Blue Skies and Sunshine

Spent a great day with 2 of my nieces. We went to SL to see the Utah Symphony and Ballet West II perform Peter and the Wolf.  The girls said they liked it. I know I did. I think they did a fanstastic job.   But then, I’ve loved the music for years. Having the dancers dressed up like the characters during the narration was so much fun though.

Then a little lunch and shopping over at City Creek. Sitting by the fountains in the sunshine was just perfect. It’s a little cool but it felt like spring.

Febrary Odds and Ends

It’s February so birthday shopping month can officially begin. I want to get it done early since I scheduled my (hopefully) last oral surgery for 3 days after my actual birthday and then I’m going to be miserable and won’t be able to eat anything. I’ve decided on 3 or 4 places to donate some money and then I think I’m going to buy myself a new bed. It’s time for the old one to go. I think I’m going to go to a few bookstores with my niece also. I’ve already gotten myself a few puzzles. The bed is kind of major so I don’t know that I’ll do too much more but that is definitely plenty.

In other news, after my trip last December I decided I needed a change in my hairstyle. I didn’t want anything drastic but still wanted it to be enough different that it was a change. So I grew my bangs longer, then had my stylist cut more bangs so they go back a little bit farther. LOL – that was a bit of a shock to get used to, even though it was what I wanted. Then I kept the layers and cut it back to shoulder length. There has been some growing pains trying to figure out how to style my bangs but I’m happy with the change. On days like today where everything worked and I like the way it looks, I’m so happy I went with it. I have had a few complements, but I like it and that’s what matters to me.

Puzzles

Growing up, my family did puzzles. A lot of them through the years. I have great memories of Christmas break from school and we'd do puzzle after puzzle. My mom would just cover the table with a tablecloth and we'd keep them out for weeks. Friends and family would come to visit and just pull up a chair and start doing them with us. The Charles Wysocki ones were my dad's favorite and became a family favorite. Then as I moved out and got older I lost interest. I couldn't sit still for that long and didn't have the patience for all those little pieces. Even so, when my parents cleaned out their house before they moved, I still took about 6 of them for nostalgia's sake. The year my dad died my mom and sister and I did a puzzle for dad at Christmas and that was the first time I'd done one in a long time.


Then right after Christmas, I was at the store with my sister and saw a 500 piece Charles Wysocki puzzle and bought it on a whim. I cleaned off my table and put it together in a couple of hours on New Year's Day. It was fun. Since then, I've bought a couple more and I've had a puzzle out nonstop. I branched out and bought a few that are not Charles Wysocki. My dad would be shocked. :)  I prefer the 500-750 piece range because they fit on my table nicely but maybe one of these days I'll go get down one of the 1000 piece ones I took from home. I've got a few more on my wish list for my birthday. Who would have thought I'd be loving doing puzzles again? Not me, that's for sure.

Best Books of 2018

Another year, another list of my favorite books...

I read 127 books this year. Officially. Unofficially, I’d add at least 20 books to that number. I caved and got a Kindle Unlimited subscription and started using Overdrive a lot more so I borrowed lot of books I wouldn’t normally read, just to try them. Since I skimmed parts in a lot of them, I didn’t always count it as “read”. Anyway, back to the official list. There are 4 classics and 4 non-fiction on the list. I was going to say that’s 8 books out of my comfort zone reading, and maybe it is, but I think it’s more that I’m realizing that I do like a bigger variety of books, even though I definitely have my favorite genres. Even more surprising is that some of these made my best of list.

Lake Silence – Anne Bishop
I absolutely love the world of The Others and will be so sad when she’s finished writing these books.

From Sand and Ash – Amy Harmon
Lots of tears for this historical fiction set during WWII.

Frederica – Georgette Heyer
This one left me chuckling and I really liked it. I just always want a little more from her romances.

Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morely
Such a cute, feel good story about a woman who up and leaves her dreary life to run a mobile library.

The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan-American Highway – Teresa Bruce
This one is a travel memoir that I just loved. I should read more travel books.

The Opposite of You – Rachel Higginson
This is one of the books I couldn’t quit this year. I kept coming back to it for comfort re-reading.

White Night - Ellie Marney
I love EM's writing. This book had me hooked from the beginning because Bo was such a nice guy.

Rough Justice – Kelley Armstrong
Pretty much everything I loved about the series is in this novella, plus none of the things that drove me crazy.

Lethal White – Robert Galbraith
I binge read this series and while parts of it were frustrating, I really liked it and this last book, so far, was great.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster – Jon Krakauer
I was riveted by this tale, even though it happened over 20 years ago, it’s still an amazing and horrifying story.

Wait For It – Mariana Zapata
This is the other book I couldn’t quit. Huge book hangover. I haven’t actually stopped reading it since the first time.


Ghost Hunter series - Jayne Castle
I binge read a ton of Jayne Castle this year thanks to Overdrive and I can't say they are great literature, but I don't regret it a bit. I even bought my favorite to keep.


Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
This one frustrated me a bit during the reading, although I swallowed the last 200 pages in a binge. Then I couldn't stop thinking about it.


Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand - Carla Kelly
I started reading CK this year and she wrote some fantastic romances. The characters in this one actually talk to each other a lot.

This Fallen Prey - Kelley Armstrong
This series just keeps getting better and better. I'm so ready for the next book to hit the shelves in 2019. Just in time for my birthday!

Merry Christmas

The good news: we got snow last night! I had about 3 inches on my driveway this morning and it's still coming down. It will be a white Christmas after all.

I was playing Christmas songs on my piano yesterday after church and I ran across the song The Christmas Waltz. I don't remember all the lyrics but the one line "It's that time of year when the world falls in love" got me to thinking about the Christmas's of my childhood and what a magical time it used to be. As opposed to now as a grown up living by myself and dad's gone and mom lives in a different house. I'm not saying it's bad now. But there is definitely a magic about Christmas when you are young. At least there was for me. It wasn't just presents. It was all the traditions of the holidays, from candy making and popcorn cakes, to puzzles, and family and friends. LOL - we still do a lot of that now. I don't know why being an adult makes it feel so different.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to the festivities tonight. My family is having a laid back dinner together and then we'll do presents. I made mom's sugar cookies for dessert. They are the shape of Christmas trees and snowmen and I made frosting so we can decorate them before we eat them. Then tomorrow I'm going to take it easy and enjoy the day off.

Krampus

So one of the most fun things we did on this trip was see a Krampus run/parade. I didn't know they were a thing until a flight attendant on our way to Munich told us about it. And then I was disappointed because we were going to miss the one in Munich. We found out from some people we met on our Nuremburg tour that there was also one in Salzburg.


The website was not accurate with the time so we waited for almost an hour before the thing started, but it turned out to be worth it. The parade was loud and chaotic and crazy and I LOVED it.


I took so many pictures and videos but most of them are crap. I was moving too much or people got in the way, or it was too dark or lots of reasons. Still I have enough for me to remember it. Those guys have got to be having so much fun. Seriously.

Germany and Austria 2018

I just got back from a trip to Germany and Austria. I went with my mom because we wanted to see the Christmas markets. I don't even recall how I realized they are a thing. But earlier this year when I really needed something to look forward to, I did a bunch of internet searching to figure out where I wanted to go and we ended up in Barvaria. We stayed in Munich and did a day trip to Nuremburg, a day trip to the castles in Fussen, and then went to Salzburg for a few days.

I've got to say that by time we left, I wasn't very excited and it's not the best trip I've ever been on but I did have a good time. The thing is, you have to enjoy Christmas ornaments and decorating to really enjoy looking at the markets. And it does get to the point that when you've "seen one, you've seen them all" because they all have mostly the same and then some different things in them. My favorite were the manger markets because they had everything you needed to make your own nativity set. I could have had so much fun with that one...but it would have been hard to get the stuff home. Instead, I stuck with a few ornaments.

Munich

I didn't take that many pictures, especially of the Christmas Markets, because it was hard to get good ones.

Nuremburg

Salzburg

I also wanted to see Dachau. It was a rainy morning when we went, which kind of seems fitting, since it was quite sobering. I thought it might be, but you can't really predict how you are going to feel. I felt truly terrible when I went into the Crematorium. My mom didn't even want to go near it and I don't blame her at all. I just think it's so important not to forget how it happened so we don't let it happen again.

I'm just going to say that our trip to Fussen was kind of a bust. Not anything we could prevent, because it was all weather related. We only went into Hohenschwangau because I didn't get advance tickets to Neuschwanstein and didn't want to wait in the lines. We liked Hohenschwangau so that was fun. We were then going to go up to Neuschwanstein and just not go inside, but snow and sleet started coming down and we heard the buses stopped running and that Mary's Bridge was closed. Plus, we had warm clothes but when you get wet, it's just not any fun. So I can say I've been there and I don't feel any need to go back even though I didn't get the full experience. 

Neuschwanstein

Hohenschwangau

Nymphenburg Palace

I'll save my favorite part of the trip for tomorrow.