library books

A Salt Lake City library card was the start of some of our favorite days of summer. We all love books so visiting the library is always an activity everyone can agree on. Take a glimpse at some of our favorite reads this summer:

Luke is into The Hardy Boys. He grabs six or seven each time.
Bridget still enjoys a good Junie B. Jones, but has also found some other series that she loves like "The Ballet Shoes," by Noel Streatfield (she loves the Fossils), and "The Cobble Street Cousins," by Cynthia Rylant.
Will is quick in his selections, like Luke. One day it's all Curious George, the next it's clifford, Star Wars, or Berenstain Bears etc. He likes to save lot's of time for playing games on the computer. (We recently selected The Little Rascals from the DVD section --- in Will's words, "It's He-yarious!")

Jonah enjoys pulling as many books off of one shelf as he can before I intervene and he squeals and quickly moves to a new spot and starts over again while I clean up the last mess. For me, rather than choosing a variety of books on different topics, I have found it works better to choose one topic, grab 4 or 5 books from that area and dash back to my boy who was in my arms one minute ago and is now on the other side of the library. One of my first reading "binges" looked like this:
Super Smoothies (all awesome), a Jamie Oliver Cookbook (all foods from his garden - yum!), a grilling cookbook, Jamba Juice 21 days to great health.

Due to the upcoming change in seasons and an itch to get a handle on the summer grit and grime that has found a permanent place here among us, my current selections include:

1. REAL SIMPLE cleaning by Kathleen Squires

I'm mopping my floor the other day and find myself reaching for the book to see if I'm doing it right...Find the chapter on floors, tile, oh, I'm supposed to use a toothbrush on the grout? almost

2. Country Living storage style "pretty and practical ways to organize your home" by Lesley Porcelli

..."Find on old iron garden gate and hang it from the ceiling in your kitchen for a pot rack"....now who wants to go hunting for cute old free stuff with me? Are there flee markets in Utah?

3. House Works "Cut the clutter, speed your cleaning, and calm the chaos" by Cynthia Townley Ewer of OrganizedHome.com

...."A place for everything and everything in it's place"...STOP the clutter...What's my clutter personality? The hoarder, the deferrer, the rebel, the perfectionist, or the sentimentalist"....Help me...I might be a bit of each! I can only take this book in very small pieces, but once I finish I hope to have this house running like a well oiled machine....stay tuned.

4. River Secrets by Shannon Hale

....I know, this did not come from the organizing section...my neighbor dropped it by...I'm excited;

P.S. Will just walked into the house in his yellow tank top and yellow silky shorts and yelled, "That was freakin' darn fun, Mom!"
If you are up for that much fun go check out the bike trails at The Ranches in Eagle Mountain. Adam and Luke were thinkin' when they decided to introduce them to Will tonight.

P.S.S. Bridget just walked in from an outside movie party and said she had cotton candy, popcorn, snickers, m&m's and lot's of fun!

Is summer really ending? After three months of sleeping in a row in the basement our three oldest kids moved their mattresses back upstairs to their own bedrooms. Sigh. I'll miss the summer evenings with everyone laying on their beds on top of their quilts, cool breezes blowing through the open windows from the lake and reading to them from the Hardy Boys, Berenstain Bears, and The Penderwicks (we read this every summer). Mmmm.

But today I wrote down a list of all our favorite soups that I'll be making this fall. And we decided that Saturday morning would be our new library day.