What we're reading, watching, listening to: September, 2016 edition

Things we've enjoyed—and would highly recommend—as we move out of summer and into fall:

Kid books

• Beautiful Birds by Jean Roussen and Emmanuelle Walker—An ABC book with birds, the illustrations are spectacularly cool. Also like how inside the front cover are eggs and on the back cover they've all hatched...
• Nadia: The Girl Who Couldn't Sit Still by Karlin Gray and Christine Davenier—The kids are excited about gymnastics lessons and this book is inspiring them. I get teary each time I read it and 14-year-old Nadia scores the first perfect 10 but they don't have the scoreboard programmed to show it. Such a sweet book...
• Silly Wonderful You by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Patrick McDonnell—A mama talking to her toddler about how her life is so noisy and messy now that she has a child but also so incredibly filled with love...
• Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson—Another ABC book, this one photographs of things in the city that look like letters...so cool...

Grownup books

• The Art of the Photograph by Art Wolfe and Rob Sheppard—It's been a really long time since I bought a book and I talked myself out of this one I found in a bookstore on a weekend vacation with my mom and then went back and got it. I'm so glad I did. I'm learning a lot...
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky—You know, this book is interesting and engaging so far (first 50 pages or so), but I'm having a little trouble getting into it, much as I'm liking it. Jury's out on how far I'll get. Not sure Russian novels and 4-year-olds mix...feel like I need some long, leisurely reading hours on the porch...a luxury I currently do not have...
• The House by the Sea by May Sarton—I borrowed this from my mom and have read it very slowly...it just seemed like a book to digest in small chunks...it's the daily happenings of a writer who moved to costal Maine and is for the most part relishing the solitude. I like the small pleasures she finds. I love that this is one of my mom's favorite books...I can see her in it...

Music

• You Are my Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell—This has been a constant in our car lately, it's kids songs but the singers are amazing and the songs are done in a very sophisticated way...it hasn't gotten old after what feels like a million plays either...

Movies and TV

• Stranger Things—Oh, how I love Stranger Things. I just finished Season 1 last night. It's scary. The story's cool. The acting is great. It's its own thing, which I love. A number of nights I watched this right before bed and then couldn't sleep after. I love that twin brothers have created it. And that they tried and tried to sell it...showing that even very good ideas need some nurturing and love and persistence sometimes. I can't wait for Season 2. I actually think I'm going to watch Season 1 again...
• Last Week Tonight With John Oliver—This is the one show I make an effort to consistently watch. Honestly it's been a little uneven this season, but when it's funny, it's so very funny...
• Kubo and the Two Strings—A kids movie that played like and indie film and was so good, so original and so complex, I feel like adults could watch it multiple times and get something new out of it each time. This is definitely one for our video library...
• Mad Tiger—Seen at our local monthly foreign film night, it's the story of a Japanese band in New York and how things kind of fall apart. Loved watching the strangeness of this, and also had so much empathy for the main character who was trying to find his way...

Anything you've found fabulous lately??

Happy reading/watching/listening!

XOXO

Grace in small things, September 2, 2016

1. Being awakened this morning by my mom and dad calling...lovely to talk with them first thing... 
2. A morning spent with great friends...
3. Laying in the park today, air warm, smelling of grass that's drying, Luke snuggled up close to me, listening to Zo play close by, watching the clouds go by, including a huge one that we (Luke and I) decided looked like a whale would look if it were swimming over you
4. Luke looking deep into my eyes and telling me the color was "orangey-brown" (otherwise known as hazel)...
5. The cushions on our chairs that we sit on out on the deck in the evenings have been away to be dry cleaned, but they are back. And so white! (It's been a couple years since they've been cleaned.) Yay cushions. We've made do out there without them, but it hasn't been comfortable...

Happy weekend!

XOXO

Grace in small things, August 3, 2016

1. Water and some kitchen utensils on the deck...nothing's more fun...
2. I am loving the friends I'm making here in Steamboat...
3. My husband volunteering to go to the grocery store on his way home from work whenever I need it...this is nothing new, but so grateful for the help, always...
4. A walk after the kids went down this evening, me and Newton the boxer...last month when I was doing walks at 8:30 or so it was light the whole way...today I was making it home in the dark...I love how things like the lengths of the days change so gradually and yet also so dramatically...
5. Beautiful "art letters" from my mom—one for each of the kids and one for me as well. What a delight these pieces of snail mail are...thank you Mom!!

XOXO