Busy And Much Better!

This past week was busy and much better, with Bobby, Emily, and I finally all feeling back to normal. At school, the third graders put on an Economics Fair and sold products, to the K-4th grade students, from the businesses they established . Emily and her friend, Ella, ran a bakery and  sold peanut butter fudge and chocolate chip cookies. The fudge didn't set up, so they became creative and put it in snack bags, offered it with a spoon, and called it spoon o' fudge. Some of the other businesses sold flowers, jewelry, candy cars, horsehair key chains, popcorn, snow cones, and cotton candy. My favorite happened to be the book marks that looked like farm animals. Since the teacher gave me a fake dollar to spend along with the students, I purchased a chicken book mark because it just goes so well with Fern Valley.

I also read to the second grade students at Mansfield Christian School. I chose the second story from Fern Valley titled, The Brothers. It is a story that involves a family of pigs consisting of one sister and six brothers. The children were so attentive and had really good comments. My favorite comment was from an excited boy waving his hand wildly. His thoughts went something like this, "If you had six brothers or six sisters, your family would get poor really quick." A very funny point and probably pretty accurate.

Two special events, my birthday on Saturday and Mother's Day on Sunday, also took place. My birthday was fabulous. Three people sang Happy Birthday to me. Over a hundred people sent me FB birthday wishes. Bobby, Emily, and I had lunch next to the creek at our local park, and then I invited Grandma and Auntie Kay over for a cook out. I threw hamburgers, turkey burgers, and elk burgers on the grill and whipped up some fried potatoes. Then we wrapped it up with a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Concert Bobby had on dvd. I just love Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Mother's day was pretty nice as well.

And last but not least, I finished the chapter book I had started reading the last time I posted. I was reading, Surviving The Applewhites, and mistakenly thought I was reading the second book in the series. It turned out that I really was reading the first. While not the type of book I normally read, usually I read shorter children's books, I did enjoy it tremendously and could hardly put it down. The Applewhites are a very unique and artistic family of poets, authors, play directors, dancers, sculptors, furniture makers, and so forth. All, that is, except E.D. who craves stability, order, and normalcy.

To make matters even more complicated for E. D., the family homeschools which leads them to take in a troubled youth whose last opportunity is to survive time with the Applewhites or end up in juvenile detention center. Tough, foul mouthed, and looking the part with multiple piercings and dressed in black, Jake Semple, arrives and tries to get a rise out of everyone. But the Applewhites are just plain different and don't react to Jake's defense mechanisms.

How the family and Jake come to terms with each other and how each person finds their niche in this crazy patchwork group is a joy to behold. If you have middle grade children that are looking for a  read that is anything but ordinary, you should really check out this book!

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.