If you at all like children’s literature, please do yourself a favor and read this book. A Newbury Medal winner, this first offering of Clare Vanderpool’s will not disappoint. Geared toward the middle school ages, the book is written as a collection of scraps that weave together the life of Abilene Tucker, her father, Gideon, and the lives of the townspeople of Manifest, KS (a fictional place based on a real town in KS). When Abilene is sent to Manifest for the summer by her father, she has the sinking feeling he’s not coming back — so, in an effort to discover who her father is and to win him back, she sets out on a search to learn his past — and discovers the bittersweet memories of a town that is beginning to realize that the past it had thought would be best left behind actually holds the keys to reviving its rich community. A beautiful story of faith, community, redemption, and love, it is sweet without being cheesy or melodramatic. Nevertheless, I cried through the last three chapters. This is a book just waiting to be made into a movie.

Lest you worry that the Tabbs are floundering with the birth of a second…we’re actually doing ok. Most of the last post (but not all) was fictitious. We don’t own a pet, and I occasionally eat more than a banana for breakfast. I did have an interesting incident with a diaper bag and my checkbook at Target the other day, however.

But overall…we’re doing good. We have our moments, to be sure. But we’ve had a lot of good moments, too. And we love how Julia is being enfolded into our family. She’s a sweetie! We already cannot imagine life without her. Well, maybe J.J. could. But he’s learning, and we can tell he genuinely loves her by the way he yells “where’s baby Jew-we-a!” every morning…and he doesn’t rest until he finds her. And touches her eye.

2. You thought about taking the kitchen trash out this morning, but dismissed the idea as “too much work.”

3. You reconsidered the amount of effort involved in taking the kitchen trash out when the dirty diaper smell overpowered the smell of last night’s dinner – which was 40-Clove Garlic Chicken.

4. You can actually differentiate between the odors of your children when sniffing to figure out whose diaper is currently dirty.

5. You signed your last check at the grocery store “Mommy,” because you forgot you had a given name.

6. You signed your last check at the grocery store because you had forgotten your purse when you left home — in favor of the diaper bag — but your checkbook had conveniently been placed in the diaper bag by your toddler.

7. You begin to confuse the names of your children, husband, and the family pet.

8. You look in the mirror and wonder “who that is.”

9. You look in the mirror and try to remember what you used to look like…but can’t.

10. You plan on shaving your other leg if you can get a shower in tomorrow.

I post the above in honor of my current season of life, and in honor of anyone who has more kids than me. Hats off to you!

I know she has been criticized for having unrealistic characters, superficial or overwrought dramas and dialogues, a less-than-diverse vocabulary, and, at times, overly-racy scenes. And…she’s a romance writer. I don’t like Christian romance novels, mostly because they paint something other than Christ as being ultimately satisfying.

But I feel it’s been worth my time to read Rivers’ five books on the women in Christ’s genealogy. Several reasons: 1) I am not a book snob; 2) they were what I happened to find at my local library when I was browsing last week for a quick, easy read, and; 3) her fiction works that take place during the time of Christ always makes the scriptural narratives fresh for me and guides my imagination to consider the real people behind such narratives in their original contexts. This is definitely a worthwhile exercise. It took great faith for Mary to bear the son of God; her whole life was dramatically altered from her teenage years by bearing the son of God. While Catholics tend to exalt Mary, Baptists like myself tend to overlook her great faith and the fact that she found favor with God. She found favor with God! What must a teenage girl who finds favor with God be like? I would like to meet this woman someday on the Other Side. Or Bathsheba…a racy character, perhaps? And her son was honored above his step-siblings in becoming one of the strongest kings of Israel.

So, although I don’t necessarily resonate with River’s portrayal of every character or situation, I have found that taking the time to read these short little novellas has refreshed my perspective of old stories in Scripture with a view toward the original people in the narrative; people who exercised faith without the advantage of knowing, as Paul Harvey would say “the rest of the story.”

Bath Time!

Sweet Boy!

I have to be! I live less than a mile from the fair grounds. Which means, that I have 30 minutes of extra traffic to contend with in the last quarter mile before my driveway for those 12 days of Fair. It also means that I get to hear each Fair concert, every evening, from the comfort of my own home (tonight is Tim McGraw). I also get the joy of being awakened by the 11:00 fireworks show every night. (Somehow, it doesn’t wake my son up, a fact for which I am thankful.)

I will admit, if pressed, that I enjoyed the fact that we could walk to the fair this afternoon when we went. And it was fun to see J.J. go down the BIG version of the slide at our local playground (it was the multi-colored flying carpet slide, if you live here). And, I get to see fairgoers walking east, perky and bright and energetic, in the mornings, and fairgoers walking west tired, quiet, and sunburned in the evenings. It could actually become a pastime, I suppose. But generally, we consider the Fair a disruption to our lives.

So I stockpile food the day before the Fair. We currently have enough to keep us in business until Kingdom Come, or until the Fair is over. Our tenant gives up his prized parking spot in front of our house only when he is confident that his plans will take him long enough to keep him from coming back before the same spot has been vacated later in the day by a fairgoer (so, after midnight). We plan our anniversary vacation for the last several days of the fair (Labor Day weekend) so that we can purposefully be gone during the worst of it. We adjust…and life goes on.

But this year, I’ve decided to make the Fair work for me. I’ve decided that I will clean something out of my house each day during the Fair and leave it as a free giveaway on our front lawn. So far I have given away a gas grill (gone before 9 am the first day of the Fair), a framed poster print that used to hang in our basement apartment, and two smaller picture frames. All were gone shortly after I put them out in the morning. other possible giveaways may include: wicker furniture, old books and CDs, and …. ??

I’ve also debated selling cold water or healthy, non-fair food in the front yard for a profit (green salad with vinagrette, only $5!) Or selling parking spaces in the front yard (but the grass is already a mess due to the Creeping Charlie problem we have).

What do you think I should do to benefit from the State Fair?

Enjoy the free resource for kids if you’ve got pre-schoolers! They’re an easy way to include talk about God in your day.