Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 151

Book Sale Sticky

I have a limited number of Martha and Charlotte books available for purchase. Click here for more information.

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Wrapping Up This Book Sale

The Martha and Charlotte book sale ends Friday because after that I have to pay attention to my own Christmas shopping.

Available in HARDCOVER:

• Little House in the Highlands (SOLD OUT)

• The Far Side of the Loch (running low)

• Little House by Boston Bay (SOLD OUT)

• On Tide Mill Lane

• The Road from Roxbury

• Across the Puddingstone Dam (three left)

Available in PAPERBACK:

• Beyond the Heather Hills (five left)

Click here for ordering information.

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Gift Ideas Roundup

I'm rerunning this old post full of gift ideas for homeschoolers—or anyone, really! Most of the posts linked below are a few years old and could be added to, of course. For now, a big round-up of posts from the past.

• The Grandpa Gifts (personalized alphabet books & placemats)

• Books we love

• More books we love

• Still more, some real gems in this one

• More, some out of print but track-downable

• A bunch of nature & gardening books I like

Interjection: The above is a series of posts I wrote several years ago. There are, needless to say, many more books I could add to the list of Books We Love. Such as:

• the new Betsy-Tacy reissues

• Shark vs. Train

• Miss Suzy

• everything on my Truly, Maudly, Deeply list

• books about our Favorite Fictional Families

Now back to the original post—

• Signing Time DVDs

• More about Signing Time

• Yet more about Signing Time

• Settlers of Catan, Wedgits

• Books on drawing

• Art prints

• Family memberships to zoos, museums, etc.

• MUSE magazine, CLICK, ODYSSEY, SPIDER, MY BIG BACKYARD—all these have been much-appreciated gifts to my kids by Scott's parents

• My most widely linked post, one that could use updating itself: Things to buy instead of curriculum

Each of the above links is a longer post on the subject.

Note: these are old posts and may contain Amazon Affliliates links.

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Martha and Charlotte Books Available

A special opportunity for Bonny Glen readers:

I have a limited number of signed Martha and Charlotte books available for purchase. I'm being a bit informal about this because I don't have time to fuss with Paypal buttons right now.

So here's how it works:

Email me at melissawiley.bonnyglen (at) gmail (dot) com and tell me what books you'd like to order. Please specify hardcover or paperback (see note below). I will write you back to discuss inscriptions and shipping.

Hardcover: $25  • Paperback: $8

Available in hardcover:

Martha #1, 2, 3

Little House in the Highlands

(5 3 copies)

The Far Side of the Loch

(5 4 copies)

Down to the Bonny Glen (3 2 copies)

Charlotte #1, 2, 3, 4

Little House by Boston Bay (5 4 copies)

On Tide Mill Lane (10 9 copies)

The Road from Roxbury (10 9 copies)

Across the Puddingstone Dam (5 4 copies)

Available in paperback:

Beyond the Heather Hills

(Martha #4—10 8 copies available)

The Road from Roxbury

(Charlotte #3—4 2 copies available)

Shipping: I will ship using USPS Flat Rate boxes. Your shipping rate depends on what size box your books will fit into. Domestic rates are about $5 (small box), $11 (medium box), and $14.50 (large box). International rates are considerably higher, of course—see the USPS link above. The number of books that will fit into each box depends on whether you want hardcover or paperback or a combination. I'll use the smallest size possible.

I'll make a P.O. run on Monday, December 6 and another on Friday, December 10. That ought to get books to you by Christmas. (If time is not a factor, let me know and we can talk about media mail shipping rates instead.)

Payment: I accept Paypal (checking account payments only, not credit card). If that won't work for you, we can talk.

Don't Paypal me anything without talking to me via email first!

These are original, unabridged editions with illustrations by Renee Graef (Martha) or Dan Andreason (Charlotte).

First come, first served! Be sure to email me—I'm not taking orders in the comments. (Not that you can't comment. Just don't leave an order in the comments.)

For more information about the books, click here.

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Film Club

An almost certainly incomplete list of the films Jane and Scott have watched in their Film Club this year. Scott's pretty sure there were more John Wayne movies, among others.



(alphabetical, not in order viewed)

Alien

Beetlejuice

Benny and Joon

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The Buddy Holly Story

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The Cowboys

Dave

A Few Good Men

Field of Dreams

First Blood

Fletch

Good Will Hunting

Groundhog Day

Heartbreak Ridge

Hook

The Horse Soldiers

In the Line of Fire

Iron Man

Jurassic Park

The Karate Kid

A League of Their Own

Mad Max

The Mask

Max Dugan Returns

Maverick

McLintock

Men in Black

Midnight Run

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

My Darling Clementine

The Natural

The Negotiator

Ocean's Eleven

Overboard

The Princess Bride

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Rio Bravo

Romancing the Stone

Silverado

The Sixth Sense

Sneakers

Speed

Stand by Me

Supercop

Tron

Trouble Along the Way

Twister

The Untouchables

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Things I Am Doing

(In lieu of a post, a list)

Reading CYBILs books, spose that goes without saying.

Reading to Rilla a lot: current favorites include SCARY HAIR, THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, and the word-perfect MORE MORE MORE SAID THE BABY.

Working through the ASL lessons at Lifeprint (again). This is a thing I do periodically with languages. German and ASL, several times a year, each. A week or three of intense immersion and then life whisks me elsewhere.  ASL is my boy's other language, and although he uses English as his primary, he tends to sign along with a lot of what he is speaking—especially fingerspelling names and such. He spells so rapidly I can barely read it.

Playing Lexulous (speaking of being back on a kick).

Not gardening, and I'm not sure why! This is usually a busy time of year for me in my bee garden. Cool enough to dig, but not cold, and enough rain to make things actually be green.

Working on this one thing, and that other thing. (She said cryptically.)

Amusing myself with this post, and almost certainly no one else.

Listening to this song over and over.

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Poetry Friday: A Rilla Reprise

Just a morsel today. I've been working on an archive page for my Poetry Friday contributions (because I find WordPress's archives obnoxiously unwieldy), and I came across this entry from March of 2007. I had to laugh, because it turns out last week wasn't the first time one of my bairns made a contribution to Poetry Friday. I'd forgotten that Rilla had a turn when she was eleven months old.

Sisters, by Rilla

They scoop me up and say I'm delicious;

They grant practically all of my wishes

(Except when I wish to gnaw on a Lego).

Mostly I wish to go where they go.

Jane is the one who totes me like mother

And won't let me pull out the hair of my brother.

Rose guards me from anything 'ticingly teeny.

The one who twirls me around is Beanie.

I'm not sure whether the ache I get from this photo is because that baby has grown so big, or because that rug has grown so dingy. Ah, the cruel march of time. And feet.

This week's Poetry Friday host is Jone at Check It Out.

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On This Day

…a revisiting of one of the first posts I ever wrote for this blog, and one of the many reasons my cup runneth over.

She finished the last round of high-dose chemo on Thanksgiving Day of 1997. We ate Boston Market turkey and stuffing in the hospital playroom while her meds finished running. There were two more years of low-dose chemo to go, but we expected to spend most of that period as out-patients. When we got home that night—home, where we hadn't spent more than ten days in a row since March—it was late, a cold, clear night, with as many stars as a New York City sky can muster. I remember thinking I couldn't imagine ever being more thankful for anything than I was to be carrying that little girl up the stairs to our apartment that night.

Full post here.

(Thirteen years later, the Boston Market logo still fills me with a sense of overwhelming gratitude.)

(But then so do a lot of things, including this face.)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends, wherever you may be.

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Miscellany

If I don't catch up on my backlog of posts soon, I might explode. I still have unfinished drafts about our trip this summer. And the Minnesota/Kidlitcon/Mankato/Margaret expedition! And Saturday's fabulous Betsy-Tacy party at Readers Inc! And forty-odd CYBILs nominees to talk about!

What is a busy motherwriterblogger to do?

Ignore the drafts (again) and write about something else (again), I guess. Like Rilla's sudden passion for Scotch tape. Four-year-old girl? Check. Pile of construction paper? Check. Endless stream of sticky creations? Check check check. They call it magic tape for a reason. I've got a very thick green airplane to prove it.

My cell phone spent the weekend in a bag of rice and seems to be more or less recovered from its hot-cocoa bath. Except that all my ringtones have spontaneously rearranged themselves. Scott's used to be a Green Day song. Today when he called me while I was sitting in the eye doctor's waiting room, "Magical Mystery Tour" blared out. I think the volume controls have been reset, too. And where my friend Alice's calls used to elicit a soft, delicate Ave Maria, there is now a sailor's hornpipe. Make of this what you will.

iPhoto is eating up all my laptop's memory and causing everything to run……painfully……slowly. Which is about the speed at which my brain is moving to seek out a solution to this problem.

People keep saying Thanksgiving is this week. What is up with that! November only just started, I'm sure of it. I don't know what you people are talking about.

In other news, I was hunting for the tiny screwdriver and checked the basket where I stick Things That Need to Be Put Away Later. Inside it were last year's Advent candles. Um. Am I a housekeeping rock star, or what?

Well, they're still pretty long. Think anyone'll notice if I reuse them on Sunday? Because you know I haven't remembered to buy the new ones yet.

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Today's the Day!

Where: Readers Inc Bookstore in La Mesa, CA

When: 3pm today

What: A Betsy-Tacy Celebration! I'll read from one of the books and we'll discuss all things Betsy (and Carney, Winona, Emily…)

Who: You and your kids, I hope!

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