Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 181

Best Gifts for Homeschoolers Master List

Reprinting this post from a couple of years ago.

Here's another topic I've written many posts on, both here and at Lilting House.

Books We Love, Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Signing Time DVDs

More about Signing Time

Yet more about Signing Time

Showcase Presents comic book collections

Settlers of Catan, Wedgits

Books on drawing

Art prints

Family memberships to zoos, museums, etc.

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

Other people tackling this topic:

Alicia at...

Um

The baby was just dozing off in my arms, not quite ready to be transferred to the bed, when the doorbell rang. Girls ran to answer it. Bean's head appeared in my doorway.

"Mom, it's, um, Guy."

Guy is our very nice next-door neighbor. It's highly unusual for him to ring our bell, so I slid the baby onto the bed rather more hastily than was conducive to his remaining asleep. As I hurried down the hall to the door, I heard him already beginning to rouse and fuss. Shoot. I'd had things to get done ...

E. B. White Essays

Pulling this up from the comments of yesterday's post—a question I keep meaning to ask here:

As for White, this reminds me I wanted to put one of his essay collections on my birthday/Christmas wish list. Any favorites, anyone? Becky of Farm School, are you reading blogs these days? I'm guessing you'll have an opinion on this topic.

Essays of E. B. White? (Perennial Classics paperback.)

One Man's Meat?

Writings from the New Yorker?

If you had to pick just one.

Updated: just found a 1977 New York...

For No Particular Reason

Found this old scan in my iPhoto library when I was looking for something else.

It made me laugh.

My Birthday Boys

Speaking of getting all teary-eyed, I'm all choked up at the thought that this little boy is six years old today. And that brilliant, funny, cocky, sarcastic guy I married is as wicked cute as ever.

Happy birthday to my two leading men!

Help Me Out

A while back I read something—it might have been in a book, but I'm pretty sure it was in a post or article online somewhere —that put a name to the emotional response a reader or viewer may have to a particularly moving part of the story. You know, the way you tear up at an episode of Little House on the Prairie. (What, you don't tear up at those? My husband mocks me ruthlessly because I always, always, always do.) Or an old Hallmark commercial. Or the ending of Stone Fox.

If you're a sap...

Time for the Annual Hanna Post

Every December I get lots of queries from kind readers wondering where they might find a copy of my out-of-print picture book, Hanna's Christmas, for something more reasonable than the fifty-dollars-and-upward it's going for at Amazon Marketplace these days. (Crazy!) Here's a post I wrote about it in December, 2006. I still don't have any leads beyond the pricey ones at Amazon, eBay, etc. So sorry, folks!

Around this time of year I begin to get lots of inquiries about my little picture book,

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Gray, chilly, bleak, rainy day here. We are spoiled by all the San Diego sun. Days like today make me feel like I'm made of tissue paper, in danger of dissolving during the brief sprint from house to car.

We had to go out for a while this morning, and now we're home, and I am feeling considerably cheered by the tortilla chicken soup simmering in my slow cooker. (Not the chai kind.) A couple of gingerbread cookies helped too. Now I'm snuggling under a quilt and wishing I had some good tea, the ...

No More Nitpicking?

This is news that shocks me to my core. The other day a faraway friend called me, shuddering, to say she'd just discovered head lice on her five-year-old. She knew I've been through that particular horror myself—twice, a year apart, the second occurrence being just days after we arrived here in California three years ago. At the time, I knew exactly one person in San Diego, and you can imagine my dismay when I discovered our (quite advanced) infestation mere hours after we had visited her...

Books I'd Like to Finish Before the Year Is Out

• Our read-aloud of Winter Holiday, which we began in (gulp) September.

• Our new read-aloud of The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas. This one'll be a cinch (she says recklessly)—it's a shortish book, something between a very long picture book and a children's novella. Although it features one of my favorite fictional families in all the world, I've never read this particular L'Engle tale before.

• Two Mental Multivitamin recommendations I began a long while back and set aside only because I h...