I can use them more at home!  Currently I am often quoting to J, “think before you act” and we have had a bit of discussion about the meaning of this wisdom.  My goal is to say and follow-as best I can-these proverbs so much so that they become part of J’s subconscious . 

On the literary front, I found a copy of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod at the used book store, gave it to Joseph, and love enjoying this favorite poem of Roger’s together.

Best of all, Joseph and I are now reading Alice In Wonderland together!!  If I recall correctly, Roger cited this book as his best loved.  That means a lot to me.  This book had occurred to me as a possibility for Joseph when I was Christmas shopping (at all three of my local bookstores—one new and two used) but I then decided it might be a bit too advanced.  Plus, ashamedly, I had never actually read the whole thing so didn’t really know what it was like.  Then, one day last week, J was very quite upstairs for a long time and then came down with a copy of said book in his hand begging for me to read it to him!  It is also a bit embarrassing that I didn’t remember I already had a copy of the book, though in my defense it is a small and simple Dover edition with only the original drawings that was among boxes of such Dover books I took home when I worked at The Vermont Book Shop.  Anyways, the point is, Joseph somehow found this among all the books on the “grown-up” book shelves and was fascinated by the fanciful illustrations.  Together we are now loving our adventure down the rabbit hole!

Often other, small things bring him to mind.  Stacking wood.  Garlic soup.  J running around in his long underwear all day today after we went skating.  Making bread.  I am so grateful for his example and wisdom and love sharing it with Joseph.   Of course, many things I do are not so close to Roger’s memory, blogging and imperfect writing being high on that list.  But, I do my best, in my own way. 

Tonight Joseph read to me!

In just the last couple days, since my book post, I have realized how much Joseph has memorized of his favorite books. As I mentioned, we currently have Backbeard and Superhero ABC out of from the library (Joseph is allowed two books at a time). We have actually had each of these a couple of weeks, and have checked them out once or twice previously. So, Joseph has heard these books many, many times and studied the pictures for an immense amount of time. Well, this week he started basically reading the books with me and then I stopped reading, and he kept going! He has almost every word memorized. Every once in a while he needs prompting, but he basically can read these books to me. It is really adorable. (He certainly doesn't say every word correctly, but you can tell what he is trying to say. Which I think is amazing since he had no idea what some of the words actually mean.) Since this discovery, which I think was also a realization for Joseph, he has been "reading" aloud to himself and to the kitties!

Excerpts read by Joseph from Superhero ABC:
"Astro-man is always alert for and alien attack. Bubble-man blows big bubbles at bullies. Captiain Cloud calmly catches crooks." You get the idea. One we think is particularly funny to hear Joseph repeat, "The Odor Officer obviously objects to offensive odors."

And from Backbeard and the Birthday Suit:
"On Backbeard's birthday, the entire crew put on their best clothes. They drank punch and scratched and spit. They hit each other with bottles and sang pirate songs. They had cake and opened presents. Afterward, Backbeard threw them all overboard."

Current and recent favorite reads

. . . which means, these are the books we read every. single. day. (And are--usually--glad to do so!)

The current library books (both of which we have checked out before). Joseph knows pretty much every word and (and they are not short books).

This was the first book for which Joseph memorized the words! (Probably because it is a song and about jumping on the bed, but still exciting.)

I couldn't figure out for the longest time why Joseph always wanted to read this book (which was passed on to us by Brad's mom and was edited by a distant relative.) Finally, I realized it was because of Joseph!

Book Love

This is a list book list that circulated on Facebook awhile back. I found it quite interesting. My intention is to work on reading more of these. I have just begun 100 Years of Solitude (which, very conveniently, is also the next selection for my book club). (x indicates a selection I have read)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte-X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte-X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell-X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens-X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott -X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk-X
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger-X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger-X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot-X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald-X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams-X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll -X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis-X
34 Emma-Jane Austen-X35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein-X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell-X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood-X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel-X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley-X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome-X
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker-X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery-X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams-X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Grand Total: 36 !

How many have you read? Favorites? Dislikes? Omisions? Other thoughts . . .