Archive | January 2013

Dead Body Language… a Book Review

Time for something a little different… well for a rather unique heroine. This first in a series by Penny Warner (A Connor Westphal Mystery) is set in small town in the California Gold Country. Connor is a deaf reporter turned detective out of necessity in this cozy mystery. The pace is good in this story and the characters interesting. I loved the premise of a woman born hearing who through an illness became deaf as a child. 

There were moments where I found Connor to be a little scattered at  time but she was fun and interesting and a tough gal. There was some editing issues which did take away from the enjoyment in reading. I would have loved a little more time with Connor’s dog as it is shown so prominently on the cover, and hope that it would become more of a player in the future books. As well, though Connor inherited a newspaper and defunct diner she seemed to do little with it, instead leaving everything with her teenage assistant (that she often refers to a slight attraction to). He (Miah) runs her errands and basically writes the paper while Connor ran here and there. 

There was a romance as well with the brother to the detective with an office in the same building as Connor’s newspaper. While I had my hiccups with this series I am still going to hunt down the next in the series. There is a lot going for this book, an unusual main character, a good mystery… definitely good for a lazy afternoon.

Dead Body Language

Saying Good Bye

January 20-21

It was hard to do it but on the 20th Ken and I had to make the drive to send Karyn back to Canada. I don’t think Trinity really understood what that meant. She really was thinking Karyn would just be back soon.

Missing Aunty Karyn

After dropping off Karyn really the rest of the day was resting and sleeping for yours truly. We stayed up late the night before (of course). It is so unreal, saying good bye again with no set date to visit each other again. BUT the visit was amazing and that is what counts!

Relaxing with Daddy

TV time

Monday had a slow start due to the ending of our visit. BUT we got our feet under us and worked our buns off to do our best with our school work. What to start with? Well… Art for Kids has always been an inspiration for us! This time we had THREE pictures to draw… the roses from before, an adorable penguin and a spider! Zander did all 3 on one page and then wrote a story with me about the picture (I will share that in another entry eventually I am sure). 

Gavin with two of 3

His spider on a rather amazing web

The three in one

The Lincoln Logs (I know, so classically AMERICAN) appeared on the floor for some intense family building, from instructions… but with some alteration of the roof! We had to liquidate ours when we moved so having a Nana and Baba set to visit with is great.

House

We made a family favourite for lunch – pita pizzas, just using tortillas instead of our usual pita. 

Pizza time!

As a SUPER special treat to make up for the lack of Aunty Karyn I busted out some Smarties of the Canadian kind to share with everyone! YUM!

YUM

We have made a great start with our Chinese New Year… of course starting with the traditional story about the great race to the Jade Emperor. My main resource for this year’s festivities is Activity Village. It is the year of the SNAKE! I have already contacted Xinny to get the characters to use for it and am looking forward to a couple snake crafts as well as our usual library books, colouring pages and time together talking about China! This year we are going much more stories and together time and less the country itself. 

Proudly coloured… with markers!

So life is trundling along with our new countdown to seeing Ted and Sean!!! After all these visits are done we are going to be one mopey family!

Pretty in plaid

This entry was posted on 29/01/2013, in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Compsognathus

While Emanuel has openly stated his favourite dinosaurs are the herbivores we most certainly can NOT ignore all these interesting carnivores. The compsognathus is no exception. This dinosaur, tiny as it was (the size of a chicken) is the first dinosaur of which a whole, complete fossil was found! Now for our links and videos for this rather interesting, but small dinosaur from the late Jurassic Period.

We found TWO videos for this dinosaur. Of course, I’m a Dinosaur was first.

But the second is actually from Jurassic Park the Game?? Seems like it could be rather interesting.

So it seem Compy is a little bit famous! Kidsfront.com has a great little blurb with a colour Emanuel whole heartedly agreed with HERE. Blue was perfect he said! There is more about the Compsognathus and its role in the Jurassic Park franchise and more HERE. Dinosaurs.about.com has some interesting information HERE. As usual Emanuel loved the charts and graphs on Kidsdinos.com HERE. EnchantedLearning has a fact sheet HERE or the article with more information HERE. Of course Wiki has its article HERE. And last of all, our colouring page HERE.

Compy