I think that K has cabin fever already. Start­ing on Wednes­day, it got pretty cool here. It started to rain. It rained and rained and rained! Then, it snowed, and it all froze. Right now, it’s cold and frozen out­side here. This morn­ing, I got up and one of the first things K did was to run laps. He ran through the kitchen, into the din­ing room, and back to the liv­ing room. He did this about 15 or 20 times in a row. Jason and I just laughed at him, but I got to think­ing that it’s only Novem­ber 9. We have a LONG win­ter now before it’s going to be spring and nicer out­side. I know that we can play out­side in the win­ter, but it’s just not the same. *sigh* I think we’ll be scout­ing out indoor play places.

A cou­ple months ago, I found Paper Bridges through a car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. I clicked around her site and found sev­eral inter­est­ing posts. One of them was a book give­away. I entered and won this book. She has another book give­away going now. If you have ever heard of or read For Men Only or For Women Only, you might enjoy hav­ing this book even if it’s not directed at you. If you have (or will soon have) a teenage boy, you def­i­nitely will enjoy this book. Click on over and check it out!

I love to read, and I have loved it as long as I can remem­ber. Accord­ing to my mom, I’ve been read­ing since I was 4 years old. I don’t think I remem­ber that, but I do know that the library, books, and read­ing were a major part of my youth. I used to go to the library every Mon­day after school and exchange my books. I would sit there and read until about 4:45 when my dad got off work and met me there. Gen­er­ally, in that time, I would have picked out 8 books (1 for each day of the week plus one for the time at the library) and returned the one I had just fin­ished. Once I got into col­lege, my pace slowed down, but I still read when I could. The day that I turned in my master’s inde­pen­dent study, I went to the library to cel­e­brate. I checked out 4–5 books and read for the next week straight, I think.

Recently, I’ve got­ten a lit­tle claus­tro­pho­bic with all the stuff we have in our house, so I decided that I should list some of my books on some book swap­ping sites. I listed books on Book­Mooch and Paper­Back­Swap. The idea of the sites (with a few dif­fer­ences of course) is that you list books you’ve read. Some­one else requests them and you send your books to peo­ple that want/need them. Then, you find some­one who has books you want/need and you request those books. Of course, the books I want right now are also ones that 300+ oth­ers also want, so we’ll see how soon I get them. Haha…

But, why should I save all my swap­ping for peo­ple I don’t know and have no con­tact with? Any­one wanna swap with me? I’m putting 5 books up for a swap. If you want one of mine, offer me one of yours. I’ll pay my ship­ping, and you pay yours. I’m going to list my books, books I have liked in the past (to give you an idea of what my tastes are), and books I want now. If you think we could make a match, either leave me a com­ment or e-mail me at casey at berbs dot us.

First, books I have and want to give away:

A Fam­ily Apart by Joan Low­ery Nixon– This was a book I had to read for one of my ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion classes in col­lege. I remem­ber it being a good book, and I remem­ber being some­what tempted to read the rest of the series (The Orphan Train Adven­tures). It is a book that is appro­pri­ate for kids in the upper ele­men­tary grades. I would say it would be good for an advanced 3rd grader or an aver­age fourth or fifth grader. There are some themes in the book that are some­what intense for kids of this age (orphans, family/sibling sep­a­ra­tion, fam­i­lies that do not adopt the chil­dren out of love but are look­ing for labor or ser­vants) so be aware of that if you are intend­ing to give this book as a gift or to some­one younger than 14ish (?).

A Time to Kill by John Grisham– This is a great book. It’s a crime drama. It’s about a man who kills two men who raped his young daugh­ter. This book isn’t in great con­di­tion. I got it off the library swap table. It has the library book tag on the side and the bar­code on the back. The bind­ing is bro­ken and page 117–118 falls out. It’s def­i­nitely read­able, but it’s not fresh. It’s a book worth read­ing though.

The Wit­ness by Dee Hen­der­son– I read Dee Henderson’s books The O’Malley Series and The Uncom­mon Heroes series. I really enjoyed those books. I thought The O’Malley Series were her best books though. This book is good, too, but I didn’t like it as well as the O’Malleys. I think that I got so attached to those char­ac­ters I missed them when I was read­ing this book. It’s a Chris­t­ian sus­pense book. There’s a lit­tle romance in it, too, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, but it’s def­i­nitely PG.

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaugh­lin and Nicola Kraus– This book is light chick lit. It’s about a woman who becomes one of “those” nan­nies to a wealthy New York fam­ily. The job starts out as car­ing for one small child. She ends up becom­ing much more than just a nanny. It reminds me a lit­tle of The Devil Wears Prada Nanny Edition.

Every Storm by Lori Wick– I read this book quite a while ago, so I’m not all that clear on the details of it any­more. I remem­ber some­thing about a plane crash and that’s about it. It’s Lori Wick. That should say it all. The main char­ac­ter is sweet and maybe a lit­tle unre­al­is­ti­cally per­fect, and there’s romance in it. Also, this is Chris­t­ian fic­tion and PG. It’s a good book. It’s hard­cover in case that mat­ters, too.

Books I have read in the past and liked:

See the list above. I liked all those. I have read books by Susan May War­ren, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, James Pat­ter­son, Lori Wick, Anita Shreve, Dee Hen­der­son, Dr. Sears, Mary Doria Rus­sell, John Piper, Henri Nouwen, and Beth Moore.

Books I am look­ing for right now:

I’m par­tic­u­larly look­ing for

You: The Owner’s Man­ual by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle by Bar­bara Kingsolver

The Shack by William P. Young

You can try me on Chris­t­ian fic­tion and non-fiction, but I’m not inter­ested in the Bev­erly Lewis/Amish type of Chris­t­ian fiction.

Ready, set, SWAP!

Last week, I signed up to join The Lip­stick Chal­lenge on a fel­low NaBloPoMo mommy blogger’s site. I got my sam­ples in the mail today. Thanks, Heather! So, for the next 7 days, I have at least one guar­an­teed post for each day!

I’ll be post­ing a pic­ture a day through the chal­lenge. Come back and check out my lips!

Over the past, oh, six months or so, Jason and I have been try­ing to take steps to be a bit greener and more envi­ron­men­tally friendly. For a long time, I prac­ti­cally ran away from any­one or any­thing that was “green” or “crunchy.” Slowly, since hav­ing kids, I have made a turn around. More on this to come in a future blog. Right now, we’re try­ing to do a lit­tle more and a lit­tle more to take care of the world around us. I’ve also found myself read­ing blogs about organic liv­ing and green choices. One blog that I read is the Crunchy Domes­tic God­dess. She’s hav­ing a give­away for Mother’s Day. Check it out!