2 The Writing(s) on the Wall

Found this awesome piece of artwork (graffiti?) on my walk in downtown Salt Lake the other day and had to stop by today with my iPad to snap a few photos. I absolutely love this wall, but something tells me the thickness of The Cat in the Hat is off.

1 more book for your buck.

Book prices can be frustrating. Even when stores like Borders are going out of business and slashing prices left and right, popular titles still cost upwards of $12 which makes building your library an expensive endeavor. This is the problem I had been running into up until a couple of weeks ago when Andrea dragged me (thanks, love) along to DI and a few garage sales with her. I was shocked by some of the books people had either given away to DI or were selling at such low prices at garage sales.

Here are a few of my recent finds:

The Hunger Games (Hardcover): $2
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Hardcover): $4
Eragon (Hardcover): $5
The Lost Symbol (Hardcover): $2
Matched (Hardcover): $4
Way to Be (Hardcover): $0.25
Shiloh (Paperback): $0.25
7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Paperback): $0.25
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TOTAL: $17.75

That's right, just $17.75 for eight books that would have costed about $97.75 on Amazon. Now, the copies I found weren't brand new, mind you, but people tend to take good care of their books and all of the copies I bought were all in really good condition.

It looks like building my library just got a lot cheaper!

0 Three Cups of Tea

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My 5-star rating of Three Cups of Tea is based more on my admiration for Greg Mortenson and the work he is doing for the children -- especially the girls -- of Pakistan and Afghanistan than on my impression of the book itself. That said, I found the story so enthralling that I found myself wishing I could dirty my hands with cement and brick building schools in remote, mountainous regions of central Asia. Mortenson's commitment and willingness to sacrifice for the welfare of others is truly inspiring. Read Three Cups of Tea.

0 The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Kite Runner is everything you could ask for in a novel: a roller-coaster ride of fatherhood and friendship, ethnicity and exile, and religion and redemption.

Hosseini delivers a heart-wrenching tale of terror and triumph, all neatly wrapped in a telling depiction of pre- and post-Taliban Afghanistan. As I read it, I kept wondering to myself whether I was so fascinated with The Kite Runner because of the story that it unfolds or because of the culture within which the story takes place. In the end, I decided on both.

0 The ABCs of the Gospel

I'm excited to announce that Andrea and I have finished The ABCs of the Gospel: A Flipbook for Children. This little book is a simple letter-by-letter guide to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was designed to be printed on 4x6 pages, inserted into a small plastic photo album, and, most importantly, to keep wiggly youngsters quiet and still during sacrament meeting.

You can view the full publication here.

0 Boston.

A text confirmed it: Tuesday night, their 9th E apartment, a cute little baby, and us. Yes, we were set to babysit Boston.

He seemed to be enjoying the mashed peas his mom fed him by the spoonful as we arrived. I guess when you're little you just don't know any better. The location of everything important was made known to us -- you know, the toys, the diapers, the wash rag, his footy pajamas, etc. -- and we distracted him with something else mashed, this time white in color, as his parents slipped out the door.

I think the sounds, movements, and textures of his toys kept me a little more entertained than they did Boston, but for the most part he wasn't too fussy. One wet diaper later, however, there was pretty much no calming him down. We changed him, sang to him, tried to give him his bottle, and did every dumb little thing we could think of to make the little guy happy, all to no avail. That was until Andrea pulled out her phone and queued up a sound clip of a baby laughing. Easy as that. No more crying.

After rocking him a bit, we got him into his little footy pajamas, put him to bed, and that was that. Removing a book from our backpacks and beginning to read, her The Silver Chair and I Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was our obvious response to the quiet that now settled on the apartment. We didn't budge until the Housleys got home and thanked us for giving them the chance to go out on a date.

A cup of hot water solved the frozen locks on my car doors and we were on our way. To do homework like we probably should have? No. Cold Stone, of course.

Andrea ordered a Cheesecake Fantasy* and I got a Birthday Cake Remix*, both in a waffle bowl. We shared bites and couldn't decide whose was better.

Spontaneity took us to the Dollar Theater where we ended up seeing City of Ember. I fell asleep, but Andrea said it was good.

The last stop was home and that spelled the end of Tuesday.

Cheesecake Fantasy: cheesecake ice cream, graham cracker pie crust, strawberries, and blueberries.


Birthday Cake Remix: cake batter ice cream, rainbow sprinkles, brownie, and fudge.