Jul 31, 2008

Stolen

Stolen from Katy over at Katy's Musings. I've actually done this before, but the list was different...

Instructions! The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you read part of but never finished.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strikethough those you hope to never read again, and sometimes wish you could un-read.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (JA is one of my all-time favorites)
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (the entire collection is brilliant)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (wonderful!)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare(The Tempest, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night / What You Will, Henry IV, part 1, Henry V, Richard III, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (wouldn't this fall under "the complete works"?)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I would hope, that simply for the education of mankind, that most people have read at LEAST 6!

Jul 30, 2008

Mommy needs a break

Seriously. What is up with my chicks??

Since we've gotten back from San Diego, no one wants to go to bed anymore. Bedtime is 8, and i'm lucky to be downstairs by 9--and that's if all goes well. Last night, I put them to bed. Jenna came downstairs with one of her many excuses. For your viewing pleasure, they are:
  • "I can't fall asleep" (after being in bed for, MAYBE, 5 minutes)
  • "I'm thinking that i might have a bad thought"
  • "I keep having bad thoughts"
  • "I think i might have a nightmare"
  • "I'm thinking about having a nightmare"
  • "I'd be more comfy in your bed"
  • "I wouldn't have bad thoughts if i were in your bed"
  • "I need more snuggles"
  • "I need more kisses"

Seriously...this kid will go on and on. She will think up ANYTHING just to get me to go lay with her until she's asleep. I've offered her my pillow, my sock monkey, and I DO lay down with her every night for 10-15 minutes. That's our ritual and i do so EVERY night. Lately though, it's not good enough.

Last night, she FINALLY fell asleep at around 10--after hours of coming downstairs with her excuses. I went to bed around 11. At 1130, she comes into the room: "I can't sleep."

"You've BEEN asleep--and so has everyone else in this house," I say.

"No I haven't."

"Yes, you have. Go get back in bed."

"I caaaaaannnnn'ttttt sleeeeeep...."

"Go get into bed, or I will beat you."

My threats didn't work. I ended up walking her in there and putting her into bed. For the next 15 minutes, she'd walk in and out of my room, whining about how she can't sleep, etc. I prayed fervently that I would retain my last scrap of patience so I wouldn't beat her for real. Finally, I just went in there and laid down with her with her. She fell asleep, and so did I.

At approximately 230am I was woken up by CLAIRE crying. "I had a dream about going pee-pee and I peed in my bed!" Seriously. I am not fricking kidding you. This child has NEVER wet the bed--even when potty-training. In the past 5 months, she's peed the bed twice--always because of one of those damned "i think i'm sitting on the potty" dreams. Dammit. And she gets SO upset. I tried to explain to her that if she's having dreams that she's peeing on the potty, then she needs to realize that she has to pee and wake up. I hate the "pee-pee dream."

The alarm in Jen's room went off at 8am. We had a dentist appt this morning. The girls LOVE the dentist. Claire went first, then Jen, then me. The hygienist told me that Claire brushes remarkably well for a 4-year old. Then she said she has 2 cavities. Genetics. It's her father.

I need a trip to Mexico.

Jul 15, 2008

Back in Texas

Well, we're back from California. Man, it's hard leaving Southern Cal and it's awesome weather to come right back to the oven that is Houston. It's even harder leaving my sister. It's even harder driving the 22 hours back to Texas when the chicks are in the backseat crying, "We don't want to go back to Texas! We want to live in California!" Yeah, me too girls. I'll take the increase in housing for the beautiful views, awesome weather, and my sister.


We had an awesome time--the beach, Disney's California Adventure, Legoland, and just tons of fun. My sister's cats are probably partying it up now that the chicks are gone. Those poor things couldn't catch a break while we were there--the girls were just dragging them around everywhere. Our cat is old and crotchety and hates people. My sister's cats are young and stupid.


Here are some pictures of the joy:

Clairey at the beach. Some totally ripped 9/10-year old boys dug a huge hole in the sand. The girls liked to jump in it. It was so deep, that we couldn't see them--even when they were standing up.



Jenna at the Wildlife Animal park. Yes, there were cheetahs. Yes, there was much excitement. See the sparkle in her eyes? She was contemplating stealing a cheetah. She's gorgeous.



Clairey just looking as cute as a friggin' button. I could eat her face. This kid is absolutely precious.

Waiting in line for Toy Story Mania at Disney's California Adventure. Don't go there. It's a 1/4 the size of DisneyLand and costs the same. What a rip off. This was one of only FOUR rides that Jenna would go on. She went in this and Monsters Inc. The other two, she attempted, but it ended in high-pitched screams.




Me and The Munch at Legoland. I can't believe more strangers just don't try to eat her. She's that adorable.




The drive back to Texas.