Book Review: Mothers & Other Liars

As promised, here's book review number two. "Mothers & Other Liars" by Amy Bourret is a pretty good read. I was a little disappointed in the plot development... I felt it was a little unrealistic as to what would happen in the real world. However, the concepts that Bourret explores are quite difficult - would you sacrifice one child to save another? Here's the back cover synopsis:

Ten years ago, Ruby Leander was a drifting nineteen-year-old who made a split-second decision at an Oklahoma rest stop. Fast forward nine years: Ruby and her daughter Lark live in New Mexico. Lark is a precocious, animal loving imp, and Ruby has built a family for them with a wonderful community of friends and her boyfriend of three years. Life is good. Until the day Ruby reads a magazine article about parents searching for an infant kidnapped by car-jackers. Then Ruby faces a choice no mother should have to make. A choice that will change both her and Lark's lives forever.

It may be a while before I do another review... I'm taking on "Crime and Punishment" out of spite. Both Sean and Mike have said they couldn't get through it, so I'm going to do it if it kills me!

Book Review: Who Loves You Best

While on vacation, I read a couple of really good books. The first is called "Who Loves You Best" by Tess Stimson. Here's the back cover synopsis:

An unforgettable story about the complex choices women make for love, motherhood, and family—and the unexpected events that open our hearts to what really matters in life.


Clare Elias feels more than ready to conquer being a parent. She’s already mastered the business world, running a flourishing chain of boutique flower shops. Her husband, Marc, is handsome, successful, supportive—and nearly a decade her junior. Clare is at the top of her game, so how hard can motherhood be?

Then the babies come—both of them. And Clare finds herself in the midst of the crisis faced by every woman who’s ever tried to Have It All. She’s sworn she won’t have her children raised by nannies the way her inattentive mother did, but when help arrives in the form of pretty, young, hyper efficient Jenna, Clare has no idea that bringing this stranger into her family will change everything. As Marc becomes distant and secretive and, worst of all, one of her babies gets sick, Clare—and Jenna—must make the kinds of heart wrenching decisions that no woman wants to face.

Wise, witty, and powerfully emotional, Who Loves You Best captures the working mother’s joys and frustrations—as well as the guilty secrets of nannies—in a tale that is surprising to the very end.

The beauty of this book is that it leaves you wanting more. When I finished, I wanted to know what happened next for each of the characters, especially Claire's brother Xan. I think Stimson does a wonderful job portraying the fear in new motherhood that Claire goes through. She juggles wanting to have a career, take care of her own children and the fear of leaving her kids with another woman. This is definitely a must read!

Return from the Lake

No, it's not a horror movie... we're actually back from vacation! There will be several posts over the next couple of days (two book reviews, vacation and a concert review) because we've been so busy!

Lake Almanor was fantastic! The weather was beautiful - warm during the day, chilly at night. As is my usual tradition, I pretty much spent the first two days reading and napping. I like to call it recharging, but I've been told by some that it's letdown. Whatever you want to call it, I had a great time doing it. We fished every single morning that we were there and ended up catching around 40 fish! They ranged from big to very small (Mike set a new record on the boat!) and we had a fantastic time.

One of Mom's fish:

Dad's monster fish:

One of my fishies:

One of Mike's bigger fish:

And, finally, Mike's record-setting fish... that's right, the smallest ever caught on the boat:

Mike and I also got a great hike in... we had wanted to climb up Mount Lassen, but the trail was closed for the entire week due to helicopter training and work going on near the top of the peak. Instead, we climbed up Mount Harkness, which is about 2,000 feet shorter than Lassen. The hike was beautiful - right near the middle there were some fantastic meadows full of wildflowers and beautiful views of the surrounding lakes and mountain peaks. Once we got up to the top, we discovered that there was a fire lookout... meaning we had a spectacular 360 degree view of the entire area. It was awesome! Here are some of the pics:

Juniper Lake:

The view of Lake Almanor from the top... I've never seen it from above and was a little shocked at how big it is:

Here's the lookout tower:

It was also our week of seeing things that we'd never seen before. One of the days that we were out fishing, I looked over at the rocks (we troll at about 2 miles per hour, about 25 feet off the shoreline, so we can definitely see the rocks) and saw this sleek black looking thing. I thought it was a cat, but it turns out, it was an otter! It had pulled something (a fish?) up onto one of the bigger rocks, eaten it and then was getting ready to go swimming again. It dove off into the water and swam away before I could get a good picture, but in all of the 15ish years that we've been going to the lake, we have never seen one of those! Also, all along those same shores are falcon nests... they're constantly diving down to pick fish off the top of the water to take back up to the babies. We saw one go after a fish that we were not able to revive after catching it when all of the sudden another falcon swooped in. The second falcon was apparently very angry that the first was hunting in it's area because it smacked into it like a linebacker! We could hear the crunch from 50 yards away! The second bird sort of splashed down into the water, collected itself and then flew away. It was spectacular:

We also had some spectacular water skiing and jet skiing days... it was a wonderful trip! Tucker and Gracie also had a wonderful time... they loved swimming and running around on the grass! Gracie really took to the boat and had a fantastic time!

The rest of my pictures are up at Facebook... if you want to see more, head on over!

Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

I recently finished another excellent book, "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger (the author of "The Time Traveler's Wife", which I have not yet read, but will be after this latest book!). Here's the back cover synopsis:

Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls' aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons and other luminaries are buried. Julie and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth's elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including - perhaps - their aunt.

Now, reading this back cover again (after having read the book), it doesn't do it justice. This book draws you in with a series of twists and turns that you definitely don't see coming. It touches on life after death, the bond between sisters and what people will do for love. This book is great vacation read - it makes you think but quickly becomes a book that you won't want to put down!

In other news, this weekend was pretty fun. LONG but fun. On Friday I had started to not feel well, but sucked it up for an evening out with Kimi, Mike and Kayla. We had a lovely dinner at the Olive Garden down in Folsom. Later that night I started to feel really yucky, so I spent most of Saturday morning trying to rest because we had Matt (Mike's cousin) and Megan's wedding in Sonoma Saturday evening. It was a really long drive... we hit traffic just West of Davis and pretty much sat in it the rest of the way there. Thankfully we had left early... we made it there about 10 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start! Megan looked beautiful... but since I wasn't feeling well, I didn't take too many pictures. In fact, the only one I that had her in it was during the ball and chain tradition:

Yeah, you read that right... apparently it's a Blankenheim right of passage to be tackled at your wedding and shackled with an honest-to-God cement ball and chain. It's happened at all of them and the key ends up in random places, like the bride's garter. Here's Mike and I after the ceremony:

We decided to drive home after the reception, so we didn't end up getting here until just after midnight... this morning I actually slept until almost 8am! I spent the rest of the day reading (I've moved on to a trashy romance novel... I have to slip those in every now and then) and napping while Mike watched golf and napped. It's been a really long time since I've had an entire day to lounge in bed... it was awesome! Next up, some Sunday night football and an early bed time to kick whatever this weird little bug is!

Evening Out

Mike and I went out to probably one of the best dinners I've had in a long time. We went to a place in Folsom called Sudwerk Riverside (formerly The Cliff House). It was absolutely fantastic! We started with calamari (Mike) and a grilled sausage sampler (me, but I shared with Mike). Then I had the filet minion and Mike had the prime rib (both were served with green beans and some fantastic garlic mashed potatoes). We followed all of this with some yummy cheesecake.

The best part is that the restaurant is right on the river - we were seated outside at a little table that overlooked the water. The weather was beautiful (holy cow, it's cool for August!) and I could not have asked for a better dinner! We definitely need to do that more often!

The rest of the weekend is going to be spent relaxing... everything has been so busy lately, so it's nice to have some down time today!

Shark Week

In honor of Shark Week, a little shark joke sent to me by Raymond. It's called "Why Sharks Circle You Before Attacking".

Two great white sharks swimming in the ocean spied survivors of a sunken ship. "Follow me son" the father shark said to the son shark and they swam to the mass of people. "First we swim around them a few times with just the tip of our fins showing." And they did.

"Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times with all of our fins showing." And they did. "Now we eat everybody." And they did.

When they were both gorged, the son asked, "Dad, why didn't we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?"

His wise father replied, "Because they taste better without the poop inside!"

Book Review: The Color of Lightning

I just finished an excellent book called "The Color of Lightning" by Paulette Jiles. Parts of the novel were very hard to read... it depicted a time in which Indian raids included the rape and slaughter of women and children. Even harder to read is the raw emotion that Britt (one of the main characters) feels as he struggles to move past the damage done.

Here's a little bit about the book (from the back cover):

In 1863, the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion—and eastern thoughts are already turning to different wars and enemies.

Searching for a life and future, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson is venturing west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children—wary but undeterred by sobering tales of atrocities inflicted upon those who trespass against the Comanche and the Kiowa. Settling on the Texas plains, the Johnson family hopes to build on the dreams that carried them from the Confederate South to this new land of possibility—dreams that are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to face the unthinkable—his friends and neighbors slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his beloved Mary severely damaged and enslaved, and his remaining children absorbed into an alien society that will never relinquish its hold on them—the heartsick freedman vows not to rest until his family is whole again.

Samuel Hammond follows a different road west. A Quaker whose fortune is destroyed by a capricious act of an inscrutable God, he has resigned himself to the role the Deity has chosen for him. As a new agent for the Office of Indian Affairs, it is Hammond's goal to ferret out corruption and win justice for the noble natives now in his charge. But the proud, stubborn people refuse to cease their raids, free their prisoners, and accept the farming implements and lifestyle the white man would foist upon them, adding fuel to smoldering tensions that threaten to turn a man of peace, faith, and reason onto a course of terrible retribution.

Paulette Jiles has definitely done her research - in fact, most shocking to me was the author's note at the end - Britt was actually a real person. She was able to dig up tons of information on him (difficult, since at that time freed slaves were not necessarily documented, nor were their stories, histories, etc). This is definitely a must read book!

Happy August 1st!

Well, it's been a couple days... things have been busy! Mike left for a fire on Thursday night, so I've had the house to myself for the last couple of days. Friday I headed down to Folsom in the afternoon for our 2010 Back Pack Drive count (we're getting close). I co-lead the annual event - Intel buys the back packs and the employees donate all of the supplies needed to get the kids through the school year. We pick one school and on the first day of classes, we go in with brand new back packs for the entire school. It's such a cool event to be a part of! We're moving steadily towards our goal, and we deliver next week... I can't wait to see the looks on the kids faces! After I finished up there, I headed into Bed Bath & Beyond to get some new towels and sheets... much needed on both fronts! Nicki and Raymond invited me over for pizza, so I hung out with them a little on Friday night.

Saturday I ran a ton of errands and started cleaning the house. Then, in the afternoon, Nicki, Skyler and I headed out to the Amador County Fair. I was very surprised... it was way more fun than the State Fair was this year! We saw a ton of animals, played some games and went through a couple of the exhibits. The theme this year was "Welcome to the Jungle", so they had this whole exotic animal exhibit... including an armadillo and a porcupine! I had never actually seen either one of these, so it was pretty cool! I also had my obligatory funnel cake (it was way too hot at the State Fair and I didn't feel like eating anything sweet or fried). It was delicious!

Today's game plan is some serious laziness... I have some more cleaning and organizing I want to get done this morning, but then I plan to just be mellow for the rest of the day! I can't believe that it's already August!!! Where is the time going?

Book review to follow a little later today!