2009 reading list

I read a number of books this year including plenty of pregnancy and child related books. I read more than I was expecting and even more than last year. My book pile dwindled during the year and I had the unexpected task of procuring more books. Not that numbers count but here are some interesting stats

1 signed copy [Olive Kitteridge - thanks Betsy for the loan!]
3 Australian novels [My brilliant career, cloudstreet, Snugglepot & Cuddlepie]
3 previously read books [Three men in a boat, The alchemist, On love]
5 audio books [Confessions, Anna Karenina, Peter Pan, Paddington 1 & 2]
9 electronic books on my Kindle

My top three books for the year are Beowulf [Seamus Heaney's new translation, first published 1992], Anna Karenina, and The reason for God. Beg, borrow or steal these!

The full list

Confessions - Hippo, Augustine of

My Brilliant Career - Franklin, Miles

The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway, Ernest

Cloudstreet : A Novel - Winton, Tim

Olive Kitteridge - Strout, Elizabeth

Peter Pan - Barrie, J M

The Alchemist - Coelho, Paulo

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Botton, Alain de

The Birth Of Christianity: The First Twenty Years - Barnett, Paul

The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer - Karp, Harvey

Don't Waste Your Life - Piper, John

Three Men in a Boat - Jerome, Jerome K.

Light Years - Salter, James

The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith - Keller, Timothy

Carry On, Jeeves - Wodehouse, P.G.

Out of Africa - Dinesen, Isak

A Fraction of the Whole - Toltz, Steve

Wandering Star - Clézio, Jean-Marie Gustave Le

The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne, Nathaniel

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism - Keller, Timothy

A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You - Tada, Joni Eareckson

More About Paddington (Paddington book 2) - Bond, Michael

Little, Big - Crowley, John

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy, Leo

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie - Gibbs, May

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible - Jacobs, A.J.

A Bear Called Paddington (Paddington book 1) - Bond, Michael

The Shy Child: Helping Children Triumph over Shyness - Swallow, Ward K.

The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway, Ernest

Treasuring God in Our Traditions - Piper, Noel

Beowulf: A New Verse Translation - Heaney, Seamus

A Mercy - Morrison, Toni

My Man Jeeves - Wodehouse, P.G.

The First Year: Type 2 Diabetes: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed - Becker, Gretchen

Amerika - Kafka, Franz

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera, Milan

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Barbery, Muriel

The Waste Land and Other Writings - Eliot, T.S.

The Prince - Machiavelli, Niccolò

The Elements of Style - Jr., William Strunk

The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash - Nash, Ogden

On Love: A Novel - Botton, Alain de

Look Homeward, Angel - Wolfe, Thomas

The White Tiger - Adiga, Aravind

2009 watch list

Here's the list of movies we rented from Netflix this year. An interesting mix. There are some that I wasted my time watching (Mamma Mia!) and there were others that were enthralling (Slum Dog Millionaire). There are 33 movies left on my 'to watch' list - maybe we'll get through them in 2010 and we can cancel our subscription. Our favourite family movie was Mary Poppins. What a classic! At the movies we saw The invention of lying, The soloist, Bride wars, The boat that rocked (Pirate radio) and The secret life of bees.

Top four - go rent these now: John Adams, Revolutionary Road, Ben Hur, The curious case of Benjamin Button

Movies I turned off before the end: The Family Stone, The assassination of Jesse James, Beowulf (the story totally departs from the original text)

Full list:

Julie & Julia

Monsoon Wedding

National Lampoon's Vacation

Away We Go

Lawrence of Arabia

Peter Pan

Adventureland

Ben-Hur: Collector's Edition

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Sunshine Cleaning

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

I Love You, Man

Out of Africa

The Family Stone

The Philadelphia Story

Mary Poppins

Rachel Getting Married

W.

Australia

Revolutionary Road

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Kenny

Charade

Flight of the Red Balloon

New In Town

Look Both Ways

Enchanted

The Painted Veil

The Reader

Corrina, Corrina

Slumdog Millionaire

Indiana Jones/Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Frozen River

Beowulf: Director's Cut

The Assassination of Jesse James

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Garbage Warrior

Bella

Into the Wild

Get Smart

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The Case for Christ

American Teen

Les Miserables

Ghost Town

24: Redemption

Marie Antoinette

The Savages

John Adams

Mamma Mia!

Legends of the Fall

Happy birthday Jesus

We had a great Christmas season! It has been jam packed with fun, food and friends, and thus blogging has been lacking. Presents were not a highlight in our house so when people ask Lucy what she received for Christmas she says she can't remember. [We all crawled out of bed at 9am on Christmas morning, made pancakes and then opened the first present at 11am as Henry was going back to bed for a nap] What Lucy can remember is the time we spent playing board games, decorating the tree, watching The Nativity movie, and the food we cooked. She loved being in the Christmas play, dressing as an angel in the Living Nativity and listening to Colin's Christmas CD. She also enjoyed checking the manger every day and opening the advent calendar, which she'll have to share with Henry next year! Surprisingly she also enjoyed taking down the decorations (we had twitter bugs). As a family we enjoyed the Christmas eve church service and a get together at the Farvers. We also attended the adult Christmas cantata at church, 2 playgroup parties (one for mums and one for families), the church women's group cookie exchange and baked cookies for our CBS teachers. It's been crazy busy because the kids have been sick with colds & coughs, Andrew had root canal surgery on a tooth and it's been zero degrees outside.


This year we celebrated Jesus birthday with a triple chocolate mousse cake. It didn't look as good as the recipe photo but it certainly tasted good. Although rich, it was low in sugar, being flavoured with good quality chocolate Andrew could eat a large slab of it. We cut the pieces with a cheese wire so that pieces were very neat.

Merry Christmas

Lucy and Henry are both sick so they have missed out on a few Christmas events. It's a busy time for us so blogging is on hiatus for a while. Have a fabulous Christmas remembering Jesus birth.

Mamarama Christmas Parties

We enjoyed 2 Mamarama Christmas parties last week! The first was the mum's spa night where we got pampered with pedicures and manicures whilst eating chocolate dipped strawberries. The second was the family cookie exchange and ornament decoration craft. Both were lots of fun, thanks Alexis!

Christmas photos

Here is a photo of our Jesse tree. We cut off one of the lower branches of our Christmas tree and put it into some florist foam within this vase (covered over by aluminium foil). Our ornaments are pictures we printed out from the computer and then laminated. We used a star punch and some leftover 'hangers' to attach them to the tree. Each day we do our bible reading and Lucy hangs up an ornament. Here are some other things we're doing:

Listening to 'Christmas Offering' by Casting Crowns

Reading: 'Have you seen Christmas?' written by Vickie Howie

Watching: The Nativity Story

Eating: The perfect chocolate chip cookie, panettone and drinking hot chocolate

The photos below are of the manger and the nativity set.

Mike's Farm

On the weekend a large group of us from church headed north to visit Mike's Farm in Beulaville. We enjoyed a Southern country buffet dinner (fried chicken, biscuits, mac & cheese, green beans, pork loin, mashed potato and gravy) and then waited in line to see the Christmas lights. We had a long wait in the cold weather, wrapped up in beanies and scarves. The worst part was that the cold came up through your shoes! Finally we hopped aboard our tractor for our hayride around the farm to see the lights. And boy were there a lot of lights! Lucy and Henry had an awesome time looking around and Lucy didn't want the hayride to end (she particularly like the fake snow falling on us from the trees whilst the song 'let it snow' was playing). We forgot the camera so there aren't any photos but check out the Mike's Farm website for the light show.