2018 Book of the Year!

It's your my favorite time of the year - my 2018 book recommendations! Oh my goodness, I read some amazing stuff this year. I read a lot of international authors - I absolutely love African authors, books set in Africa and India, and I even recently read one set in Korea/Japan by an author from Korea. Such good stuff! I also read SEVEN novels out loud this year - to my kids, to Blu, to my New Day older kids, so that was a blast! It was so tough to decide, but both my fiction and nonfiction favorite books this year were set in Africa (shocker). So, without further ado....

2018 Fiction Book of the Year

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue - This book follows the story of a hopeful immigrant family from Cameroon and their encounter with the "American Dream." Just wow.

2018 NonFiction Book of the Year

The Girl who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya - I love me a good memoir. This story follows a girl who came to America as a Rwandan refugee. I actually saw the Oprah episode where she was reunited with her Rwandan parents years ago. This book explained what came next. It was a tough read.

I feel like I can't close out without mentioning Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah, children's books The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, Bud, not Buddy and The Mighty Miss Malone by Christopher Paul Harris, and memoirs The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner and A Mother's Reckoning: Inside the Aftermath of a Tragedy by Sue Klebold. SUCH good books this year. Can't wait to see what awesome novels 2019 brings! :)

Cloudcroft Day 5!

Today was the day I’ve been dreading....for years! I have avoided snow skiing so many times....on my senior trip when I went but refused to ski...when Blu has begged me to go on ski vacations through the years...even when we went to the Swiss Alps but “somehow” didn’t get a chance to ski! Even yesterday, when it didn’t work out to ski, I thought maybe I had gotten out of another ski trip! But, alas, today was the day...the day to face my terror! And I have to admit....I LOVED it!! It was way easier than I was expexting, easier than water skiing, and pretty fun all the way around! The scariest part was definitely the chair lift! Cason was a fearless speed demon, who finally learned to atp! Caedmon was super smooth and had such finesse! Cambree didn’t try much today—she’d rather tune, but she’ll try more tomorrow! Blu skied as a teenager and was amazing, as usual! My body is soooooo sore already, but we are excited to hit the slopes again tomorrow! (Never thought I’d say that...!!!).

Cloudcroft Day 4!

Well today didn’t go as planned, but it still was a great day! We were late to there ski resort (we couldn’t find the truck keys—they had fallen out of Blu’s pocket yesterday while sledding!! It was a miracle we found them in the snow about 1/2 mile from our cabin!!!) Anyway, we were late to the ski resort, and after waiting in line to get our lift tickets for an hour, they announced they were out of skis! They were slammed and didn’t really know how to handle so many people! So we decided to change our plans and we left to go sledding. We found some great runs, listened to Blu scream like a girl for awhile, and then headed to the Old Apple Barn for lunch! After that, we drove to Alamogordo to the White Sands National Monument. We had heard it was closed due to the government shutdown, but we also heard that tons of tourists were still going in to play on the dunes, so we decided to check it out! Sure enough, just past the monument, there were cars lined up on the highway, so we went for it! It was awesome, though nobody had as much fun as Blu! We are ending our night with some steak fajitas and Romeo and Juliet! Another great day!