“Mine is the Night” Book Review

A friend of mine started getting books for free from WaterBrook Multnomah’s Blogging for Books program.  I thought it sounded like a great way to read books that I might not normally come in contact with and to get them for free!  So here is my first review.

From the back cover of “Mine is the Night” by Liz Curtis Higgs:

SHE LOST EVERYTHING SHE LOVED.
HE HAD EVERYTHING SHE NEEDED.
BUT COULD SHE FIND THE COURAGE TO TRUST HIM?

Stepping from a battered coach on a rainy April eve, newly widowed Elisabeth Kerr must begin again, without husband or title, property or fortune. She is unafraid of work and gifted with a needle, but how will she stitch together the tattered remnants of her life? And who will mend her heart, torn asunder by betrayal and deception?
   Elisabeth has not come to Selkirk alone. Her mother-in-law, Marjory Kerr, is a woman undone, having buried her husband, her sons, and any promise of grandchildren. Dependent upon a distant cousin with meager resources, Marjory dreads the future almost as much as she regrets the past. Yet joy still comes knocking, and hope is often found in unexpected places.
  Then a worthy hero steps forward, rekindling a spark of hope. Will he risk his reputation to defend two women labeled as traitors to the Crown? Or will a wealthy beauty, untainted by scandal, capture his affections?
   The heartrending journey of the Kerr women comes to a glorious finish in Mine Is the Night, a sparkling gem of redemption and restoration set in eighteenth-century Scotland.

I guess I didn’t read the back very closely because I had NO IDEA this was a sequel until after I was finished!  That speaks a lot about the author because I didn’t feel like I was lost in the storyline.  It felt like natural background info on the characters lives as I read.

I really liked this book!  I usually like historical fiction and period pieces and this was no exception.  I love reading about period clothes, customs, ways of life, etc.  And it was a great love story (even if I could spot the romance the second the male character was introduced)!  I also enjoyed the strong female characters and their willingness to adapt and find joy in a situation far different from the one they knew before.  My only complaint is that the author wrote many characters with a strong Scottish dialect and I was bothered with having to stumble over the words to decipher them.  I felt like it disrupted the flow of my reading too much.  However, I got a little used to by the end of the book.

I would give this book 4 stars and recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction and love stories. 

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Abigail at 14 Months

 
Abby is now 14.5 months old and is much more like a toddler than a baby.  It’s quite sad!  But it’s also a lot of fun!

Sometimes she looks so grown up….

But sometimes she still looks like my baby.

Here are the signs she knows, along with how she verbally says some of them:

milk (me), eat/food, drink, sleep, diaper change, cat (ca-ca-ca), dog (dah-dah), bird (bee), fish, cracker (ca-cuh), please, bath, more (meh), all done, baby (buh-bee), hat (ha), ball (bah), car (cah) mom (mama or mah-mee), dad (dada), jacket, banana, leaf, bear (beh), and her versions of balloon (reaching up in the air and saying boowa), stinky/poopy (waving hand in front of her face) and lotion (wiping her hand around her mouth).  I think there are several others that I can’t recall at the moment.

Here are the words she says (what I can think of right now anyway):

thank-you (keh-kee), brother (bruh-buh or buh-buh), papa, socks on (sah-ah), Wubby…her binky…(wuh-buh), uh-oh (uh-ah), book (buh), bye (bah-bye), beep (bee), num-num, amen (ah-mee)…she has also started to fold her arms during prayers.

Recently, as Nat was reading her “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” she chimed right in with “uh-ah" after the line, “we’re not scared”, just like in the book.  Adam and I read that book 2 weeks ago for Tot School and she must have heard it enough to remember the prose….or verse….or whatever technical term it is.

Every morning as I open her drawer to get her clothes I sing, “Oh what should we wear today, today, day today, day today….” and with the “day today” parts she says, “day day day” (just like Adam did at this age).

She loves to march around like a one-legged Nazi (you know, sticking just her right leg straight out) and dance by spinning in a circle or bopping up and down.

She currently only has 3 teeth but I swear the second top tooth, as well as what looks like her bottom canines, are coming soon.  Somehow she manages to eat just about everything.  When she wants to.  She sometimes flat out refuses to eat food I know she likes.  Sigh.

I just like this picture

This is pretty typical….fussing that she wants someone to read to her.
(I was trying to get a picture of her in my favorite dress before church…didn’t work out too well)

She loves to drive this part of a little train in circuits around the house.  Sometimes, like in this picture, she takes something for a ride.  This is her Sleepy Dog and, along with her Wubby, is her most favorite possession.

She likes to color!  Especially if she can sit at Adam’s little table.

And she loves to be anywhere her big brother is.
She is physically fearless and loves walking, running, climbing, and now sliding.
This is her new trick….she likes to reach under her legs and grab stuff.

But, she is still my sweet baby girl and I love her to pieces!

Just some fun with Daddy

Head Shaving Party!!

This is the Shurtleff Family saying “Take that cancer!”

First up….Heath who had been waiting to cut his hair until this moment.

Of course we had to have fun with it!

Second….Tommy.
He was the most sad about doing this because he loves his shaggy hair.

We were laughing hysterically at his old man ‘do!

Third….Adam!
He was a little unsure about it but I didn’t give him a choice.  He needed a haircut either way so we buzzed him!

Cute little guy!

Fourth….Dad.
He’s getting more and more sick with each treatment (which are now weekly, so he doesn’t get much of a break before having to go back in).

Having fun.  You gotta laugh right? :)

And last but not least…..Nat!
I didn’t know if he’d do it, especially because he just flew out this morning for a business trip with a bunch of other Real Estate people.  Bald.
I got to do the honors here.

Not too bad huh?

All the guys pre-razor.

Post-razor.

Oh. boy.
Nat definitely wins the most-hair-per-square-inch award and also the darkest-hair award.

We had a fun night filled with lots of laughs.  Afterward we had dessert and played a game while Dad hung out like this….

It was a good night.

Combined Tot School

- Adam is 40 months and Abby is 14 months -

I didn’t do a theme with Adam this week and really only did focused play a couple of days.  Daddy was out of town and Mommy was in survival mode.  Wish me luck this week as he is leaving again!  But then he’s done traveling….for now! :)

Abby spent the week doing puzzles

Playing with her Melissa & Doug shape peg thingy

Putting Adam’s little clips into a baggie

Coloring

Working next to Brother.  She wants to be doing everything that he’s doing!

And be everywhere that he is!!
This week Adam worked on a number puzzle (above) and his Melissa & Doug bear family dress-up puzzle.

He tried out our new Tangoes Jr. set that I got for free using my Huggies Rewards points.  It’s magnetic and everything fits inside the case so it’ll be the perfect airplane toy for our trip to San Diego next month!

He completed 2 more coloring pages in his Handwriting Without Tears workbook.

And drew on his own.

He requested to play with the pony beads and numbered egg carton.  He put the corresponding number of beads into each space.

Then he used measuring spoons to transfer beads from one spoon to the other and then into an ice cube tray.

We also watched a Little Pim Spanish DVD that we have from Netflix (they LOVE this series so I’m thinking about buying the DVDs) and also Baby Signing Time.  Abby is picking up on new signs really quickly now!  She now signs ‘leaf’ and ‘stop’ and Adam is loving re-learning all the signs he once knew as a toddler.  Lest you think they don’t watch anything else…there is always some Team Umizoomi, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, or Dora throughout the day as well. :)

The next 2 weeks we’ll be doing Spring and Easter things and Adam can hardly wait to dive into the plastic eggs that I bought to play with (and that he saw before I could hide them).

Check out 1+1+1=1 for other Tot School ideas!

A Papa Forever

I said our family prayer tonight.  It was just me and Adam because Nat is out of town on business.  I prayed that my Dad’s chemo treatment tomorrow would go well and that he wouldn’t feel sick for too long.  I prayed that he would be healed.  This is nothing new, we pray for Papa most nights.  But when I finished praying, Adam asked questions.  And it broke my heart.

He asked why Papa was sick and what a ‘treatment’ was.  He asked why he had to go to the doctor.  I answered his questions and proceeded on with the our bedtime routine.  I randomly chose to sing “Families Can Be Together Forever” and while I sang, I cried.  I cried because I realized that whatever happens to Adam’s Papa, he will be his Papa forever because he made the choice to marry his Nana in the temple and because I made the choice to marry his Daddy in that same temple.  We will forever be together and I am so grateful for that!  Because of my choice and the choice of my parents, and my grandparents, and some of my great-grandparents, we will be a family forever.

I have faith and a spiritual confirmation that my Dad will be fine.  But someday, Adam will lose his Papa and although that day will horrible, it won’t be the end of the wonderful and powerful relationship between a Papa and a grandson.  I can’t put into words how much I love my Heavenly Father for giving that to me.