Guest Review: Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyui Choi

Alex wrote a great review for a book report at school, and I wanted to share it here with you. After reading his review, I think I'd like to check out this book.

Year of Impossible Goodbyes
by Sook Nyui Choi

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Sook Nyui Choi wrote Year of Impossible Goodbyes. It takes place in Korea (North and South) in spring and summer 1945. The genre of this book is historical fiction. The main character of this story is Sookan, a 10-year-old Asian girl. There are many other characters but that is the only important one in my point of view .The plot of this story is that the cruelties of the Japan military are occupying Korea. Police captain Narita does his best to destroy everything of value to the family, but he cannot break their spirt. Sookan’s father is with the resistance movement in Manchuria and her older brothers have been sent away to labor camps. Her mother is forced to supervise a sock factory and Sookan must wear a uniform and attend Japanese school. I liked the book because it is educational and sheds light on history through a personal story but it is also very intense. The descriptions are great and readers really can get a feel for what the land of Korea is like. I DON’T recommend it to little kids and kids that are immature, because the violence in this book and some stereotypes, inappropriate language and they are beating around the bush on some paragraphs in the book (inappropriate terms). Other then that, I recommend it to people who like history books!

By: Alex Collins

Wow, another long dry spell

It's been almost a month since my last post. Maybe it's because we've been so busy? Still. We had our Halloween fun. Finished up Middle School Volleyball. Started Middle School Boy's Basketball. And were just lazy.

I finished up a couple of great books.

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo was my favorite. This would have to be added to my favorites of the year. Kate Burkholder grew up Amish and is now in charge of keeping the small town of Painters Hill, Ohio safe as the chief of police. While she was growing up in the Amish community a serial killer dubbed the Slaughterhouse Killer terrorized the town. Now as a grown woman she is challenged with finding out if he is striking again. Secrets are reveled that will keep you on the edge of your seat, or couch. This book was definitely a 5 star!


The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker was the other book I read. Truly Plaice, an overly large and ungainly girl, is the polar opposite of her sister, Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. With their parents dead, Truly and Serena Jane are separated: Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation. There, while Serena Jane’s beauty proves to be her biggest curse, Truly finds her calling—the ability to heal illness with herbs and naturopathic techniques—and, in reckoning with her demons, the possibility of love in unexpected places. {Copied from Goodreads.com} This book was ok, I could have gone without reading it. Still a 3 star.


Now I am reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and love it. I can't wait to see what is going to happen to the young Liesel in the heart of Hitler country. I have seen this book everywhere and was happy to find it on Bookmooch.com.

I am lucky enough to live only 5 miles from a great selection of antique shops. Since we live so close I take for granted that they are there. I stopped in a few weeks ago just to browse, and found a great deal! I found 3 bags of vintage fabric...I'll call it vintage because it looks like that to me....for $1 each! Huge amounts of fabric for $3. I loved how the seller had them separated according to the color spectrum.








The brown fabric on the top of the stack has already been put to good use as some backing for my 9-patch quilt that I finally got done for Crazy Mom Quilts - Amanda Jean's quilt along.

I love this quilt. It's the perfect size to snuggle with on the couch. Now on to the other 4 I have in progress.


The weather has been so wonderful here for this time of year. Our school has 2 days off because of a large number of kids being sick so the boys and I took advantage of the warm weather and went to a nearby playground. It was a lot of fun. Simon is getting old enough that he can just go and I don't have to worry as much about him falling and getting hurt. But at the same time this gives him more confidence and he is much more daring.

It was fun watching the boys play and run around together. I know that in the blink of an eye they will be out of the house and on their own, so I was glad we were able to spend the day together.

"Since you've been gone....."

Alex turned 11 and had a few friends over. Alex had been talking about his party all summer and having a water balloon fight with everybody. Wouldn't you know, when we went to buy water balloons we had a hard time finding them. We did end up with 2 packages for a total of 72 (which I thought would be plenty). They went through them in about 15 minutes and then broke out the hose.




Simon ran around the house with no clothes on. Only underwear. Does this surprise anyone? I love how he's gripping his fists. This makes him "runfaster"







The boys played one of their favorite outside games. Ride the skateboard down the driveway. Simon did have clothes on for this. His spooky Spiderman costume.







School started. Here is Alex with his girl friends. He's such a womanizer.








Yesterday during the Michigan football game, Simon wanted to wear the helmet. He normally is terrified of this mask and calls it the spooky guy. He wore it long enough for me to get just 2 shots. This was the best. And what do you know....only underwear!


Enjoy your week.

My baby's growing up

My breath caught the other day when I saw it in the laundry room. His cross country uniform.
He's been running all summer so I knew this day was coming. I just wasn't prepared.
Now that he's a 6th grader he can participate in sports. He's just to young.
The coach says he's a unique individual and he fits right in. At least he's having fun.
This morning he brought another one of the runners home to hang out a bit. A bunch of them are going canoing today.
He's just becoming way to independent. At least I know he's safe.

Why do they have to grow up so fast?

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you get up at 7 a.m. and don't take a nap during the day!

I got quite a bit done today. I finally cleaned up my craft room, which caused me to realize that I have a lot more scrap material than I thought I did so I can get working on my kalidescope quilt!

I made a sock monkey. I have never made one before and it was pretty fun. It only took me 2 hours which was way longer than I thought it would, but still it was relaxing quiet time all alone.

Simon fell asleep in brother's bed. Which I think is just the cutest thing. He just loves his brother so much. While he was napping and I was in my room in the basement I thought I heard a thud. But no crying so I assumed everything was okay. Well after later inspection about an hour and a half later I realized that the thud was Simon. He fell out of brother's bed. But he was able to grab a pillow and blankie and made himself comfortable right there on the floor.

The boys just finished a peanut butter and mulberry jelly sandwich. They both are still happy with the homemade jelly I made last week. And now they are playing their DS's. It's funny to listen in on their conversations. Simon (3) just yelled out, "Oh, yea baby. I won. Oh Yea. Oh YeA!" He is hilarious. Brother (10) is trying to help him out. They really are best buds.

I just love summer! No real schedule to keep to. Just doing what makes you happy. What made you happy today!

Our Camping Trip

What's a family vacation without some pictures. Here are a few of my favorites from our trip last week at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park in Fremont, IN. If you live anywhere close to this campground you should plan a visit. I promise you and your family won't be disappointed. We love it!

Here I am giving Yogi a high five. {That's my hand!!}

The water was our favorite spot for the week. Here is the little guy playing around.

Dad & Simon in the water. I love how the camera captured the water.

Alex and Simon with Yogi, Cindy, and Boo Boo. I don't know who was more excited Simon or Alex.

Simon's 2nd favorite place to be...the playground.

Needless to say, my camera took a crap on me about day 3. Now it won't turn on. :] This could be a good way for me to get that "Fancy Pants" camera I want. I don't know, maybe Ashton has an extra he could just give me. Maybe I should hit him up on Twitter.

Anyways...we had a great time camping. The weather report was calling for pretty nasty storms a couple of nights that never came, so other than being in the upper 80's-90's and very humid we were pretty lucky with the weather. Alex and I played Bingo a couple of times. We took a drive to a flea market. Simon only took 1 nap, stayed up until 11 pm every night, got up at 8 am like clock work, so dad & I slept in big time today.

We decided to only take 1 of the dogs with us. Ace. He is the best behaved. He had a good time, except it was too hot for him too. But he did get all the food scraps and didn't have to share them with the girls.So hopefully tomorrow I can get our new blackout/heat blocker curtains hung and a couple sets made. Our windows are junk, but not junky enough for us to break the bank. So we're going to see if the claims of saving 25% in energy cost are true. I'm going to be making some for the kitchen and bathroom, so hopefully they turn out okay. Say a little prayer for me.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

My Son: The public speaker

Last night at our school's monthly school board meeting Alex and a classmate read essays they had written regarding a new sidewalk that their class felt should be constructed. Alex did a great job speaking in front of the group of adults.
They both gave excellent speeches regarding why they felt the sidewalk needed to be constructed, and I agree with them. The area that students are walking to school on is also a highly trafficked area where parents are driving through to drop of their kids. A sidewalk there would make it a lot safer for students. They had a rough draft of a diagram of the new sidewalk and here are a few of the school board members taking a look at it. Alex, his teacher and the other classmate are meeting this morning to make a more detailed diagram to give the school board. I'm such a proud mamma today. We had a great day yesterday. We spent 2 1/2 hours at our community pool. We had a picnic there too. Came home and Simon took a nap and I read. I could really get used to a summer like this. Too bad it couldn't be sunny today too.

And on a happy ending note, here are my little Potato Heads. (Look closely, they are holding Potato Head pieces.) (And of course, Simon is just in his underwares.)

1st Big Garage Sale Hurrah

Our citywide garage sales were this weekend. My sister (Emily) came up yesterday and her, I and my cousin-in-law (Teny) went around town and then to a town over to check out their community wide garage sales. We found out that the other town's sales didn't actually happen until today (Saturday) so I went back there with the boys today....boy was that a mistake. :)

This year the sales I have been too just seem like everyone is trying to get rid of their junk. We did find a few great deals and discovered that Teny is more of a jew-er than we thought. I don't think she bought anything for the sticker price. We were amazed at her mad skillz.

Anyway here are a few of my favorite deals from the weekend.

First of all BOOKS. I got these books for .25 each...the 1 hardcover book was .50!

A cool wood truck and wagon for .50 and there is a Mac computer game for him in this picture too, (remember the Apple computer we got last year for only $5? Simon loves playing it) and some free legos in the red thing. They must go to some kind of a set because they have some little 'guys' that he has been playing with since we got home.
Another 'playground'. This contraption was only .50 and along with the 'guys' has kept Simon entertained all afternoon. Plus there is a Buzz Lightyear movie there on the table too, that was only .25. I bought more VHS tapes this weekend than I needed to but Simon loves to play at the table and have a movie going. I got most of them for .25-1.00. I think 1.00 is too much for a VHS tape but when I averaged them all out they were probably about .50 a piece which isn't too bad.
This picnic table was a great find and I did a little jewing with a youngster to get it down to $3. It was nasty dirty and the neighborhood was a little very shady so I felt I was due a deal. Simon was estatic when I brought it home and wanted hotdogs, and cheese, and ketchup right away at his new table.
Emily was/is looking for a babydoll carseat/carrier thing for the billizion dolls that my niece has. I found this cute little thing, which I'm sure isn't exactly what she was looking for but I snagged the carrier and Cabbage Patch baby for .50. Aren't I a wonderful Auntie??!!
And I guess that's about it. Alex found a PSP Wresteling game for $1 so he got that and an Airzooka, which he has been wanting forever! He got it out to play with in the car only to find that the handle is missing, which makes it nearly impossible to work right. I embarressed him completely by going back to the garage sale to see if they might have the handle. They didn't. So I got 1/2 of my money back. I felt bad for embarrassing Alex and the boys who were doing the sale. It looked like they just cleaned out all the toys and junk that they don't play with anymore and were trying to make a little cash. But I'm not payin' if it ain't workin'.
All in all it was a fun weekend. I just hope I can get some more great deals this summer. I really thought that with the economy that everyone would be wanting to get rid of stuff, I guess not though. It's all been just junk. :(

Let the Spring Business begin!

Last night was Taylor's 1st track meet. Which means my first spring athletic trip also. Our HS kids ran against 1 other school, but there were 4 schools total at the meet. Our team was the largest, which is huge since last year there were only 6 girls on the team. Both the boys and girls' teams won! Taylor did a great job. Got her first meet jitters out.

Look at that stride!

Taylor is the one towards the back of the pack clear to the left. Her time in the 100m was 14.1, which we think is better than her fastest time last year. Our top girl sprinter was only .3 away from the State Meet qualifying time. Everyone is looking forward to a great season.

Alex had his first soccer practice tonight. His first game is Saturday at 9 am. Taylor has an invitational meet that we have to leave for at 8:30, plus prom is Saturday night. Her mom is taking her to get her hair done after the meet. So it's going to be a busy weekend.

What a Wonderful Weeked

This past Saturday Joey, the boys and I went to see the Michigan football team play their Spring Scrimmage in Ann Arbor. It turned out to be a great day. Simon ended up sleeping through most of the game, which was a plus for us. He saw the football field, and the players and once he had enough he was out.
I have to share a funny story. While I was posting some of these football pictures on facebook Joey came into the room and I was asking him who some of the more famous past players were that I had gotten photos of. He asked why, who are you blogging that to? And I don't know why but this had me in tears. He is always making fun of me Tweeting, and Blogging and being on Facebook. He really needs to get all the terms straight. I mean come on, I wasn't blogging it to anyone. You don't blog to someone.

He feels that we are all 'friendless' people. If we all wouldn't be on the internet so much we could have friends.

While I'm on the computer he's busy doing my chores around the house. Dishes, cleaning, putting the kids to bed.

My reply was, "I know. I've blogged about that already." Geez...just lay off, Joey!
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.....this is for Aunt Staci. Simon loves his Diet Dr. Pepper. I wonder who he gets that from?
Simon, Alex, and my niece Ali with their eggs. We had wonderful weather. The kids all had fun. There was just enough to eat. It was just a great day.
The high school was supposed to have an away track meet tonight that I was going to drive the bus to, but it was canceled because of the weather. Didn't hurt my feelings too much because I didn't get the call until my sub was already at the school getting ready to take my afternoon kids home. So I was able to go to our Middle School track practice, and help the hubby.

When we got home it started to rain and I noticed the sun shinning too. The rainbow I saw out our front door was the brightest, biggest rainbow I think I've ever seen. I just wish this photo captured the beauty of it better. I just love seeing rainbows.

They really are a promise of a new day. And thank God for that. I'm ready for today to be over...after reading over my shoulder Joey is going to beat my ass tonight. So pray for me. [Just kidding, he doesn't hit me. Simon would never let him!]

1. The Katy Perry concert was awesome. It was a very small place, actually an old church, so we could see fairly well. The kids had to sit on a side section of the bar to see but still had fun.
2. The Great Lakes Crossing mall in Auburn Hills, MI is among my favorite malls now.
3. Coloring Easter eggs is only as fun as you make it. Don't worry about the dye staining your dinning room table or porcelain sink. It will all eventually wear away.
4. Easter eggs smell good, and are fun to play with.
5. When giving an option to eat a yummy cinnamon roll or yogurt, Simon will always choose chocolate. Warning: this next photo is nasty!
6. DO NOT forget your camera when going to a cool concert with your kids. Just because you think they might not let you take a camera in they more than likely will let you have it. Just take it!

In other news I found a crazy site called WeUseCoupons.com. It is totally confusing, and I really don't like it that well. Because I don't understand it. It is a forum where ladies, and guys, share their coupon finds and deals. The only thing I have gotten from this site is a cool way to organize my coupons. I had one of the small dollar store things that has the dividers, but I was getting too many coupons and couldn't keep track of what I had. So I tried this. I found an old 3-ring binder in one of the kids' closets and bought trading card protective sheets. This is what it looks like:
I just changed stores and I tried to organize my coupons by isles in the store. All I have to do is take this along with me and flip through to find my coupon(s). Alex was helping me sort them all out and asked if I was really going to take this with me everywhere. My answer....Yes. He's embarrassed already. I love it!

I also found that eBay is a pretty good place to get coupons. I purchased a lot of 100 coupons for like a buck or something. I couldn't get that many with a weekend paper for $1.75. I just love saving money!