Otherwise known as how I started a new series AND found a new author… Rose Pressey is the author of this fun and quirky novel with a paranormal aspect. We join Larue Donavan, bookstore owner and Ghost buster extraordinaire at her bookstore Book Nook. She is joined there by (seriously) the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. I honestly think he was about my favourite side character of the whole story!
Now as you can probably figure out Larue can see dead people, in fact on the weekends she is traveling around helping them make it to the light. Thought she often ends up with spirits following her home (another way our cast of characters expands hilariously). I don’t want to give too much away but I can tell you there IS a love interest… a little mystery… some dead people (but no murders!) and so many entertaining moments and quirky dialogue.
I absolutely love that Larue is an independent and (generally) self assured woman. She is doing what she loves (working at a bookstore she owns AS WELL AS ghost hunt) with her bestfriend in the know and her dead friends along for the ride. If you want a good giggle, a GREAT heroine and a taste of the paranormal this is the book for you!!!
Middle of the week can be interesting, Thursday always feel slightly anti climatic, not quite Friday not the middle of the week.
Busy AND productive!
With Tuesday being a tip to the library Wednesday was a READING DAY! We started with dinosaur books (I listed them on the Tyrannosaurus dinosaur page… which will be up… eventually). Our Halloween story of the day was a silly one called Cheech and the Spooky Ghost Bus. A giggle of a book and a great first one for our Halloween stories.
Story time
We did our next Halloween themed craft as well – pumpkin bags. We had to make them slightly smaller than it called for as I could not get sheets of felt bigger than 9X12 inches at Michaels. But the kids had a blast weaving the ribbon and gluing on their faces. Tiny bags they are PERFECT for our finished ghosts. Now I just need to get some black ink to make some fingerprint art!! One step at a time.
Making pumpkin bags
Ken found us a season of Word World for the boys to work on their simple language structure issues. I love how they give jingles for the sounds of letter combos.
Word World
Thursday morning was exciting for Emanuel and Gavin… though Ken forgot the camera while he let me sleep in (seriously!). The tooth fairy left her tooth offerings under our fairy looms! You can make your own fairy loom HERE. She brought them Playdoh no less! I was told in great detail about how wonderful she is and how happy they are. I think a precedent has been set.
We have continued on with our book work. In fact, Zander had a completion – the reading review book I bought halfway through summer is finally completed. Gavin still has a couple pages in the same book and Emanuel in his leveled reader. I am so impressed at how much progression there has been in their reading. Even Emanuel is trying to learn the sounds of letters a little more.
Zander and his finished review book
We started our second Halloween book but as it is the HISTORY of Halloween we are taking it as a two parter. BUT we finished our Velocoraptor book… Velociraptor by Janet Riehecky (in Spanish and English). Friday is a no new dinosaur day so tomorrow Emanuel and I are going to go through ALL of our dinos and make a page of the herbivores. Today we looked at the Sauroposeidon… arguably one of the TALLEST dinosaurs ever found. OH and then I found out that one of the videos we have been using – a Discovery one got this particular dinosaur pretty much COMPLETELY wrong! I will share those links on the Sauroposeidon entry… eventually. I am so far behind on these! Time for some two post days I guess.
A bit of Halloween
Ken had a second interview as well. It went rather well with a potential THIRD interview next week with the owner. So please keep a positive thought and a prayer for Ken and his job hunt!
October 8 (also Canadian Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving belatedly to all my Canadian brethren)
Well, Trinity’s bug bite/cyst finally broke open Monday, after a long period of slowly decreasing in size and looking better and better in colour thanks to b12 and careful lotion application. What surprised me was how she felt NO pain after she broke open the skin (on a chair???). She was more upset about the little bit of blood that came with it. We cleaned it up as best we could and put warm compresses on it until we could determine the extent of the tear and what was coming out of it. Since it was rather icky (best I can come up with) we decided to send her to urgent care.
After Ken and Nana sat with Trinity for hours the doctor did see her and determined that it was ok, yes it would scar a little but everything is out of it and now it can heal. We also finally got an answer on WHY nothing was done about it sooner. Apparently the location (under her chin) was near too many nerves, glands and blood vessels to mess around with. So what we did the right thing, though he put her on antibiotics for 7 days and told us to clean it 3 times a day and keep it covered.
Anyway, before all that we had our day back to school… book work, etc but add into that journal-ling about our weekend – very important! And since part of the excitement of Sunday was coming across that little snake we HAD TO read the website about the Northern Red Bellied Snake and talk about the facts about the one we found. Oh, and have our resident artist draw a rendition of the one we found. Talk about a surprise learning opportunity. Neat to know there are NOT poisonous snakes here in Minnesota!
Common Minnesota wildlife!
The BIG project for the day was starting our felt ghosts. I was short stuffing so we could only do the stitching around the edges but this was an accomplishment all by itself as this was the first sewing Emanuel has ever done AND the twins learned a new stitch – the blanket stitch. We used a video off of youTube!
There was some frustration and some needed help but really they did a great job all on their own. Yours truly is going to make Trinity and Echo theirs though Trinity will design her own face. We used a template that Ken made himself but you can find instructions and a slightly more complicated (to sew) template HERE on our favourite UK site.
This is Emanuel’s very first sewing project!!!
We ALL (except Ken) had naps and Emanuel covered his dinosaur of the day… with interesting videos! Again he throws me a bone for Tuesday – Tyrannosaurus Rex. Like the Triceratops… too much to find instead of the usual complex hunt.
Video time!
As a part of our journal process I had the kids draw TWO pictures from the weekend and share their favourite. Gavin actually ended up with too big of a picture so his words spilled onto a third page which he then drew a little snake at the bottom of to ensure the page was full! It was so much fun seeing what part of the weekend was noteworthy for each of the kids.
Emanuel and his corn pit. He is so willing to write his two or three words now it is amazing! And then he tells me what to write.
Zander’s funny chickens and turkey at the petting zoo
Gavin’s filler image
Tuesday we were back on track with our morning. There was of course our usual book work… the kids are right on top of that now, in fact today ZANDER asked for his spelling test a day EARLY and got 100%. Granted this set of words was easier to sound out BUT he rocked it and I am so proud! He had to tell EVERYONE.
Perfect score!
Our Judy Moody time is continuing on with laughter and good responses. We are not working on the same route we did with Farmer Boy but focusing much more on the character list (we update it each chapter), the simple print outs I found online AND the pure joy of storytelling. After Judy Moody we are probably moving onto the Fudge series… and I found myself a good Halloween themed story to read the week before it.
Proud members of the T.P. Club
Our pen pal letters have slowed down lately (busy people busy lives) so I am working on motivating the kids to start drawing pictures and getting some little artistic items together to send out and maybe kick start some interest. That and keep the kids busy giving and creating…We did do our errand run… first to Michaels and Walmart for necessities for school and Halloween (I think I have ALL the pieces for Trinity’s costume in hand now, just crafting work to do). And then over to McDonalds for food and PLAY TIME! This was a rather neat one. It had touch screens with games etc at a couple of the table!
HAMBURGER
Ken and the touch screen
We got some rather neat stuff in a 2.00 grab bag from Michaels… some wedding pieces that will work well for other things and of course the necessary items to finish our ghosts and start our pumpkin bags.
Random items
Our last stop was the local library branch to request books (not a huge surprise they had none on hand in such a small branch) on the platypus… a grand total of TWO in the system! This of course is the precursor to having a library day on Wednesday. Sadly a very BRIEF stop as Miss Echo did NOT approve so no books for me, but we lucked out on the dinosaurs and even one on Minnesota. We are still drifting a little on our social and science interests but the little minds wander and that is ALWAYS helpful in this respect…
Reading with Baba
With the purchase of our stuffing for our ghosties the kids were over the moon to complete their sewing and glue on their googly (seriously is there any better?) eyes (except Echo as I sewed on buttons for safety). That left drying for overnight and the addition of mouths for Wednesday.
Echo’s stuffed and in need of mouth
Really after we get through a day and look back I feel much more accomplished than I do in the moment. I just hope that I can continue to spur on interest in the children and myself to learn more and more about… well… EVERYTHING!
