Good deals make me happy. I bought my favorite pair of jeans for $4 at Goodwill. I was thrilled last week when I scored a Nike Iowa State hoodie on ebay for $13.00 to give one of my boys for Christmas. And I enjoy scouring the clearance racks at Kohls with my 30% off coupon in hand. But when the employee at the register rings up my purchases and excitedly tells me that I just saved hundreds of dollars, I am always tempted to say, “You know I know that’s not true, right?” – I’m a frugal consumer, but I’m…
I’m not usually tempted by a Daily Deal, but for some reason I succumbed to Kindle’s advertising ploy one day this summer. Lucky for me The Hangman’s Daughter was worth the $1.99 I paid for it. This book is a bit gorier than books I normally read, but I think it was the disturbing nature of the prologue that sucked me in. Kind of like when you can’t take your eyes off a bad accident. The suspense/mystery/historical fiction story is about a midwife wrongly accused of murder and witchcraft in Bavaria in the 1600s. The town’s hangman believes her to…
Our family had our first “wilderness” adventure together this summer. With all of our necessities on our backs, we packed in to a primitive campsite on the Superior Hiking Trail and spent the night away from all modern conveniences. And we all came out alive. The boys filtered water from the Split Rock River, gathered firewood off the trail and set up their own tent. They inhaled their mountain meal like it was the most delicious food they had tasted in their lives, and Owen said he liked river water better than regular water. Aside from one child falling in…
We own Love You Forever. It’s stuck in the bookcase somewhere between Oh The Thinks You Can Think and Animal Alphabet. We read it every now and then, but it always makes me feel a little funny. It’s starts out lovely but gets increasingly more bizarro with the flip of each page. I would be concerned about my mother-in-law’s mental health if she drove to our place at night with a ladder strapped to her car and then climbed up the side of the house to enter through a second-story window. Wouldn’t you? That’s freaky enough, but if she then proceeded to…
My two oldest children are convinced they will never get married, so I very well could have just wasted my money on this book. But I’m all for being prepared “just in case.” 😉 When I first saw Kevin Leman’s picture as keynote speaker on the Hearts at Home Conference website a few years ago, I thought, “Oh great, he looks pretty stuffy, boring and preachy.” Far from it! He was my favorite speaker at the conference. He is completely engaging and funny in real life and in print. His books are educational and insightful, but they are also so darn entertaining, that…