Summer Reading Lists

What kind of teacher would I be if I didn't do some reading during my summer vacation? Luckily, I have had some phenomenal reads...

Including refalling in love with this classic...

"Pride & Prejudice" is definitely timeless. I can read (and watch the BBC version) again and again and I still anxiously wait for Darcy & Elizabeth and Bingley & Jane to fall in love. Not to mention Austen's clever wit that makes everything still connectable to our time.

I also read...

This book had an intriguing plot, however I was disappointed with the "worldly" things that were unnecessarily thrown into the book. That's why I usually only read kids books. I'll bet the movie is good though since it won't be as detailed as the book.

Next came one of my new favorites...

I CANNOT wait for this movie to come out. I had heard about this book awhile ago, but because of my anti-adult literature mind, I didn't start it until now. And just like many characters in the book, I did not know what I was missing! It is such a good book. I absolutely LOVED, loved it. In case you didn't catch that, there are TWO Loved(s). Unlike the rest of these books, I didn't read, "The Help" on my kindle because I was hesitant to buy it, but I'm probably going to purchase it just so I can read it again and again! (Thanks for letting me borrow it, Jenni!)

Next came this sea breeze...

"Turtle in Paradise" is written by one of my all time favorite authors. There are not many literary works that have made me fall in love as much as Holm's "Boston Jane" trilogy. SO GREAT! Although "Turtle in Paradise" didn't have a love story, it was still a breath of fresh air from the Florida Keys. I started and finished while I was waiting for my car to be fixed. The back window wasn't rolling up and in the az heat- that no work. So it was definitely delightful to take a trip to the beach with the Conches while I was waiting.

Today I read...

"We're lucky some people are so full of goodness."

My wonderful, librarian mother told me to read "Turtle" and she has been asking me daily if I had finished "Because of Mr. Terupt." Today, I could tell her that I had. It was a quick read, but boy was I bawling! This one will definitely pull the heart strings of any teacher or anyone who has had a good teacher or anyone who has seen the genuine innocence of a child. It definitely helped me get my teacher engines going again. Just a few more weeks...

Have you read any of these? What's next? I need some suggestions....please.

Food, glorious food...

So I really don't like going grocery shopping. I just don't. Sadly, neither does Michael. That means we get pretty resourceful when it's meal time and we don't have milk, eggs, bread, chicken, fresh produce, canned veggies...anything. Michael and I had crackers for breakfast yesterday! Haha! Lame! I guess that's one plus about us not having kids yet. Otherwise we'd be border line negligent parents. No worries, we've promised each other to go grocery shopping tomorrow. or Saturday. Maybe Monday. We'll see.

This lack of desire to grocery shop has made me remember our lives at the beginning of the summer where we had an endless supply of food at our finger tips or just a room service call away. All inclusive. Seriously. Cruise ships are the dream. And I really mean it when I say food brings people together. We were on a ship that promoted freestyle dining so we could go to dinner whenever we wanted. We enjoyed going to the sit down restaurants with all 6 of us.

Michael enjoyed eating at the buffet and then going to our 3 course dinner AND THEN ordering room service!!! Seriously. I had NO idea my husband could handle that much food. THREE Dinners! Yowzers.

I enjoyed being able to have hot chocolate on brisk, rainy days.

We had two days at sea over our trip, which was nice to be able to sit, relax, eat, read, etc. We also had beautiful weather. This was my view... nice crowd eh?

Of course, the towel animals are the cherry on top...

Guess how old my husband is? He hearts shuffleboard!

We had so much fun!

And we enjoyed riding off into the sunset!

Now we have been back for over a month, we need to go grocery shopping and my contract time starts again in two weeks...BUMMER! Talk about a reality check...

Mom! Look what I drew!

My little neighbor boy who is 5 said, "Sister Shields, may I do this dot to dot."

(He really calls me Sister Shields and he really says may I. He's super refined.)

I said, "Of course you can!"

(It's the back of an old Better Homes and Garden Magazine.)

He did a great job and his counting was superb.

But when he said, "Mom! Look what I drew!" We realized why that magazine would have a dot to dot on the back. It was an ad, of course. An ad that might be a little too spicy for a 5 yr. old.

As it didn't phase him at all, you could tell he only has brothers!

Nynashamn [ni-na-saw-mmmn]

Our last port of call was in Nynashamn, Sweden! It was an hour outside of Stockholm, so we were debating to take the bus excursion from the ship, but Michael & I ended up deciding not to. We wanted to see the little town of Nynashamn. We had to take the little boats to shore...

such pretty places!

When we got there, we realized it was a Swedish holiday so NOTHING was opened, however, there was a train going into Stockholm. So we thought- why not? Better yet, since the ticket office wasn't opened yet, the train conductor just said we could get on! Sweet! Free ticket into the city an hour away!

So we got into the city and quickly tried to piece together what we wanted to see. We found a museum by the sea that had quite the history. A giant ship was created to symbolize power in every single way possible. In 1628, the Vasa started it's maiden voyage and 1300 meters later, it sank. Just off of Stockholm's shores is where it stayed until 1961. Then the ship was pulled up, restored and a museum was built surrounding it right on the water. In 1990, the museum was finally opened and on June 2, 2011 we got to enjoy it!

Here's the outside of it, you can see the masts sticking up in the back.

Here's the ship in all her glory

It is an amazing story and a really intriguing museum since the ship is soooo old and the museum is soooo new. It's amazing what the restoration process was.

We spent the rest of the morning seeing the city and getting a lunch from street vendors.

Have I mentioned how much I love cities on the water? Good thing we live in Arizona!

We then took the train ride back to Nynashamn (and barely made the one we wanted by one minute-phew!- this may or may not have involved some running through the station.) When we got back Nynashamn looked completely different. It was no longer a ghost town! It was a delightful, nautical town! (And their visitor's center had free internet! -cherry on top!)

It was a great day with beautiful weather! It was a calming, last stop for our cruise.

What the Helsinki!?

After St. Petersburg, we had two more cities to stop at. They were nice because we didn't have any tours, we just walked and enjoyed the cities by the sea. We are pretty spoiled because after the elaborate Russia, everything seemed a lot more 'plain' and redundant. How lame is that? Here we are in Europe and we're saying there's no gold in here or there's another mural. Haha!

Luckily, Helsinki is a beautiful city and the Finnish people are super nice. We got into the city and thought we had gotten onto the wrong train...

Gotham City anyone?

I think this was their inspiration.

Then, we took a ferry to an old fortress that is now this sweet little town. It was very quaint and a beautiful day to walk around. It kind of reminded me of Antelope Island, minus the stinky brine shrimp and all the gnats.

After the fortress, we walked around the beautiful city seeing the cathedrals and cobble stoned streets. We are in Europe after all...

Now that we are back in the desert, I sure do miss seeing green trees,

ancient cathedrals and the pretty seascapes.

The Rumors of St. Petersburg

Day two of St. Petersburg was just as jammed pack as day one. We started with the Hermitage!

The Hermitage was formerly the winter palace of the imperial family (aka Anastasia) but it is now a museum that competes with the Louvre on how many pieces of art each has. They said that is you were to see every piece of art in the Hermitage for one minute, from opening to closing you would need 11 years! I doubt I could give every piece a minute but that's pretty insane.

I loved it!

After the museum, we saw a few more cathedrals.

Including the cathedral that has the tombs of all the imperial families including Anastasia's (pictured above.) I still LOVE the cartoon "Anastasia" and all the songs were stuck in my head the entire time we were there. However, the film is far far from what actually happened. I guess it was Anastasia's sister and brother who were missing and so they just found their remains and will bury them with the family as well. It's just an interesting mystery.

That afternoon, we went on nice boat ride around the city.

When we got off the boat we had a real Russian lunch with a bunch of other tour groups. A man in our group was very happy to find out that all six of us don't drink so that he could get our beers that came with the meal. Good thing he wasn't our driver!

After lunch, we went to the Tsar's cousin's palace. That's right- even the long, lost cousin got a sweet palace. The size of it was nothing compared to the Imperial Family's palaces, but it did have a theatre room. (compliments of google image)

It was a beautiful palace, but so are they all. This one also had some crazy history to go with it. There was a certain 'medicine man' that's influence over the Tsarista had the family worried so this cousin invited the medicine man over to his palace's basement for lunch that had been poisoned. But the poisoned lunch did not kill Rasputin so the cousin shot him. He went to get guards to help and when they got back, Rasputin was not there! He was running away so they gunned him down again and wrapped him in a rug and threw his body into the freezing river.

When they found his body and gave him an autopsy, there was water in his lungs! He died from drowning! Not the poison or the gun shots, but drowning. Seriously creepy stuff. Because of all this history, they have a diorama set up in the basement to tell the history. And we got to see it all!

It was completely surreal to actually be in Russia and see how unbelievable and different it is. But it was a beautiful two days and I loved my babushka scarf that husband bought for me using all that Russian speaking of his!

Have you heard...?

There's a rumor that we went to St. Petersburg, and it is absolutely TRUE! We were in St. Petersburg for two days from May 30-31.

I always joked with Michael that the only way I wanted to see Russia is on a Baltic Sea Cruise. Flash forward three years, and here we are, docking in St. Petersburg! What a city! Russia is one where you either have to have a paid tour or pay a hefty sum for a visa on top of all the entrance fees to the museums. We therefore went with option #1 and had a tour. Which I am so glad we did. Our tour guide was super on the ball and pretty intense. We were going, going, going both days.

I have NEVER seen so many extremely ornate and elaborate buildings. We started out by visiting the summer palace- you read that right-the SUMMER palace of Catherine the Great.

You'll have to forgive my camera, but there was NO possible way to fit the whole palace in one picture. The palace kept going on and on and on! So you get to see parts of it.

I just cannot believe how much details, carvings, paintings, and GOLD there is EVERYWHERE!

We had to wear booties to protect all the pretty wood floors.

Seriously, I felt like I needed to go through all the buildings three times. I wish we could have!
1st time for the walls-

Below is the Amber Room. You are not allowed to take pictures inside so thank you Google Images. Every panel of the wall is made of thousands of Amber stones in different shades!

2nd time through for the ceilings-

and 3rd time for the pretty floors-

It was unbelievable! After Catherine's summer palace we went to Peterhov Palace. We were waiting outside for our tour guide and I asked if we were going in. She quickly replied no. We had just seen Catherine's Palace, there is no need to see the inside of this palace. Haha! That statement sadly sums up much of Russia compared to other cities- it's just so ornate. But the Peterhov is known for its fountains. There are hundreds. It is amazing!

Including this sneaky fountain...

After these two palaces, we stopped for lunch. And I literally mean stopped. We pulled off to the side of freeway and before we could figure out what was going on, our driver hopped out and met up with another man getting out of his car. Seriously shady. Then the guy handed our driver a bag and the driver brought it back to us and started driving again. It was our lunch. It was delicious. But very interesting means of getting it. Oh Russia!

That afternoon, we drove around the city more and of course stopped at some Russian Orthodox Cathedrals. Recognize this architecture?

All mosaic! Unbelievable!

It was a beautiful first day in Russia!