Book Meme

I saw this over on Stacey's blog and thought I’d take a shot at it.

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline or star (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.

The premise of this exercise is that the National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1 **Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 **Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 **To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 **Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 **Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 **Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 **Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 **The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 **Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 **The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *******Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery I loved these books when I was a teen!!!
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel Ugh... I did NOT like this book!!!!
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 *****Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 ********The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon This is such a great book... especially if you have any kind of relationship with someone who is autistic.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ~ I did read about half of it.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 **********The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett I have read this numerous times!
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 ********The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 *****Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 *****Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 *****Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Some other all time favorites of mine are Jurassic Park,... I have others, but babies are fussing. I'll try to fix this later.

How ’bout you?

Best Friends!

Someone is listening to me!

So yesterday the Wondertwins were playing in the living room. Bumblebee walked up to the TV and started to play with the buttons. Monkey walked up to her, gently took her hand, looked her in the eyes, and said, "NoooooooooOooooo... NoooOOoooooooooo." He was shaking his head and looking very serious.

It was so cute! I especially love how gentle he was with her. I LOVE my kids!

WOW... Monkey can use a FORK!!!!!!

Monkey Boy has a little bit of a texture issue. He doesn't like to pick up things that are slimy or too messy. Today I fed the Wondertwins cantelope. Monkey just kept looking at the melon on his tray. So, I started feeding him with the fork and bowl I was using. I was getting more for Bumblebee and set the bowl and fork down on Monkey's tray. He immediately picked up the fork, speared a selected melon and ate it!!!! I was so surprised!

I ran to get the camera, but the battery was dead! By the time I got it charged enough he was done eating melon. So, I got out some raspberries in an attempt to get him to do the same trick.

Notice how he checks the berries out. First he pokes at them. When I tell him to use the fork, he gets down to business, but hesitates when he gets it to him mouth. After the video ends (camera died again) he finally ate the berry.

I was just so excited to see his coordination! I am in shock that he can not only hold the fork, but pick out food, stab it with the fork, and put the food in his mouth... WITHOUT making a mess!!!!! WHOOOOoooHOOOooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our trip to Indiana

All in all, it was a great trip. We had a few mishaps including my back causing problems on the 2nd half of the trip (I had twisted my ankle and fallen 2 days before the trip) and the Wondertwins and I all getting a huge cold. However, taking my family to visit joyous places from my past, getting to see old friends, and spending time with my family was wonderful. I will have lots of great memories from this trip!

Hubby and Monkey taking a break from our hike on the first day of our trip. We were visiting Spring Mill State Park... One of the neatest parks in the US!





In front of Donaldson Cave.



The Wondertwins and I on the back porch of the Inn.








Hubby and Monkey Boy standing in the cool Spring Mill Creek.


Our family, in the Village. You can see the actual Mill to the right in the picture. I wanted that to be the main focus, with our family... but I guess the photographing stranger didn't understand that.





Monkey and hubby in front of the Mill wheel, then BumbleBee (we changed her nickname) and I in the same place.










Somewhere, there is a picture of me playing with this same spinning wheel when I was 1. I tried to get the Wondertwins' picture here on numerous occasions during our stay. As you can see, they were not into it... AT ALL!!!!









Friends since High School... my friend Lisa and her little munchkin with the Wondertwins and I. We had a great visit, despite her dealing with two herniated disks!







BumbleBee wearing Daddy's cap.









Our trip to the Indianapolis Zoo. This was the Wondertwins first trip to a zoo. They had a blast! Auntie was such a great help! She even carried BumbleBee in the Ergo... Continuing even after she got stung when a wasp got trapped under the strap! What a trooper.





















We found these fountains in the gardens next to the zoo. The Wondertwins had a blast splashing and playing! They were soaked by the time we left... Luckily, I had extra clothes!




We also got to visit with my friend who has twins. Her girls are about a week younger. We have been getting together since all of ours were about 2-3 months, along with some other twin moms. She recently moved to Indiana... So, it was great to get together and have our kids play together again!

Going back home

I grew up in a little town in Indiana. My hubby, kids, and I are on our first road trip... back to where I grew up. The drive was long... but we made it. We arrived yesterday.

As we neared the gatesk, of the park we are staying at, my chest grew tight. This place... this park we were visiting... I grew up here. It was a place of many of my greatest memories. This is a place where my family was happy. I don't remember fights here... I don't remember things that led to my parent's divorce... things were good here. I remember time with my grandparents... I remember feeling young and free. And now... I was bringing MY OWN kids and husband. It was an amazing feeling!

We hiked, we swam, we ate, we looked, we walked, the list goes on. We packed about as much as we could... with twin toddlers. It has been amazing.

My dad has memories being here, as a kid... I have memories growing up here... Now, I am beginning to build memories for my kids.

WOW

Glasses

Little Frog LOVES to put on glasses. The funny thing is, she never puts them on her face. She puts them on her neck then uses her chin to hold them down. Too Funny!