Fun List Sandy!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (X)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)--I read 1 and found it to be the most boring thing I have ever come across, the movies are much better!
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte ( )
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (X)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (X)
6 The Bible - (x)-not cover to cover
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ( X)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( )
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (X) Great book you all should give Dickens a try.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ()
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (X)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (X)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
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 (X)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (X)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (X)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ( )
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (X) This book is great I highly recommend it
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (X)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (X)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (X) My favorite Dickens novel!
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - (X)
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 (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (X)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (X)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (X)
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 (X)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon ( )
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (X)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ( )
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (X)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (X)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (X)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (X)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
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 (X)
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 (X)
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 (X)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (X)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (X) Possibly my favorite book ever.

As a side note many of these I have listened to. I work in the most boring job ever so in an effort not to go crazy I listen to books on tape. I count 35! I need to go to library with this list and see what they have on CD!

Canning, Concert, & Coldstone

This last Saturday was a busy day for me and Scott. We (Scott) slept in, and then we spent the afternoon canning pickles. This is the 3rd year that we have done pickles. We love them!

My adorable, domestic husband. He's one great cucumber srubber. And for those of you who may not know, Scott is amazing in the kitchen. Not only does he cook for me every night, he does it deliciously and from scratch. I love it!

We got 17 new quarts this year. I can't wait for them to be ready by Christmas! Notice all the yummy garlic we put in them. Wow, I'm seriously drooling right now.

Saturday night, Scott and I went up to the Homestead in Midway with Scott's dad and our friend Jen to see my cousin April Meservy in concert. I may be a little biased, but I think April is absolutely amazing! I love her unique, gorgeous voice, and the songs she writes and sings speak directly to my soul. I love April!

After the concert, we took Jen to Coldstone to celebrate her birthday. I'm not a huge fan of Coldstone or really any ice cream place (Red Mango frozen yogurt is my addiction), but I did enjoy my creation (as well as the hot fries we got at Wendy's). I must say that I was very impressed with Jen's ability to finish the Gotta Have It size! Happy Birthday!!

Cubbies & Camping

So a couple of weekends ago, Scott and I drove to Fort Collins with his sister Diana and her husband Sam. We stayed with his other sister Sandy and her husband Jacob in their new house. We had a great time playing cards, eating yummy home-made food, eating Big City Burritos, touring the Anheuser-Busch brewery, drinking soda pop instead of beer at the end of the tour, shopping in downtown Fort Collins (although Scott sat on a bench most of the time), and attending a very exciting Cubs vs. Rockies game. Here are a few pictures of our adventures:

Here we are on the tour. I learned a few interesting things.

We were sitting in the Rockpile at the game with all the rowdy fans, and so we were thoroughly entertained by them--several got kicked out and one got arrested.

Doesn't Scott look thrilled to be at a Cubs game? :) Cubs won!

Last weekend, we went backpacking/hiking/camping in the Uintas with Sam and Diana, Scott's dad, his sister Lynda, and her husband and 2 boys. To make a long story short, we survived hail on the hike in, pouring rain most of the night, a leaky tent, a sopping wet sleeping bag, hail and snow in the morning, and getting lost for over an hour in the snowy/foggy Uintas. Good times. Pictures to prove the craziness:

The silver lining of the hail on the hike into Jewel Lake--Scott and I finally got to wear our Cubs ponchos that I made for the playoffs game we attended last Fall.

Here we all are enjoying our dinner before the downpour.

Sam & Di trying to share a sleeping bag. Sam gave me his because mine was drenched. Thanks, Sam!

Scott looking delirious in the freezing cold.

I guess we were all a little loopy after playing cards for 4 hours and then trying to sleep in the misery. I even told my infamous ham-butt joke...

Scott decided to build a huge bonfire in the frigid morning.

Do you love my outfit? Half of my clothes were wet.

Here we are right after we realized we had made a huge circle and ended up right back at Jewel Lake. Thank goodness our prayer led us back to a place we recognized!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the worst part of the trip--Scott lost his wedding ring sometime during the hike in. Maybe he should have listened when his wife warned him to leave it home because it often falls off when his fingers get cold. Sad!

One more thing. Last night Scott and I went to an Owlz game with my parents, my sister Christina, and her 3 adorable kids. My favorite part of the night was when Faith and Cole kept referring to the mascots (owls) as chickens. Way funny!

Harvesting

These are the after pictures of our beautiful balcony garden. If you want to see the before pictures check out our post in May. I am pretty happy that the end is near. As the plants have grown they have required more and more water. Because I am so lazy this has made the garden less fun to deal with. But I have enjoyed the fruits of our labor. The tomatoes taste really good, they are a little on the small side, but the flavor is great. The flowers are pretty and the herbs have made many tasty creations. Here is me looking super fat picking our first tomatoes.

Look at the size of these plants!

There are lots of tomatoes on the plants.

Here are some yummy small tomatoes.

The herb garden has gone wild, we have cut it down several times, but it always grows back into the forest you see here.

I am amazed at the size of these flowers. There were many times during the year when I thought they were dead, but with a little fertilizer and water they have turned into the bushes you see here.

Do you love Mary Ann's weird little frog? I admit it has grown on me!

Anyway the garden has been fun. I have learned a few things. The topsy turvey tomato planters work very well in a small space if you don't mind small tomatoes. Also herbs are easy to grow, they don't require much care. In the future I think I would put them in separate containers, I think that would make for easy harvest. I guess we will see in the spring if we want to plant things again, for now we will enjoy the plants until it gets too cold.

Clayson Family Reunion

A few weeks ago, we had a Clayson family reunion at a resort in Brianhead. My mom and dad did an excellent job of planning a fun-filled few days. Here are some pictures:

My mom showing the kids how to make our matching t-shirts.

Grandma and the aunts/mommies helping with labor bingo.

A treasure hunt with real treasure at the end.

A yummy BBQ in the covered pavillion.

Karaoke. Need I say more?

I love this picture of me and Cole. What a snuggle bug!

Mom and Dad (or Grandma and Grandpa) singing their song.

The nieces and nephews singing and coordinating moves.

Family picture at Cedar Breaks. We're only missing my sister Christina because she was sick.

Scott at one of the many beautiful lookouts.

The kids catching bugs, rocks, and plants for their bug catchers. Don't worry--we were out of the national park before we let the kids go to town.

The talent show. Mikayla, Faith, and Sierra singing a Taylor Swift song.

Jason sharing his collection of sports cards. Go Cubs?

Clay doing a little break-dancing. Yo homey!

Kyler showing us his karate moves. Hi-yah!

Faith doing her weirdy eye thingy. Love it!

Mikayla singing a song that she choreographed. Nice balance!

Sierra jamming on her guitar. Rock on!

Scott and I playing a little duet. It's Christmas in July.

Jana and I made a "Pickles for Breakfast" comeback!

Mom and all of us sisters grooving to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." The kids loved it!

Cole singing country with his mom. Cutie patootie!

The kids loved playing on the playground at the resort.

We signed each other's shirts, and Clay wanted to model his.

Grandma gave all the kids "PJ'S"--things to help them remember to Pray, write in their Journals, and read their Scriptures.

Grandpa doing his award-winning yo-yo tricks. The kids were mesmerized.

Making creative paper airplanes for a contest. Too bad I missed getting a picture of the tortilla toss and the water balloon toss.

Scott and Katelyn looking cute.

The kids LOVED the potato guns.

Melissa, cheesey Rylan, and Katelyn in one of the two huge hot tubs.

Grandpa swimming with most of the grandkids. We swam every afternoon.

Mom and Jana relaxing by the pool.

Movie night with High School Musical 3 and munchies. Some of the kids had it memorized, I swear!

Joseph and Scott avoiding HSM3 and watching baseball instead.

One last picture of the cousins at Brianhead Peak. I love all these kiddos!!

Aww. What a cute couple. :)

Thanks Mom and Dad for a fabulous reunion!