Saturday, July 26, 2008

The Big Read

I love books and used to be a bookworm, anyweher and everywhere I was I had a book close by, I was reading a lot while I was pregnant to, there is always a period time when I have to wait for the kids to be done, to pick them up, or just in the waiting room, or just because I wnted ti. Now I entertain Soren or he me in those moments when we are out instead of sticking my nose in a book.And by the time I go to bed my eyes are falling closed on my way. But if I begin a book then i have a rel hard time to set it down before I get to the last page.

Carol posted this, and I had fun remembering all the great books I used to read (and some that I was forced, err... encouraged, to read in school).

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How many have you read? Look at the list: Bold those you have read. Italicize those you intend to read. Underline the books you LOVE. .

I just don't know if this list of the top 100 books would be the same in Germany. I give my best try to see if i can translate all the titles for me to mark them. LOL

I have no clue how to underline anything here, I didn't figure that out yet. And funny is only that I have seen at least 34 movies made from books of this list.


1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Herzlichen Glueckwunsch, Oma!


Monday, July 21, 2008

Saturday Pictures

It's Sunday, no already Monday and we have no pictures to post from today, but we took quite a few on Saturday and have a few to share with you.

The girls spent quite a bit of time outside just splashing and jumping on the trampoline until they decided that it is way to hot outside. LOL. It took them a couple hours to notice that. LOL



Soren instead was napping quite a while and I just stayed inside where the A/C is working nicely.

Later on the day we actually had to leave the house, or movies were due to bring back - I hate paying late fees - and we were out of milk. So we got our errands done, stopped at home to fill up our icebox with drinks and snacks, grabbed chairs and went to the Saddle Club horse show/games just around the corner. It is really just around the corner that I of course missed the entrance to the arena right away because it was way too close to our street. (By the time we went back home it was dark and I missed our road, too, LOL, they are seriously missing street laterns out here in the country), but eventually I will not drive past the house anymore. LOL


Chiara L O V E S horses, so she was all excited to go there, hoping to get to sit on a horse, too, of course and we spent all evening hanging out there. The kids had a blast, playing with Neva and Lorna, catching grasshoppers with Landon and thanks to Heidi and Neva did get to pat and ride on the ponies. Even Soren got to be the first time in the saddle of a real horse and loved it. Not a little bit scared, just enjoying it, having a blast and not wanting to get back down. There is our second horse crazy child now. the pictures are not going to justice on how much he enjoyed sitting on the back of the ponies. He was so happy being outside, no fussing, no crying, no whining, playing, lounging like the big once and that till late that evening.



Friday, July 18, 2008

Just So




You Are Barbeque Sauce



You are a social person. You enjoy cooking for other people.

You are both skillful and competitive. You enjoy mastering hard tasks.

You appreciate complexity more than simplicity.



Your taste in food tends to lean toward interesting flavors.

You appreciate exotic spice combinations. You tend to like cutting edge, fusion cuisine.

You get along with all personalities from a distance. Except salsa personalities, who always seem to annoy you.







You Are a Black and White Cookie



You're often conflicted in life, and you feel pulled in two opposite directions.

When you're good, you're sweet as sugar. And when you're bad, you're wicked!







Your Blog Should Be Blue



Your blog is a peaceful, calming force in the blogosphere.

You tend to avoid conflict - you're more likely to share than rant.

From your social causes to cute pet photos, your life is a (mostly) open book.

Good Bye Sandra und Stevie

Today a week ago, Sandra, Chris and Stevie stopped by at our place for the last time before they totally moved to South Carolina. They are gone. And we do miss them.

We met them for the first time shortly after we moved here when Stevie was about 2 months old in January 2005. And all our kids are grown quite a bit since then.



Bella and Stevie do have a special relationship right from the beginning.



Chris, Sandra asked for a picture. LOL





Sandra,

in case you change your mind and want to come back
to Texas, just let us know and we fire up the grill,
stock up the fridge with food and drinks
and always will have an open door for you
here or whereever we will end up.

The Bissell Family

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Spring Ho in Lampasas

Letztes Jahr hatten sie schon zugemacht und abgebaut bis wir es endlich zum Spring Ho am Sonntag in Lampasas geschafft hatten. Wir hatten ja keine Ahnung, dass am letzten Tag so frueh Schluss gemacht wird in America. Dieses Jahr waren wir gerade noch rechtzeitig, dass wir einmal durch schlendern konnten und auch alle Karusell fahren konnten. Soren hat seine erste Karusellfahrt auch genossen und sich an Leland festgehalten.


Who would have known that fairs here in the States are closing down so early on a Sunday afternoon, so last year we just missed it and arrived too late. This year we came on time to stroll through the fair and let the kids enjoy some rides. Even Soren got his first ride on a black and white striped horse on the Merry-Go-Around. He held on tight to Leland.












Boys


Amy Mae is Found

Heidi's cow is finally found. A friend of hers posted the cow "Amy Mae" missing on the local craigslist and somebody actually called to let her know that a cow show up at their place four days ago. And indeed it was the missing cow. The cow is still there. It seems she was extremely bored being the only cow with a bunch of horses, so she ran down the fence and took off. For right now she might stay there with more cows for company until the fence is fixed and perhabs she gets somje more cow company at home. LOL

Even we do live in the country now with horses and cows close by, Amy MAe's farm is in town. LOL

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Heidi's Cow is Missing!



REWARD: Heidi is offering 2 dozen eggs(all colors and sizes) from free running chicken for information leading to her whereabouts.

The cow is black and white, weights about 1000 pounds and was last seen on their property, but didn't show up for dinner on Thursday.

The cow might eat out of your hand, but does not like to be patted.


It's their only cow.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Hair or Fur?

Yesterday morning we were still aslepp, Chiara comes snuggling, waking me up and then asked absolutely serious "Does Daddy have hair or fur on the front?"

You can easily guess my answer. LOL. I spare you the photo of the sleeping object of the question. LOL.

But how do you really explain the difference to a five year old?

So let's google 'hair' and 'fur'.

WIKIPEDIA

Hair is an outgrowth of protein, found only on mammals.[1] It projects from the epidermis, though it grows from hair follicles deep in the dermis. Although many other organisms, especially insects, show filamentous outgrowths, these are not considered "hair" in the scientific sense. So-called "hairs" (trichomes) are also found on plants. The projections on arthropods such as insects and spiders are actually insect bristles, composed of a polysaccharide called chitin. The hair of non-human mammal species is commonly referred to as fur. There are varieties of cats, dogs, and mice bred to have little or no visible fur. In some species, hair is absent at certain stages of life. The main component of hair fiber is keratin. Keratins are proteins: long chains (polymers) of amino acids.

Fur is a body hair of any non-human mammal, also known as the pelage. It may consist of short ground hair, long guard hair, and, in some cases, medium awn hair.

I guess I learned something today, too.

Kurzfassung auf deutsch:

Chiara hatte gestern morgen gefragt, ob Daddy vorne Haare oder ein Fell hat. Klare Antwort = Haare. Aber wie oft sagen wir das sind Haare oder das ist ein Fell. Ich konnbte ihr den Unterschied nicht so einfach erklaeren, deswegen wurde erstmal danach gegoogelt. LOL

Soren's 1 Year Pictures!

Finally we got to take Soren's official 1 year pictures. We took a lot of them to get a few good ones. LOL. It's hard to keep a mobil toddler in one spot, so we just moved outside. So much more fun. I am going to put more pictures on the photo blog including him standing on the bobby car. LOL.



Endlich sind wir dazu gekommen Sorens 12 Monatsbilder zu machen. Wir haben viel geknipst, da es nicht leicht ist ein mobiles "Kleinkind" auf einer Stelle zu halten. Deswegen sind war dann letztendlich auch nach draussen gegangen. Dort macht es auch viel mehr Spass. Ich werde noch weitere Bilder auf den Photo Blog stellen inklusive der mit Soren auf dem Bobby Car stehend. Schlingel.



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