Gravel Road Musings

So it's no secret I'm a bookworm, but this book, oh this book, it dragged me in and held me. Even with an energetic 18 month old, I read this book in 3.5 days. This morning when I should have been doing other things, more profitable and uplifting things I was glued to my book.  Rachel does an amazing job.  I had this mental image of a 50's something author and then I saw her bio picture and she doesn't look even as old as I am. How do people churn out books like this? This is the second book I've read by Rachel and I will be totally on the lookout for any new ones I see of hers. I'm not sure how to describe her style, but it grabs me and pulls me in. Just a brief story line. A girl, Haley, held by a pinky promise, comes back home after going to college, being a captain in the army, getting tangled up with the wrong man, a married man and decides to reopen The Wedding Shop. The second part of the story, tangled throughout the book is the story of Cora, from...

By Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan This is the third book in the Return to the Canadian West series. I didn't realize it when I requested it, so, of course, I had to get the other two books from the library first so I could get a full picture of what the story was about. And it was definitely worth it.  It has been awhile since I had read any Janette Oke books and I thought that while she was a good writer in her day, her style was a little outdated for my tastes. Well, then I read this series and I think I am wrong. Yes, I'm not a big fan of calling siblings darling and dear, etc. but she put wove some very solid, timeless truths into all of these books. In this third book, Beth, the main character, has returned to a little town out west to teach school again. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what the time setting was-mid 1900's maybe. There were cars and telephones and electricity in the modern cities. Anyway, she has returned to teach and has found that the di...

A 10-Week Bible Study of Acts 1-12 Recovering the Wonder and Devotion of the Early Church Once again I was completely surprised by the size of this book. I knew I had ordered a Bible study book and so I expected it to be the size of most Bible Study books, about a 5x7 and a 1/4 inch thick or so. Not so this book. It's more like an 8x12 and an inch thick. Note, measurements could be way off due to the author's complete lack of ability to size things up accurately. However, this book looks like it is just waiting for me tor me to delve in. It is a 10 week, 50 day Bible Study. Yes, I know the math doesn't compute there, but each week has five lessons, which I really like because it gives you a chance to catch up if you fall behind or for me, weekends tend to be tougher for me to get in my devotions because of the mixed up schedule or lack of schedule. Some of the questions Erica asks in the intro are: "What if Christ were to become my greatest reality?" ...

Ahh, finally, the giveaway is over and Our Little Heaven won. So that was fun. So if you didn't know before, you are quickly learning. I am a Dr. Seuss fan. Just a side note, I am a very big non-fan of my computer right now. (So if stuff doesn't quite make sense, it's because I'm a phrase or two or three ahead of the all-wonderful computeing brain of my computer and therefore I cn't see my spelling until it's a line away and then to try and go back is sheer torture for my instant gratification self. So?...) And by the time, I had all that typed out, the computer had mostly caught back up, but I decided not to correct myself on the basis of I'm not sure what. Also of note, is the UPS man was just here and I'm rather anxious to see what he brought. I've been waiting on a couple books that I am to review. Even though I have five staring me in the face, I have six out there yet, I believe. The one is only a coloring journal and I am simply waiting un...

The President, The Purchase, and the Explorers who Transformed a Nation Wow!! I did it. I finally made it through this book. It feels like I have been reading and reading and reading and reading, are you getting the idea, it. When I was looking to pick a book a long while back now, I wasn't finding anything that was striking me and I decided I should read more history and learn about the past, so I saw this book and thought it would be a good one to start with. I was unprepared for the size of the book. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a smallish book, think novel size, but it's a nice hardcover book instead. It turned out to be a very interesting read. It talked a lot about Lewis and Clark and their explorations and also some of the other ones that you don't read as much about. Zebulon Pike, for example, I knew the name, but never realized that's where Pike's Peak got its name. Then there were explorers like Freeman and Dunbar who I had never hea...

I've been thinking about where I want to go with my blog and if I want to have a theme and a focus that predominates on here and beings I am in the beginning stages of the trenches of motherhood, it makes sense to gear this more towards moms. But then I thought about some of the other things I write about and I don't want to give that up either. And obviously there will still be my book reviews that will be shared on here, likely more frequently than any other post, but I'm not interested in making this a book blog or a reading blog or anything down that line. So mostly, this blog will continue as it has been. I think I will make a greater effort to share some of my homemaking experiences. I am striving to be a good wife and mom and to make my home a haven. For the first five years of our marriage, I worked and our home often reflected that busy stage and didn't always stay up to par as far as decorating. Along with that, was a serious lack of energy and ambition to ...

So I went thrift shopping yesterday and there is a distinct chance I might have bought too many books. I think I'm going to have to promise D to pack and move all the book boxes myself!!! It's the only thing he seems to care about in relation to my need to hoard  collect books. I got a couple Dr. Seuss and one of them was Yertle the Turtle. I had never read it before and I have to say it really struck me while I was reading it. I read it aloud to Amber, ha ha, who was rather crabby and not that interested, so basically I read it to me, but it was fun. So here's a few snippets from it. Yertle the Turtle is the king of all he can see and all of a sudden he decides that he can't see enough, so he orders turtles to climb on top of each other so he can see more. "So Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand And Yertle, the Turtle King, gave a command. He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone And, using these turtles, he built a new  throne. He made each t...

Striding Toward Spiritual Refreshment One Sunday at a Time A Month of Sundays provides food for the body as well as the soul. It offers thirty-one weeks of delicious Sabbath meals along with reflections on the need for true Sabbath rest. This book will leave you feeling spiritually refreshed, reconnected with your Creator, and at peace with yourself. That is the book cover description.  I got this as an ebook which I often end up regretting. I like to hold a book in my hand, plus I feel like ebooks can tend to have a few more grammatical errors and misspelled words than a paperback. I don't know if that is really true or not, but this book did contain some minor errors like that. Paula did have some good thoughts on rest and refreshing oneself on the Sabbath. While I don't necessarily agree with it being relaxing and refreshing to do my housework on Sunday, I can understand that for some people it is. And like the book description said there were menus with each chapt...

Devotions to Deepen Your Faith in Christ This is a beautiful padded hardcover devotional book. It contains 180 devotions that are intended to strengthen a Christian's belief that there is a God and that the God of the Bible can be trusted. Lee Strobel is well-known as the atheist that went searching to disprove the Bible and instead became a Christian. Mark, I hadn't heard as much about, but now after reading this book, I would like to read some other of his books. It's hard for me to just pull out one phrase or even devotional from this book. It was just good. It was faith strengthening to see how science and history confirm over and over and over again the validity of the Bible, how the very idea of a moral right and wrong confirms a Higher Power and so many other examples that Lee and Mark gave. There are devotionals on who Jesus is, how we can know there's a God, truth, etc. It was a very good book and I highly recommend it for anyone. It is deep and I f...

The day was long, but the to-do list was longer. There was laundry to do and bills to pay and bookwork to enter. There was food to make, cupcakes with yummy frosting and rice krispy bars and then bread because why not choose today to make bread. It doesn't matter that fresh homemade bread hasn't been churned out in close to two years, but today is the day to change that. Then there's the random spur of the moment decision that the birthday cake I need to make for Sunday should be an ice cream cake and there's ice cream on sale at Gordy's and so I should go today and get said ice cream. Nobody please tell me that WalMart's ice cream is always cheaper because I might just sit down and cry. So it's not really that long of a list and really didn't take that long to do, but the other factor that wasn't considered here was a little 17 month old girl who decided that today was the day she needed mom to sit with her on the floor while she played, that she ...