Book Review

AAdoring Addie is the first Amish novel that I have read.  It was a good first read to venture into the Amish world.  Addie Cramer is a nineteen year old young lady who is underappreciated at home by her family, especially her mother.  Addie's mother is a self centered woman who wants to control Addie by having her do all of the housework, and who wants her to marry the Bishop's son Phillip even though Addie has no feelings for him.  Addie's family believes that Phillip is the perfect catch, and Addie herself is unsure until she meets Jonathon Mosier.  There is no doubt that Jonathon is the man for her, but they have to sneak around because of the long standing feud between the Cramers and the Mosiers.

Addie and Jonathon enlist the help of family members to ease the feud between their parents so they can be together.  I will not give more of the story away, so you will have to read how it turns out!

I give this novel a 4 out of 5 stars.  What that bothered me where how fast Addie and Jonathon fell in love with each other (love at first sight), I am not sure how realistic that was – it was too fast for me.  I would have liked to have seen their relationship grow a little more.   Also, I would have I wasn't quite sure throughout the novel of what time we were in, current day or the past. Maybe it was just because this was my first Amish novel.  The vocabulary of the Amish people was explained, or was easy to figure out what the word meant.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers for my honest opinion and review of this book.  I would recommend this book to other readers and will for sure consider reading the Courting Cate -Book #1 in the Lancaster County Series and future books from this author Leslie Gould.

Swept Away is the story of Luke Stone who returns to Texas to reclaim his family home and land that had been illegally taken by a Flint Greer, a madman who killed his father while he had been away.  On Luke's journey back to Texas to reclaim the land, he finds a young woman, Ruthy (Rosie) floating on a river due to a wagon accident.  Luke can not leave her behind, so he brings her with to Texas.  She fits in perfectly with Luke's friends who are teaming up to take back the family homestead.  This book is the best one I have read in a while, one you can't put down and one you can't wait to continue.  The book ends with a cliffhanger, making you anxious for the next edition.  I ran to Amazon to find that "Fired Up" is the next installment of "Trouble in Texas, but I have to wait until September 15 for it!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers in return for my honest review of the book after I had read it.

I give this book 5 stars. 

A book review

I received this book from Bethany House Publishers as a sample for review.  I was not compensated for this review, and these opinions are my own.  Thank you to Bethany House for the complimentary copy to write my honest opinion on the book.

I am a huge Lauraine Snelling Fan and have read all of her Red River and Blessing series.  I have read Valley of Dreams before this "Whispers in the Wind" book.  I hate to say it, but I have been bored with this series. I found that I am reading it just to read it, but not because I really like it.

I just don't feel an attachment to Cassie and her story.

It has been slow moving and has not really kept my interest.  Whispers in the Wind is the story of Cassie Lockwood after her journey from the Wild West to the Bar E Ranch in South Dakota, which she owns half of.  At this Bar E Ranch, Mavis Engstrom (who loved and was associated with Cassie's dad who passed away and owns the other half) accepts her as a daughter and allows her and her friends to stay in the vacant log cabin on the ranch.  It gives a lot of details about her learning domestic skills and making it on her own.

I do intend to read the third book, just because I want to see if it gets a little bit more interesting.  I am hoping the third book has the Lauraine Snelling touch that I have really enjoyed in the past.

I would give the book 2 stars.

Devin the Magician

This was taken shortly after spending time at Dan's house. Let's hope this is all he learned!

 

http://youtu.be/M9WteVxaJ0g

The 3rd EEG since July, He's doing good!

The Neuro doctor felt that the blood tests show that Devin had enough of the seizure medication in his body, but decided to do a 2nd EEG because of his restless sleep habits. Devin's 2nd EEG was 2 weeks ago and showed quite a bit of brain activity at night so they wanted to do a 24 hour one that looks for more Epileptic specific information.

The 3rd EEG indicates that Devin has some increased activity during the night compared to the day, but not enough to warrant any changes in medication so they will continue to monitor him more through his psychological evaluations. The prep for this test was the hardest part. The 2nd one was done in an area that they deal more with sleep apnea, so they were not used to dealing with kids and I didn't feel that the results could possibly be very accurate.

Here is a fun picture of Devin playing in leaves after getting off the school bus in the afternoon one day! He really is doing well and loves going to school. He is probably walking better than he has ever walked before with tri-canes. It really helped that we spent all of the summer continuing to do Pediatric PT at Mayo once a week because he would not have gotten any in our community through the school district. In every way, he is a typical 5 year old and pushes the limit every day which unfortunately can also be a symptom of so many things that Spina Bifida children often have so he is under a constant microscope.

2012-13 - My new classroom!

Another school year is about to begin - where did the summer go?  It seems like it just started... Here are pictures of my new classroom - after Mom and I spent 28 hours on it, it is ready to go. (my principal came in and said he has never seen the lab so clean and organized!)  I graduated up to the official chemistry lab - the nicest science room in our school.  I am the only chemistry teacher now... all of the chemistry students will have me all year!  I am going to enjoy my new classroom... however, it will be a little bit crowded at times with my biggest class being 31 students.

MRI Results

The photo is from the Winona County Fair.

Devin had another short seizure last Saturday so they upped his seizure medication. He had a complete MRI today that had been schedules after the first seizure. What they found is that there is a section of his brain that shows up a bit brighter on the MRI (whiter round spots). The Neuro. doctor describes it as thicker (more dense) part of the brain. The normal communication that happens in the brain is disrupted by these areas which then causes a seizure. It is likely that he has had them since birth and that they will not get better but they will also not get worse. The doctor really feels that this type of seizure should be manageable with medication. We just have to get him up to the amount of medication, in his blood system, that is likely to manage them. They did a blood test for this today, but we do not know the results yet. She also looked at how the shunt was working and indicated that the ventricles in Devin's head were stable which in turn indicates that the shunt has been doing it's job. After talking to the doctor about Devin's restless sleep, they now want to do a sleep study to see if the Chiari Malformation, near the base of the brain, which he was born with could be affecting his sleep. If it is, this could also be contributing to the seizure activity. We knew that he had this but did not have a lot of the complications that comes with it.

I've not posted an up-date recently, and thought it might be time to do so as much has happened since the last up-date! Devin had a second surgery on his lower legs in December of 2011 (the same as what he had in April 2010). We have been traveling to Rochester once a week since March for Physical Therapy and I really think it has paid off. He started out using a mobile stander and quickly went back to the walker he had been using prior to surgery. He is currently using the Tri-canes pictured for short distances and his wheelchair to keep up with his peers and siblings for long distance. The Fire Fighters from a local Volunteer Fire Department included Devin and other kids in the fun of using water to push a barrel from one end of a wire to another. This has been a highlight of his summer. On another note, Devin had a "Temporal-lobe Seizure" last Wednesday (June 27th) as he was waking up for the day. It was a bit scary for all of us as we had never dealt with that before and promptly called Mayo Clinic. It turns out that the Mayo nurse we usually deal with was out and it took a while for the message to be routed to Devin's Neuro. doctor. By the end of the day we were in the emergency room at St. Mary's hospital in Rochester. They checked some basic medical stuff and sent us home with a follow-up EEG. After sleep depriving him, Devin had the EEG bright and early this morning. While Devin has learned to be very patient with medical procedures, it tried his patients some. Eventually, he did go to sleep and the technicians found quite a bit of activity in his left frontal lobe. Enough, that they would not send us home without medication for seizures and got him into the already full schedule. The doctor indicated that usually they don't put people on seizure medication until they have at least 2 seizures. In Devin's case, they felt that the one seizure along with the EEG activity was enough to warrant medications and that there was a 90% chance he would have another one if not put on medications. They will be following up with an MMR to see if they can get any other information about the activity happening in the left frontal lobe. We are thankful that this has been caught early and that we are able to continue with some preventative medications. The MMR will also be able to confirm how Devin's shunt is working so this too will be a productive procedure.

Thanksgiving 2011

These pictures were taken by KC Filzen.

On the home stretch...

Here is where we are at now... new lights have been put on the front of the house - including the light pole.  Also - amazing - nothing laying around - it is actually cleaned up (at least in the front)! The garage is basically done, and there is a new power vent installed on the roof - which needs to be wired next week and we had them take down the dish from dish network...
What is left?  for them... the storm doors on the house, a little bit of caulking around two windows on the house,  and a new garage window... and for us, to paint the garage one of these weekends....  It has been a long summer of home improvements... mom and I are done for a while.