The boys were so excited about Halloween that they got up extra early and were complete maniacs before they left for school. I feel sorry for the teachers on party days. I went to school for their parties and split my time between Cash’s room and West’s room. The difference between the kindergarten party and the first grade party was pretty remarkable. It was like going from a Metallica concert to a Barry Manilow concert. What a difference a year makes!
Batman and Batgirl (why isn’t it Batwoman??)
Optimus Prime and Bumblebee
Ready for trick or treating!
Leaving the grandmas and Mommy in the dust.
The Peanut Vampire will take away all the unsafe candy that has peanuts in it and leave the boys a set of the newer Star Wars movies in return.
November 1st, 2011 in
Cash,
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The second day of Halloween started with a lovely brunch at Avenues Bistro. When Travis and I were deciding where to go to brunch, he was sure that the food would be too fancy for the boys and that they would hate it and misbehave. Well, luckily the universe favored me that morning and the boys were really well-behaved (which unfortunately doesn’t happen much lately!). Not only that, they said they loved the food and wanted to come back to eat there on their birthdays!
After brunch, we headed to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Cash has been learning about Monet in art class and wanted to see his paintings in person. Unfortunately, Water Lilies was on loan to a museum in St. Louis but they had two other paintings by Monet we got to see. Then West wanted to see Asian art so we looked at their extensive Asian art collection. After that, we toured the two special exhibitions going on right now: The Prints of Romare Bearden and George Ault and 1940s America. We let the boys lead the way the whole time and they were having so much fun we had to drag them out of there after three hours so that we would have time to carve pumpkins. Travis is pretty proud to have children that love art as much as he does. We definitely need to take advantage of having this wonderful museum right here in our city more often.
On to pumpkin carving! This year both boys designed scary faces and helped Travis cut them out.
November 1st, 2011 in
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Halloween was a multiple day event this year. It started on Saturday night – the boys hosted a Halloween party at our house for their friends. It was a lot of fun! We had a chili and hot dog supper, followed by a pumpkin bean bag toss and pin the tail on the black cat. Then the main event and grand finale – a tour of our haunted garage. Unfortunately, we were so busy during the party that we didn’t take any pictures! Luckily our friend Rob sent us some that he took:
Luckily the weather was nice enough that the kids could play outside until dinner was ready.
Cupcakes! The orange ones are supposed to look like pumpkins but they didn’t really turn out the way I wanted them to.
Spooky smoke in the haunted garage.
Travis, the sexy vampire, led the kids through the garage and made sure they made it out alive.
Creepy vampire lurking in the haunted garage.
October 31st, 2011 in
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The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Polish zookeeper Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina hid over three hundred people in their zoo during the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II.
I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise sounded so intriguing to me. However, I never felt invested in the story or the people. The sequence of events seemed confusing to me – it either jumped around in time or details I needed to understand what was going on were left out. There were so many people who were mentioned briefly and then mentioned again several pages later that I couldn’t keep track of them.
I expected that the author would go into more of the details of how the Jewish people were hidden in the zoo and how the Underground worked. This story seemed to focus more on what the Jewish people who came to the zoo did before the war and also on the Zabinski’s animals.
I still found aspects of this book very interesting and I did learn quite a few things about World War II and the Nazis that I didn’t know before so I think it was worth reading.
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October 31st, 2011 in
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Elements of Style by Wendy Wasserstein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Elements of Style follows the lives of several of New York’s Upper East Side socialites and their families in the year following 9/11. The back cover calls this book a comedy and describes it as “madcap”. I didn’t think it was humorous at all. Most of the characters are selfish, vapid and materialistic (which I expected seeing as they are wealthy society people) but in a sad and pathetic way, not in a funny way. I expected this to be a fun, chick-lit book and was disappointed.
I listened to the audio version of this book. The audio production was good and the narrator, Kathe Mazur, did a fine job.
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October 27th, 2011 in
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Deadline by Mira Grant
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Deadline is the second book in Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy. This review assumes you have read the first book Feed and will spoil it for you if you haven’t. Proceed with caution!
It’s been one year since Georgia Mason’s death and her brother Shaun is still struggling. Chasing zombies isn’t fun for him anymore. Now his focus is on finding out who is responsible for Georgia’s death and exacting his revenge.
This book focuses less on the actual zombies than Feed did and more on investigating deeper into the conspiracy uncovered in Feed. I’ll admit that some of the more scientific aspects discovered about the Kellis-Amberlee virus that were explained in this book were hard for me to follow. I’m not sure if that’s my fault or the author’s. I’m hoping that it will all make perfect sense after I read the final book in the trilogy, Blackout. (It doesn’t come out until June 2012. Boo!)
The one thing that bothered me in this book and that kept it from being a five-star review is some repetitiveness. It seems like we are constantly reminded that Shaun drinks Coke even though he doesn’t really want to and that he is probably crazy. That got a little irritating after a while – we can tell Shaun is crazy because he acts crazy.
Overall though I thought this book was fantastic. It took my breath away at times just like Feed and the ending left my head spinning. I can’t wait to read Blackout.
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October 26th, 2011 in
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Bright Light: Spiritual Lessons from a Life in Acting by Dee Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dee Wallace’s Bright Light is in part a memoir and in part a new age self help book. (In case you are wondering who the heck Dee Wallace is – she played the mom in ET.) Her philosophy seems very similar to the the New Thought movement and The Secret – basically that positive affirmations, thinking and energy can heal both mind and body and help one achieve ones life goals.
Dee walks us through her career and personal life and points out when and how things went well and explains what she was doing energetically at that time. She also is not shy about pointing out her shortcomings and explaining how she unconsciously sabotaged her life at times.
As an amateur actor myself, I found reading about her acting classes and techniques very interesting. I also liked learning more about the professional side of the business. I was less interested in her New Age philosophy but by the end of the book, she had me thinking that she might be on to something. There is not much “how-to” information in this book but she includes a bibliography of recommended books at the end if the reader wants to learn more about her spiritual practices.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Dee Wallace since she’s from Kansas City so I was pleased that she came across as charming and likable in this book. Fans of hers will like it as well as people interested in reading about the spiritual journeys of others.
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(I received this book courtesy of the Goodreads Firstreads program.)
October 18th, 2011 in
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The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter by Mark Seal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is the story of a German man named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter who came to the United States in 1978. For the next thirty years, he assumed multiple identities. He eventually assumed the name Clark Rockefeller and was able to dupe scores of intelligent people into believing that he was a member of the Rockefeller family. He even married and had a child with a very successful woman who bought his story hook, line and sinker. Finally, after years of marriage, his wife started to see through his story and divorced him. He then devised an elaborate plan to kidnap his young daughter, which turned out to be his undoing.
This was a well-researched, fascinating story. It was really amazing to read how relatively easy it was for “Clark” to fool so many people for such a long time. I would have liked to get inside of Clark’s head to perform a little armchair psychology and know what he was thinking but the author wasn’t able to speak with him. He did interview a lot of people who knew Clark so there are glimmers of Clark’s motivations that come through.
Overall, this was a compelling read that fans of true crime will really enjoy.
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(I received this book courtesy of a giveaway at Devourer of Books. Thanks Jen!)
October 14th, 2011 in
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Lover Eternal by J.R. Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lover Eternal is the second book in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Each book in the series focuses on one of the brothers and his love interest. Lover Eternal is Rhage’s book. Rhage has always been a player, in part because of the curse the Scribe Virgin placed upon him. That changes when he meets Mary Luce, a human woman who is unwittingly brought into the vampire world. Mary has been made tough by hardship and finds it hard to believe anyone could love her, especially a vampire who looks like a movie star.
As in the previous book, the Black Dagger Brotherhood is fighting the lessers – evil, undead creatures who want to wipe out the vampire race. Once again, I didn’t really care much for this part. The romance storylines are the reason why I read the books in this series. Rhage and Mary made a great couple although Rhage’s curse made things get a little weird between them at times. There were a couple of scenes that had me cringing. You’ll see what I mean when you read it.
I read this book and listened to the audio version. The audio version is read by Jim Frangione, who also narrated Dark Lover, the first book in the series. I thought he did a better job with this book but that may be because Marissa wasn’t in this book. I’ll be interested to see if he gives her the weird accent he gave her Dark Lover in future books that she appears in.
Fans of paranormal romance will enjoy this second installment in the series.
My review of Dark Lover is here.
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October 13th, 2011 in
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Fodor’s Walt Disney World with Kids 2012: with Universal Orlando, SeaWorld & Aquatica by Kim Wright Wiley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I used this book to plan a trip to Walt Disney World with my husband and two sons who are five and seven years old. The most helpful part of this book was the detailed descriptions of the rides for each park and the discussion of what ages the rides were most appropriate for. There is an easy to refer to chart for each park of the “Don’t Miss” rides for different age groups of kids. This was helpful because there were several rides that our kids could have gone on because they met the height requirement that would have been too fast and/or scary for them. We rode a couple of rides that the book said our kids were too young for because they really wanted to and both times the ride turned out to be too intense for them just like the book said.
The part of this book that I thought was lacking was the discussion of restaurants and food options. There is virtually no discussion of the quick service restaurants because the author says there is only so much to say about fast food. I think there is actually a lot that could have been said about the quick service options. I would have liked to know ahead of time what foods each one offered so I could have chosen to eat at the ones that had the healthier options. I thought the descriptions of the table service restaurants could have been more detailed as well.
Overall, this was a helpful guide for planning our Walt Disney World vacation.
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(I received this book courtesy of the Amazon Vine program.)
October 12th, 2011 in
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