Retreat Time!

Hey ladies! It is that time again. Retreat Time!! I am super excited to hang out with all of you! Here are the particulars:
Date: October 23-24
Time: Meet at my house at 4:00. We will meet Logan people at the Smith's parking lot at 4:30
Bring: A blanket and a pillow if you want. There are lots of beds.
~A inexpensive paperback to use in a paperback swap. A book that you love and would like to share with others.
~A treat to share
~$10 for food and craft
~Beads for watches
Craft: Yes, we are going to make beaded watch bands! Hooray! This is a personal taste thing. You will need to go into Beadles or Hobby Lobby/Micheal's and pick out your beads. There are some great ideas on this website.I will let you know approximately how many beads you need soon. I will also provide the beads that hook the two sides of the bands together(if you want something particular or fancy get it at Beadles), lobster clasps, and elastic cord. If you want to order a watch band leave a comment. I would choose something from this page. Call me if you have questions or want help choosing. I will be placing an order ONE TIME ONLY in a week so let me know which one you want ASAP.

I will provide dinner and breakfast with the pooled money. I need a couple of volunteers to drive. Anyone? I love you all and can't wait to hang out! Let me know if you have questions or comments(newbies especially). If you want to know how much I love you click on the comic. If you are not on the comic just know I ran out of little people, and maybe be grateful I didn't take a jab at you! Yay, yay, for slumber parties!

Book Club Meeting for September

Hey ladies! First of all, thank you Johanna for hosting book club this month. It was so great to get together with all of you. For some reason I feel like I haven't seen you all forever. I had a great time. The pie was yummy and the company was great! It was also great to go finally see "My Sister's Keeper" with a bunch of you. What a fun evening.
Now on to our book for next month.

Angie has chosen "Follow the River" by James Alexander Thom:

Mary Ingles was twenty-three, married, and pregnant, when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement, killed the men and women, then took her captive. For months, she lived with them, unbroken, until she escaped, and followed a thousand mile trail to freedom--an extraordinary story of a pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her people.
This is a great read the will probably haunt you for days after reading it.

We have decided to try moving book club to the 4th Thursday of the month. We will try this out and see how it goes. Let me know what you think. With that, book club will be held on September 24, 6:30 PM at Angie's house.
Also our retreat for October is in the planning stages. Please vote on the poll to let us know what weekend will work best for you. Bear in mind that the date we pick will be most dependent on when the cabin is available. It's just helpful to know what is best to most of you. Again, let me know if you have any questions.
Love to all of you! If you love me leave a comment because I kind of live and breath for them! (I am working on being more subtle).

My Sister's Keeper

Let's go see My Sister's Keeper!

Date: Thursday, July 23
Time: 9:25 show
Place: Providence Stadium 8 (it is the only place showing it)

Meet at Mindy's just before 9 PM if you want to car pool in. We will leave my house promptly at 9:00. I like previews. Call me if you have questions. Leave a comment if you are going to come, just so I know. Hope to see you there!

August's Book Club Choice

Johanna hos chosen our book for this month. Here is a synopsis from amazon:

First-time author Lisa Wingate drew upon her relationship with her grandmother for inspiration in writing Tending Roses. Her sensitive and able crafting of language, character, and situation pierces through the turmoil and stress of everyday life, illuminating its message with almost painful intensity: "Maybe you should start wanting less." Wingate's words resonate as readers are introduced to Kate Bowman, her architect husband Ben, and their infant son. Kate, on maternity leave from her high-profile Chicago job, has been given the unenviable task of convincing her increasingly frail and forgetful grandmother that she can no longer live alone on the Missouri farm that has been her home for almost half a century. Kate and Ben are struggling to deal with mounting debts and medical bills as they strive to build a lifestyle, rather than a life. Frustrated by dealing with her stubborn, if well-meaning, grandmother, Kate finds solace and clarity in Grandma Rose's handwritten journal. The simple stories of earlier, less complicated times renew Kate's understanding of the truly important things in life. Through the journal, Kate discovers the essence of the remarkable Grandma Rose and is forced to reevaluate her priorities and those of her family. Simply put, Wingate's aim is to exhort readers to "stop and smell the roses." The daily race to achieve and have more, more, more is clearly and all-too-accurately portrayed in these pages. I guarantee readers will stop to think of their own lives and where they are spending their energies. Let's hope Lisa Wingate has other relatives as inspiring as Grandma Rose for future novels.

Our meeting will be on August 13th at 6:30. We will meet at Johanna's house.

July's Book: Peter and the Starcatchers

Our book for July is Peter andthe Starcatchers. Here is a short review of the book:

Fourteen-year-old Peter is an orphan who doesn't exactly know how old he truly is, just like he doesn't know his last name. So when St. Norbert's Home for Wayward Boys places him aboard a ship called The Never Land, along with four of his mates, on a trip to an island ruled by the evil King Zarboff, where they will be forced to serve as slaves, Peter doesn't know exactly what to think. But when he meets up with fourteen-year-old Molly Aster, a rich passenger, traveling with her governess Mrs. Bumbrake, mysterious things begin happening. For instance, Molly can speak to porpoises, and she's hiding information about the strange trunk located in a holding cell upon The Never Land. Information about the magic, and mystery, that the trunk is holding inside. But when the notorious Black Stache learns about the treasure, the passengers upon The Never Land are in for a lot of trouble. Trouble that leads them all to fight with pirates, and become stranded on a desert island.

Our meeting will be held 6:30, Thursday, July 9 at Linda's house. Please let Mindy know if you have any questions.

Movie Night

We are going to hit the movies Tuesday night! I know this is late notice, but hope you can come.

Date: Tuesday, June 16
Time: 9:50 showing
Place: Cinefour Movies

The Pianist

The Pianist, by Wladyslaw Szpilman, is this month's book. {The full title is actually "The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945" ... but who honestly wants that as a post title?} It's a memoir, which is sorta-new to us and should be awesome. It is Bonnie's pick, it has had FANTASTIC reviews, and really- it looks phenomenal!

Here is an Editorial Review I found on Amazon:

Written immediately after the end of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation. "Things you hardly noticed before took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid armchair, the soothing look of a white-tiled stove," writes Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist for Polish radio when the Germans invaded. His mother's insistence on laying the table with clean linen for their midday meal, even as conditions for Jews worsened daily, makes palpable the Holocaust's abstract horror. Arbitrarily removed from the transport that took his family to certain death, Szpilman does not deny the "animal fear" that led him to seize this chance for escape, nor does he cheapen his emotions by belaboring them. Yet his cool prose contains plenty of biting rage, mostly buried in scathing asides (a Jewish doctor spared consignment to "the most wonderful of all gas chambers," for example). Szpilman found compassion in unlikely people, including a German officer who brought food and warm clothing to his hiding place during the war's last days. Extracts from the officer's wartime diary (added to this new edition), with their expressions of outrage at his fellow soldiers' behavior, remind us to be wary of general condemnation of any group. --Wendy Smith

Yeah. I know! Stop drooling and go get it, then! ;)

The L. library has 2 copies {I've got one}. The N.L. library has one. And Amazon has them for as low as 38 cents.

We'll be meeting at my "new" house {slash Bonnie's in-law's} on Thursday, June 11th @ 6:30pm. Bonnie also has hook-ups to an edited version of the movie and will have it there if anyone wants to watch it afterward. Woohoo! I'm pumped already. So go get the book, then sit out in your yard and read. Ah... summer!