Books

It's no secret that I love books.  I always have.  My mom jokes that before I could read to myself she would tell her friends to claim they couldn't read if they came to visit or else I would keep them so busy reading, there would be no time for conversation.  

It's also no secret that I totally lack self control when it comes to reading.  I get in much more trouble in a book store than a shoe store and once I start a good story, the world stops until I finish it.  Ryan claims that early in our marriage, before kiddos took priority, he would come home to a nearly dark house and find me with my nose in a book- so intrigued that I'd forgotten to turn the lights on.  

That's one of the things that I love about summer.  I always make time for reading.  Not the non-fiction reading I allow myself all year long, but the fiction reading that I love.  So far this summer I've enjoyed 4 good stories, mostly from the church library.  My favorite was The Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers.  Ahh, I love Francine Rivers.  

Reading is one way that my kids and I have always made memories together.  When I get especially frustrated with them, I often call them all to the couch, pull out a good book, and a chapter later we're all on the same team again.  We've read hundreds of books together and it's one of my favorite mommy things.

Last summer, the girls and I had a book club.  I wasn't that ambitious this summer.  But, I did want to get in some good read-aloud books that weren't school assignments, so I ordered several  early in the summer and we've been plowing through them.  One of our favorite book club books last summer was The Penderwicks, so this summer I ordered the sequel The Penderwicks on Gardam Street.  It has set on the book stack for several weeks while we've read others, and at least once a day one of them would ask if we could read it.  So, with great anticipation, we finally we started the book yesterday.  

Now, this is the story of a family of four girls who live with their widowed father.  Book one told us little about how the mother dies.  Book two fills in the gaps.  In the prologue.  Very sweetly.  Needless to say, it is very precious,  very sad, and I got very emotional.  I mean I was  ugly crying emotional, as I was reading the prologue.  We were sitting around the breakfast table and I started weeping as I tried to read.  Then I looked up to see 3 of my 4 children weeping too.  Isaac actually had his head in his hands and was sobbing, shoulders shaking sobbing as he pictured the scene.  And then we all looked at each other and started to laugh hysterically at one another.  Laughter through tears, I love those moments- the ones that can't be created, they just happen at some of the most unexpected times.  

I guess we've made another funny memory together, all compliments of a good book.  Did I mention that I love books?