Katie and Katy Dance: Take Two

They danced once here. Last week, they did it again and it's still highly amusing. Last time, it was the synchronized head bobbing and going in circles. This time, it's the arms above the head and giggling.

The Time Has Come

Well folks, I think it's time to break out the Halloween decorations. It's my favorite holiday, and after walking through the Halloween section at Target yesterday, I don't think I can wait any longer! I'm sure there will be more Halloween posts to follow...
Image from Belle and Boo

Weekend Visit to Spokane

We spent last weekend in Spokane and had a very lovely time. It was fun to watch Katie play with her cousin Liz. Nicole got some great pictures of the girls!

(Someday I hope my girls will keep their cute hair-do's in!)

Katie was also very fascinated by the dog Jake. Interpret "fascinated" as always asking about him and wanting to see him, but only from a distance. The last day we were there, she managed to get a little closer to him!

And, just being silly.

The Name Game

I saw this on Lisa's blog, and loved the idea. You create a mosaic of pictures describing yourself. I think everyone should play! Here's the breakdown:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.
d. copy the mosaic image (right click, save image as) to your computer.




1. Kate #1, 2. abundance prayer, 3. i can't remember my combination, 4. The Chesil Beach at Portland - Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, 5. christian bale, 6. The Real Thing, 7. Street sellers, 8. coffee and chocolate mousse cake, 9. writer's teeth, 10. Raccoon Family, 11. shell seeker, 12. 4436

The Questions:

1. What is your first name? Kate

2. What is your favorite food? Potatoes

3. What high school did you go to? Orem High

4. What is your favorite color? Blue

5. Who is your celebrity crush? Christian Bale

6. Favorite drink? Coke

7. Dream vacation? Europe

8. Favorite dessert? Chocolate

9. What you want to be when you grow up? Writer

10. What do you love most in life? Family

11. One Word to describe you? Seeker

12. Your flickr name? kated

Let me know if you do it, because I think seeing people through pictures is fascinating!

A Girl Can Dream

I have always LOVED the ruby slippers. One of the main things I dreamed about when I was little was owning a pair of sparkly shoes. It never happened, and the girl in me is still out to get some!

New York fashion week is on, and so are ruby slippers! Swarovski and some top designers teamed up this year to celebrate the anniversary of the ruby slippers and The Wizard of Oz to create some modern-day ruby shoes, and the results are pretty stunning! Check them out here. Or, check them out for real in NY and if you do, I'm jealous! There's also a video that shows some of them here. My favorite is the pair by Diane Von Furstenberg.

Quirks

Link the person who tagged you
Mention the rules on your blog
Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
Leave a comment on each of the tagged bloggers blogs letting them know they have been tagged.

Mauvia tagged me, and here are the quirks:

1. I'm slightly obsessive compulsive. There are certain things I just can't stand, and no one else can understand why it bugs me! (except my dad - love you dad!) For example, the zipper side of all my couch cushions must be on the bottom. I hate it when the zipper is visible! And all of my books on the bookshelf must go in order of height from tallest to shortest...really, the list could go on and on.

2. I hum when I get really busy doing something.

3. Apparently, I am super stealth. I can't count how many times I've startled Michael to death just by walking into a room and saying something to him. He jumps about a mile, grabs his chest and says, "Can't you make a little noise coming into a room?!?"

4. I tend to mouth the words when I'm reading a book silently.

5. I make up my own words.

6. I hate to cry in public. I fight it really really hard. Any time I'm in church or at a movie and I start to tear up, I start scrambling to think of something funny so that I can get it under control. Even if everyone else is doing it, I still fight it. Years ago, when my family went to see Finding Neverland in the theater, I did really good at holding back the tears through the last part of the movie until the blank white screen came up at the very end, and then I lost it. I was so mad because that was right when the lights were coming back on and people were standing up, so I hurried and went to the nearest exit so people wouldn't see me crying.

The Big Read

Today I happened upon a list of 100 books that seems to have been circulating a lot and no one seems to know where it originated. Someone mentioned The Big Read, so I went to that website and found this information:

The program was created in response to the National Endowment for the Arts report Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, which identified a critical decline in literary reading among American adults. In partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau, this study, with a sample size of 17,000, revealed the following about literary reading in the U.S.:
Less than half of the adult American population now reads literature. (In this survey, literature is defined as any novels, short stories, poetry, or drama, with no distinctions made for quality or length.)
The percentage of the U.S. adult population reading any book has declined by seven percent over the past decade.
Literary reading is declining among all age groups, but the steepest decline is in the youngest age groups.

According to what people are saying with this list, the average adult has only read about 6 of the 100 books. How many of these have you all read? I'm curious.

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

I don't know who came up with this list, but I counted 31 that I know I've read all the way through for sure. Some, I am still stuck in the middle of and can't get out *cough cough - Love In the Time of Cholera* But, it encouraged me to keep reading more. I love reading lists, and it looks like The Big Read has got another list out on the website too. So everybody start reading! It helps with so many things aside from just reading ability - vocabulary, spelling, articulation, not to mention imagination. I'm going to use my electronics less, and read more and make sure my kids do the same! Okay, I'm done ranting.

Here is a fun blog with children's book recommendations.

Zoo Day, Hooray!

Even though it was a holiday, we got up early yesterday so we could take the girls to the zoo. It was so much fun to show Katie the animals that she usually only sees in books.

It was a little chilly, so we warmed up in the gift shop.

Katie kept asking where the monkeys were - I think they were her favorite, so her daddy got her one to keep. Here she is is talking to her monkey on the car ride home.

And a little kiss...

And time to sleep...goodnight monkey.

What a fun and busy day.

P.S. I realized I had accidentally "hid" my comments on this blog, but they are now "unhid" I'm an English major, and therefore reserve the right to make up words. :)