The whole family ran down to the Barnes and Noble bookstore last weekend to buy books to read on our trip to and from Mexico. Aunt Julia had given Kelly and Christian $15 gift cards that were burning a hole in their pocket. Christian went off to find a puzzle, Lorena grabbed a bunch of fashion (home and clothes) magazines and sat down to read, and Kelly and I started looking for books. Kelly was sad because she had run out of authors in whom she had confidence. She was not in the mood to use primary book selection method of making the choice based solely on what is on the cover (“It ALWAYS works!”). So after floundering for a half an hour or so, we decided it would be a great idea to spend the $15 on authors she had never previously read with the hope that one of them would be from an author that she could mine in future. To that end, she picked a book titled Knit One, Kill Two (A Knitting Mystery) by Maggie Sefton that she had read about somewhere that I do not remember. It meets all the criteria and more: It is a mystery, the author has written several other books, and it is about knitting! Then, I recommended that Kelly try a Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout book. She got Fer-de-Lance because it was the first one. They say it is not his best novel, but it is a good one and one should really start at the beginning. Another option might have been to get Before Midnight because it was written in 1955. Rex Stout wrote something like 72 of those books, so Kelly will be in good shape if she likes them. I do not remember the third book. We were looking at the first book in Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal detective series, but I do not think that was it.
As for myself, I am taking a book on comparative religion by Rodney Stark, an Agatha Christie novel that Kelly read and liked from the library, and the Financial Peace book by Dave Ramsey. Christian is taking a model of a Spitfire airplane to assemble along with a Firefox cartoon collection. Both of the kids are taking their knitting materials. I think Lorena’s plan is to spend as much time as possible gossiping with her mother. That is always a very good thing. My mother-in-law, Conchita, is awesome.
Update: Christian just called me. He just finished his first year of Rosetta Stone Spanish!!! That is huge step in the homeschool process. Kelly should finish very soon, too. Sonlight and others claim it is equivalent to two years of high school Spanish or one year of college Spanish, so it is quite an accomplishment for them. We will start in on Spanish Level 2 next. As soon as that is complete, we will start getting them ready to take the Spanish CLEP test, then jump into French.