Five Years--a glimpse of what's been happening!

It's been such a long time since I've blogged anything! I don't know yet if I'm coming back to this, but I do feel like I should update it a bit. I have no idea if people even keep up with this or wonder about what's happened in the last 5 years. What's the best way to update what feels like a lifetime? Here's my attempt...

2009

September

My parents celebrate 25 years of marriage and take a trip to where they honeymooned. While they are gone my siblings and I plot a surprise party for them with family and church. They were duly surprised. :-)

December

My Aunt Donna went home to be with the Lord.

2010

I take on a full time management position at work.

March

We have a baby kitten born on our porch, she gets named Puzzle and we keep her. 

May

Youngest brother Andrew graduates from high school, ending our years as a home schooling family.

June

We go on probably our last family vacation/graduation trip. Head to Massachusetts. Had a great trip. We got to see John Q. Adams house, explore Lexington, see the house of Louisa May Alcott (book loving me loved it!), see Plymouth, visit Cape Cod, and stop in Pennsylvania for a trip to Sight and Sounds. Was a great trip!

September

My sister Sarah heads to Spain for an eight month adventure as a teacher assistant. See her blog for the full scope of that adventure! (http://fromthevalleytothebasin.blogspot.com/)

Fall-Winter

Stressful time for me dealing with the stress of full time retail.

2011

March

I step down out of full time management and go back to part time. Life becomes much better!

I head to Spain to visit Sarah. First visit overseas for me! Spend a couple days in Spain and then head to Paris with Sarah. Great trip, but very crazy! Think lost luggage times 10 in weirdness. I have a post on her blog about that trip. You can read two long posts about it here:

http://fromthevalleytothebasin.blogspot.com/2011/04/semana-blancaaka-semana-amanda.html

 http://fromthevalleytothebasin.blogspot.com/2011/05/well-always-have-paris-amandas.html

April

Life at our local church undergoes some major changes.

June

I head back overseas and meet up with Sarah in London. We spend almost three weeks touring the UK. Get to see a lot of England and a few days in Scotland. BEST TRIP EVER!!!!!!!

Highlights--Attending Charles Spurgeon's former church for a service, seeing amazing historical museums etc. Stonehenge. Bath--I loved Bath. Jane Austen fans must go there! Was my favorite part of England. We get to see a Hamlet production, loved that too! Sleepy town called Woodstock, such a great place after the hectic London world. Chatsworth house--where they filmed the most recent version of Pride and Prejudice. Such a great place! We get to see the Bronte house, and get an unplanned walking tour group. Great time! Funny story involving an older gentleman taking us right up to the house because we were so concerned about missing it. Yorkshire--sorry, very lame and touristy, we should have skipped that! A couple of days in Edinburgh. Cool castle, fun Highlands tour and get to see the Loch Ness. Adventures of Sarah leaving her purse, but no worries, no one took it! That is a really surface view of our time in England. It was such a great time!

Sarah returns home with me, life goes back to normal in our household. :-)

Fall

Mom's sister Susan, has a return of cancer.

Parents take a trip with Mom's sisters and their spouses to Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Dad retires from the fire house!

Sarah and I take a trip down to see our friend in South Carolina.

2012

June

My siblings and I take a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah to visit our Aunt and Uncle. Fun trip with our first real exposure to the western part of the US!

August

I am diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis--a two year journey which involves a blog or several posts of its own!

2013

April

 Parents, Sarah, and I take a trip down to South Carolina to celebrate our friend's 30th birthday!

June

Mom's sister Susan passes away.

Most of the year

Life gets hard for me, I'm trying a diet called SCD to help with the UC. Losing a lot of weight and getting very sick. I stay with some friends in Nov/Dec to try to help. A stomach virus on Thanksgiving day puts me down to 92 pounds! Scary times. 

December

Doctor is urging me to go to surgery

2014

January

Cold times in Ohio!

I finally get in to see another doctor, who is in to functional medicine.

He suggests just doing gluten and dairy free diet. Within 4 weeks I gain 14 pounds! Praise the Lord!! Since then, I have only continued to progress and am still amazed at the Lord's provision and care for me! A short snippet doesn't do justice to what has happened in the last year of my life!

March

I start getting into gardening

June

We get a new kitten and name her Ellie.
July
Our church gets to host a joint service for the first time with several local small churches joining us for an evening service. Great time of fellowship!

August

Sarah and I take a day trip with a friend to Lexington, Kentucky. Fun times exploring the Horse Park, seeing Mary Todd Lincoln's house, and eating at a place called Shakespeare & Company.

Sarah and I take a trip down to South Carolina to visit friends.

I know I'm probably missing some things, but that's a pretty good summary of the last 5 years. Dad is preaching more at our local church. I am still at our local craft store, 6 years coming up soon! I still hope for an Administrative job someday. We currently have three cats and one dog. 2014 has brought a lot of new friendships into my life and I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for 2015!

Life is busy, but good, and God is GREAT!

Thanks for reading!

Praise & Prayer Request!!

Hello all! Some of you know that I have been job searching for awhile now, and today I found out that I will be working part-time seasonal work at a local craft store! I am very thankful for this opportunity! I'd appreciate your prayers as I learn the new job and continue to search for full-time employment. I start Monday morning and I will be searching for the "dress code" work clothes this weekend. (that could also be considered a prayer request too, that I can find the items I need!)

Thank you to all those who have been praying, and please keep doing so!

A very excited, and thankful blogger,

Amanda :-)

How to Leave a Comment

Hello all! I thought I'd do a "how to" post today. :-) I realize that many of you out there know how to leave comments, but I know a few people who are somewhat confused on how to do it, or if they've tried, they've been unsuccessful. (it is kind of confusing if you've never done it.)
So hopefully this will help a little!

First--Go to the end of the blog post you want to comment on and look for something like "0 comments." Click on that link. After clicking the link, you will see a white box that says: "Leave your comment"

Second--Type in your comment. (easy enough :-) ) The next part is where it gets a little tricky...

Third--You will see a section where it says "choose your identity." There are several options.

Googgle/Blogger--if you have a gmail or a blog account, I recommend you use this one.

Open ID--This one is a little confusing to me, so basically, unless you know what you're doing, I wouldn't choose this one. :-)

Name/URL--This is probably the easiest option, if you don't have a gmail account. Just type in your first name, and you are good to go! You don't need to fill in the URL if you don't want to.

Anonymous--You can choose this if you prefer to not have your name online.

Fourth--Once you've chosen one of the above mentioned items, you will be asked to type in some letters for security purposes. After that, you're done! Your comment won't appear right away, since I can moderate comments, so after I read your comment, (and make sure you aren't saying anything bad) I agree to publish your comment and it appears! :-)

Overall, it's pretty easy! Let me know if you have problems, not that I'll know what to do...but you never know! :-)

(Oh, and in case you noticed recently that a comment was deleted from the Spiritual Disciplines post, that was me practicing, so I could figure out the best way to explain this to you. :-) However, I didn't mean to actually post my own comment! So I deleted it. :-) )

Have a great day!

The brief history of this blog & why it was started :-)

Hello all! I don’t feel like doing a book review today, but I did want to post something.
So, I thought, maybe I should tell you how I got the idea for this blog and why I started it.
Of course, you may also wonder, and rightly so, why I haven’t talked about this before. :-)
After all, it would be a logical first post. Anyway, despite the delay, I shall now give you a brief history (okay, maybe not so brief) about this blog, and myself. First, I must back up a couple of months…

In June, a new family started coming to our church, I began talking with the lady/mom/wife, or however you want to describe her. We exchanged emails and shortly after that she sent me one. At the end of her email was her blog address. Curious, I checked it out, and was intrigued. I knew a little bit about blogs before this, but to my recollection, I had never looked at any. So over the course of the summer I occasionally checked out her blog and she tried to persuade me to start one. :-)
(you can check her blog out here: http://dea-frommyhearttoyours.blogspot.com/)
I thought a blog sounded interesting, but way too time consuming, and I had absolutely no idea what I would talk about. (Unless it was a family blog and I gave updates on my family) So, I continued on with my daily routine throughout the summer.

Then in August, our church had a weekend youth/teen/singles/whatever, camp out/retreat. During this retreat we watched the dvd series of the Harris brothers entitled “Do Hard Things.” (This was the purpose of the retreat) If you are familiar with their story, you know that their blog basically started their ministry. Anyway, so that is the second part of the story.

Shortly after this retreat, a friend of my brothers and fellow church member also started his own blog. Which I also enjoy looking at, you can find his blog at the sidebar or follow this link:
http://thereformeddoug.blogspot.com/

Anyway, so all these people have blogs! I still think they are interesting, but after all, what on earth would I talk about, and who on earth would care what I have to say! :-)

However, at the end of August, I had two separate conversations with people about a book I was reading, I went into some detail about it etc. After these conversations I thought, “Hmm, I love to read, and I’ve read a variety of things, and I love talking about books, why not have a blog about books!” So with this thought in mind, I began making some quick, and impulsive decisions. I was going to start a blog, and it would be about books! I remembered the word bibliophile (my sister helped me discover this word when I was doing a college project) and thought it’d be the perfect name.

However, even though the primary purpose of my blog was to be about books, I wanted to give myself some leeway to talk about music, movies, or my family if I ever wanted to expand. Thus, the “and more” was added to the title.

So, that is a rather lengthy version of how I got started on this blog.

Now, moving on a little further. One of my reasons for starting the blog, was primarily to encourage others to read good books. You may notice that I have a lot of “Classic Christian” kind of literature up that I review. This is not all that I read, I do in fact enjoy Christian historical romance fiction. However, I don’t really want to encourage others to read that, I’d rather you read more “quality” books. That’s why you won’t be finding any reviews with those types of books. So, lest you think I am some perfect person who only reads “old-fashioned” books, it’s not true.

In fact in the course of the months of September and October I have so far, read approximately 32 books, and only 7, soon to be 8 of those books have made it to my blog for reviews. However, at the same time, I really do enjoy the “old fashioned” books, and think they are much more worthwhile than contemporary fiction.

Anyway, I say that to let you know that I enjoy a variety of books. One day, I may incorporate more “classic” literature as well for review. (i.e. Jane Austen, maybe Charles Dickens, or other such authors)

More reasons/purposes/trivia about the blog: I am generally assuming that the majority of my readers are on the “younger side” (with the exceptions of my “adult” friends from church and family members). This may be a little presumptuous of me, but that’s just my guess. I define “younger” as in teens to young adults/twenties, etc. As a result, my writing style is a little more directed to that age range, at least, I guess it is…maybe not. :-)

However, I also would like the blog to be useful to adults/parents as well. I hope it to be helpful in parents choosing books for their kids. I also would like the blog to be a place where interesting discussions about the books can happen. This hasn’t really happened yet, but hopefully in the future, readers will get a little more involved.

Anyway, hmm, I can’t quite decide if I should drag this out a little further and talk about my personal background with reading etc. Maybe I will do that tomorrow! :-)

So, I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about how this blog got started. Although the blog is time consuming and I am swamped with reading, I am enjoying it immensely!

Have a wonderful day!

Happy Anniversary!

Just wanted to post a quick note and let you know that my parents are celebrating 24 years of marriage today! (Dad is working today, so they will probably do something special later this week :-) ) One of these days maybe I will write more about my parents and how they met, until then...

Happy Anniversary Dad & Mom!!