One step WAY closer to current. Time to glance back at how we started this year. Now over midway through the memories are actually a little faint, so this will be a fun reflection back for myself as well!!

Let’s see less to share in January… Snow! Yup, honest to goodness white fluffy stuff. Which became white structures.

We made a trip to the Science Museum (with out large family the pass is awesome!).

There was a hands on cardboard exhibit.

Amazing beaded dresses display too.

Karate, of course!

Equally of course – the YMCA for workouts, swimming and all that jazz.

CHINCHILLA!!! Cuz you must embrace the fluff! Or at least look at my copious amounts of pictures of our Fluffy Overlord.

More crochet… and crafts

We did homeschool stuff, like look at snowflakes on black card stock and get to work on our Chinese New Year learning.

Ken and I saw interesting things.

I wish I had gotten a better picture of the sign. It said Floods, earthquakes and hurricanes.

And we even went out for ice cream.

Acolyting continued.

And sermon notes

And life was, apparently good. Well according to the images I saw off my camera roll. If nothing else, the memories that these images popped up were great which to me is the most important part. And that was January!

Sick napping Trinity

 Cafenova, a Clairmont Series book by S. Jane Scheyder is a lovely Christian romance with a contemporary setting. The story centers on Maddy who has recently had an engagement end badly and moved out to the East Coast to start over with her own B&B. In order to afford such a venture she had to take on an absolute fixer upper which leads us to her contractor – John, single father of  two young boys. With Burt the large and loveable dog it is a recipe for success.

While I love this book, there is a random hyphen (-) issue and I found it a little odd that every time a door in the house closed the author wrote it banged! I mean I understand the emphasis on how it closed (if you can’t tell by my normal script that is italicized), but after a while it was almost like seeing a book title or real life store name. Exclamation point and all. 

The Christian aspect does become more prominent as the story goes on but it is heartfelt. There is some confusion and complication with the romance but, really, is a romance that runs smoothly from start to finish all that interesting to read? Another point in the favour of this contemporary is the lack of sexual scenes. Instead the characters are quite up front about their need to be mature and careful about their relationship (Maddy due to her personal perspective and ruined relationship and John his two adorable sons). 

Forgiveness is a pretty strong theme in this book, as is being responsible with your relationship and how you progress. For some this may seem a little stiff but it felt rather real that they would discuss their wish to be intimate in the right (for them) setting. I honestly enjoyed this book from start to finish. There are moments you worry along with our characters that love may not win out, your heart feels for their struggles and giggles with them as well. If you are interested in a nice Christian message (as it does become more focal towards the end) with a lovely romance this is a definite should read.

Cafenova