Beach Day

My 13th B-Day

 Flowers from Grandma and Grandpa!

And of course Braiden got into BYU Provo so we had to celebrate that...

A Summer Secret by Kathleen Fuller

I was given a copy of A Summer Secret (The Mysteries of Middlefield Series) from BookSneeze in exchange for writing a review. First of all I am going to say that this is a young adult book and is an easier reading level.

The book starts out with thirteen-year-old Mary Beth, who is the main character. She is Amish and lives in a small Amish community with her family. She spends her time in a neighboring abandoned barn, where she gets away from her chores and taking care of siblings. After a while she finds a couple things in the barn that she did not leave. In-between her chores she finds time to look for more clues about the mystery.

After a few chapters she meets Sawyer, who is a run away who has been living in the barn. Through out the story Mary Beth and her brother, Johnny, make friends with Sawyer and try to figure out what they should do.

A Summer Secret is great for a 12-14 year-old, adults might like it, but it is not written for an older audience. I felt like it just barely kept you hanging on. It didn’t draw you in as much that you couldn’t stop reading it, but just enough to keep reading. It is a mystery but some things were really easy to guess and not many things surprised you, I really like suspenseful books and this wasn’t one of them. Overall this book was fine as a very light read but it would definitely not be one of my favorites.

Surfer Girls

"You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf". -Jon Kabat-Zinn

 
So... that's what we did! After seeing Soul Surfer my number one goal was to learn to surf. Not just to ride the waves in on my knees, ( I had already done that), but to stand up on the board and ride the wave in. Now last Saturday was not a good day for surfers, most of them anyways... but for us kids, it was perfect...


Claire even went out...



 



Maddie and Jolie riding " Tandem"...

Here is a video my dad made...



Catching Up- July

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything so here's what we've been up to...

 We've been to the beach quite a few times....

Celebrated the 4th of July...

Went to the Midnight Premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2...

My dad turned forty four and I got to make the cake...

And we just got back from Utah.... More to come about that later.

I also got to go to girl’s camp in July and it was a lot of fun. If you haven't already seen it, scroll down I have a post about that.

Girl's Camp 2011

This year I got to go to Girl's Camp at Camp Josepho. It was a lot of fun and I made a bunch of new friends. It was from July 5- July 9 and at first I was a little nervous about going but after I got there I love it. This year’s theme was W.O.W, Warriors of Worth. Here are some pictures from the week...

 My bunk bed….

On our three mile hike we saw a rattle snake…

An old World War II bunker we hiked to…

My friends and I found this creepy old car just close to camp…

 

A cool  old tree…

At the Rifle Range…

 

 

 

During the week we also swam at the pool, went on another hike, cooked, did archery, and just hung out. I had so much fun and on the last night we had a testimony meeting. I can't wait for next year.

Another Slice of Lemon Meringue?

Everyone has heard of Pride and Prejudice, but have you heard about Pies & Prejudice (Mother Daughter Book Club)by Heather Vogel Frederick. My mom chose this book for me, and I had my doubts at first, but upon finishing it, I really liked it. I found out after I finished it that there was a first, second, and third book in the series before this, but I could figure out what was happening in the book without reading the other 3.

Pies and Prejudice is about a group of teenagers who participate in a mother daughter book club. But when Emma, a girl in the book club, finds out she is participating in a house swap and is moving to England, everyone thinks this is the end of their book club. But no worries, they figure out a way to continue their book club even when they are over 1,000 miles away. The girls plan to bring Emma home for Spring Break, and that's how their pie business Pies and Prejudice begins.

This book was really cute. I thought it was well written and drew you in, making you want to find out what happens next. I love the title of the book too. After finishing this book I wanted to start my own mother daughter book club. Luckily my teacher already does mother-daughter teas for my class and she thought it was a great idea.

A great to read with this would be Scones and Sensibility by Lindsay Eland. Both of these are quick reads (I finished mine within 3 days), but great ones at that.

Rereading a 'Classic'

Some may argue, but I think of Harry Potter as a classic. When people ask you what your favorite book is you don't have to say Harry Potter because everyone knows it has to be one of your favorites. Recently, I got a copy of the first book of Harry Potter, so having not read it for at least four years, I decided to reread it. Upon finishing the first, I continued to reread the rest of the series and I must admit, I forgot how great these books are.

So here is my attempt at a quick summary of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerors Stone, but with books like these almost everyone knows what they are about...

Harry Potter is just an average eleven year old boy, well almost. He lives with his aunt and uncle and has a lightning shaped scar on his forehead which supposedly came from when his parents died in a car crash. Sometimes Harry can make stuff happen without even trying to though. And on his eleventh birthday he finds out that he is a wizard and that his parents were killed by the most famous dark wizard of all who tried to kill him and failed. Soon after that Harry goes to Hogwarts, a school for witchraft and wizarding, where he is "famous". He is swept into the world of Quidditch, magic, and so much more.

Anyways, these books are great and if anyone has not read these, I highly suggest you do, and trust me, the books are so much better than the movies. Speaking of movies, I am so excited for to see the Deathly Hallows part 2. I am pretty sure it comes out in July 15.

Thankgiving... and Braces

I haven't posted in a while so before I get into a book post I've decided to do a "catch up" post. For Thanksgiving we went to Utah. We had been hoping it was going to snow and... it did! While we were there we went skiing. We got there on Saturday night and on Monday we went to to the Brighton Ski Resort. Maddie, Taylor, Braiden, and I all had never skied before so we all took lessons. In the two hour lesson we all had we all picked it up and got pretty good. On Tuesday we were supposed to have a giant storm, we were told we might be snowed in. We didn't leave the house so we went out to lunch, played in the snow a lot, went sledding and waited. It was really windy but not much snow. On Wednesday we went and saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the movie with our friends Ben, Carter, and Ann. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we went to my grandparents house, it was a lot of fun. Last but not least we went skiing again at Wolf Mountain on Friday. Unfortunately, we had to leave the next day, we were glad to get back to some warmer weather.

Also last Monday I got braces. For now I only have them on the top teeth and in nine months I'll get the bottom too. I wasn't very excited to get them but my mom was for me. She insisted on taking pictures...unfortunately.

Before

After

Sprouting Wings

A little while ago I read the book "Wings" by Aprilynne Pike. Now although this involves faeries it isn't your typical fairytale. It adds several twists in the plot and is a really exciting book.

Laurel has been home schooled her entire life, but after her and her adopted parents move she finds herself in public school for her sophomore year. But Laurel is different than other kids in a couple ways that lead up to her having a baseball sized bump on her back from which sprouts a long wing-shaped flower petal kind of thing. With help from her friend David, who loves science, she figures out she's a plant, or more specifically a faerie.

As she goes back to her old house, which is in the woods, she meets Tamani, a boy faerie. She soon gets dragged into an ancient battle between faeries and trolls, and everything ends up depending on her.

I really liked this book. It starts out a little slow but once you get into it, it really draws you in. I thought that the story line was good and that the book overall was very well-written. After this book there is also a second book in the series called Spells, which also  is very good.

The Good, the Bad, and the Uglies...

Well actually it was all good...

Imagine a world where everybody is actually divided into groups: those who are ugly, those who are pretty, and those who are special. The uglies spend their days dreaming about their sixteenth birthday and staring at Pretty Town. The pretties are who everybody wants to be, and the specials are only called in on special circumstances. No, I'm not talking about high school; it's a book called Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

Tally Youngblood is only a couple months away from turning sixteen, and she can't wait. On the day of her birthday she'll get an operation that turns her into a pretty. Then she'll be swept off to Pretty Town where nothing matters but what she's going to wear to the next party.

But in the months before her birthday she becomes friends with Shay, an ugly who, unlike others, does not want to become pretty. Right before her birthday Shay runs away, and Tally has a choice: betray her friend or stay ugly for the rest of her life.

I loved this book! Although the setting was in the future it was easy to understand and keep up with. The book was very well written and it draws you in after the first couple chapters. There are 3 others books in the series that I would also recommend: Pretties, Specials, and Extras.