And then nappies.
Just chillin’
My top 10 sellers of 2023
MY FINAL 2023 TOTAL BOOKS READ IS 187!
I did a monthly book bracket—which was hard because some months had more than one great book!
That said, my top 12 bracket books of the year were:
- January – Verity
- February – Spare
- March – Winners
- April – Under the Whispering Door
- May – In the Lives of Puppets
- June – The Bones Beneath My Skin
- July – Housemaid’s Secret
- August – Dark Matter
- September – Big Little Lies
- October – A Man Called Ove
- November – The Wishing Game
- December – Never Lie
And the winning bracket book of my year is Under the Whispering Door.
Other books I’d highly recommend:
•Beartown (series)
•Project Hail Mary
•Midnight Library
•The Rose Code
•The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
•Undercover Bromance (series)
•Remarkably Bright Creatures
•The Authenticity Project
•Gone Girl
•Drowning
•In an Instant
•Finley Donovan series
•Thursday Murder Club (series)
•Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice
•I Will Always Write Back
•The Wild Robot
•None of This is True
We’re Disney-fied!
Schwalm Christmas 2023
A Christmas surprise!
Since we missed going to Grayling for Christmas since Katie had Covid, we surprised them in Lansing for the Schwalm Christmas! We decided at about 10am that we could make it…and walked in to Beth and Jim’s as they were finishing dinner! SURPRISE!
Sometimes she picks him.
Ivy on Olive
Olive loves the kids’ new beanbag
Bah humbug.
Katie tested positive for Covid (her second time!)—she even took two tests. I blame the cesspool of middle school. Tom and I are as boosted as we can be so fingers crossed we don’t get it.
She was super upset and crying when we got the results—she really wanted to go to Gramma’s house. I’m just glad we decided to test her at all because we thought it was just a cold.
She slipped into this position
And stayed there napping for quite some time. Dogs are weird.
12 in 12 (2024)
If you’ve been following along this year, you know I’ve read a ton (I’m at 175 and I’d like to finish at least five more in the next 13 days—I passed my original goal of 125 in August). I still have hundreds on my list, but I enjoyed all of the recommendations I got last year—so I did it again! Here are the 12 books recommended to me by 12 friends!
So regal.
Does your Boston make this sound?
I love their silent fighting
Waiting for me to play tug.
#IvyOnOlive
It’s a two-fer (fur) cuddle!
Once upon a time there was a girl…
Tom picked up our box o’ deer today.
We were somewhat disappointed that we didn’t get any steaks—we must have read the form wrong. But we have lots of ground and the other things we asked for like jerky and sausages.
This just makes me smile.
How does this always happen?
You know how I told you how Owen always manages to be behind something at a concert? The stage was empty when I got there. I had my pick of pretty much any seat in the auditorium. And this still happens.
Back is at it again.
OMGGGGG Y’ALL. So I hurt my back yesterday just doing housework prepping for the cleaners…but I took an Oxy which pretty much made me forget about it.
Fast forward to the middle of the night when I woke up and couldn’t move! Freaked me out until I realized that the Oxy had just worn off and my back was super sore again—and it was just tough to move.
Stayed in bed laying down because it didn’t hurt if I wasn’t moving. Got out of bed at 9 to take another Oxy and sat on the couch hoping to take a nap until it started working…but the dogs kept playing and making noise and jumping on me and waking me up. So I kept floating in and out of sleep.
Guess who’s JUST NOW finally getting up?! OMG it’s almost 2:30.
And look who FINALLY settled down now that I need to get up.
I feel like these need their own special category.
MOM ARE YOU UP YET?!
THIS FACE!
I love how tiny her feet look.
My first day of trying bifocals
How long did it take you to get used to them? I’m feeling nauseous after about 35 minutes. The line per se doesn’t bother me, but what does bother me is that I can see the difference in my peripheral vision.