It's a Wild World Mary!

Mary had another birthday last weekend. It makes me just a little sad to think she is getting older and will be leaving the nest in what seems like only a few short years......

Greek Festival, May 11-13

After our little jaunt to Rosebank Farms, it was time to head out to enjoy the food and music of Charleston's annual Greek Festival.

Mary & Papa Bear. Photo courtesy of Miles.

A few of the vendors.





I wish I had thought to zoom in with this movie. I was caught off guard when Miles began dancing alone between acts. There were several times he received applause. Even though the music was Greek, he was attempting to dance an Irish Jig.

The Hellas Dance Troupe from the Greek Orthodox Troupe performed for us.



This is the first movie that Miles took. It is a dance around the May pole.

Afterwards, Mary tried out a few of the dances for herself.

This is just of Miles striking one of many poses.

The girls enjoying themselves. Photo courtesy of Miles.

Rosebank Farms Revisited

I went back to Rosebank Farms this morning. This time my goal was to get a bouquet of flowers for my Mother-in-law. Mary picked out the sunflower arrangement below. The kids thought the freshly laid eggs were neat...and I even caught Mary sneaking one to her room. She thought if she could keep it warm it might just hatch for her. :) The kids enjoyed feeding the animals on the farm and I did remember to bring a camera this time.

Literature Meme

Stolen from Sara who stole from JLynn, who stole from Claire who stole from Holly, etc. The first rules I read would have you place in bold type the books you've read from this list of 100. If there are others you've read by the same author, include those in bold, under the original, without the author's name in parentheses.

I have removed 14 books because the authors were redundant. Do we really need to list all of J.K Rowling & JRR Tolkien individually? Hmmmm? The rest of the list was as I found it.

Additional rules that deviate from the first I found include:

Place in italics books you have the book in your house begging to be read
Place in Blue if you have seen the movie / mini-series
Place in Green if you have read aloud to your children
Place in Red if you listened to the book on Radio Reader or Audible.com

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings (Tolkien)
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
The Hobbit
6. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
Anne of Avonlea
7. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
8. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
10. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
11. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
12. The Stand (Stephen King)
Carrie
Christine
Dolores Claiborne
Firestarter
The Green Mile
Pet Cemetery
The Shining
13. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
14. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
15. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
16. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
17 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
18. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
19. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
20. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
21. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
22. Dune (Frank Herbert)
Children of Dune
Dune Messiah
God Emperor of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune
Heretics of Dune
Hunters of Dune
Dune: The Butlerian Jihan
Dune: The Machine Crusade
Dune: House Atreides
Dune: House Harkonnen
Dune: House Corrino
Dune: The Battle of Corrin
- A friend /coworker is coercing me here…including the pre-lending of the books!
23. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
24. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
25. 1984 (Orwell)
Animal Farm
26. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
27. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
28. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
29. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
30. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
31. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
32. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
The Valley of Horses
The Mammoth Hunters
The Plains of Passage
The Shelters of Stone
33. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
34. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
35. Bible
36. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
37. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
The Three Musketeers
The Man in the Iron Mask
38. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
39. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
Of Mice and Men
East of Eden
40. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
41. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
42. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
A Christmas Carol
Oliver Twist
43. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
44. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
This Side of Paradise
45. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
46. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
47. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
48. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
49. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
50. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
51. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
52. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
53. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
54. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
55. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
56. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
57. Les Miserables (Hugo)
58. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
Et aussi…Le Petit Prince
59. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
60. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
61. Shogun (James Clavell)
62. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
63. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
64. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
65. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
66. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
67. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
68. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
69. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
70. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
71. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
72. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
73. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
74. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
75. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
76. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
77. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
78. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
79. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
80. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
The Mermaid Chair
81. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
82. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
83. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
84. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
85. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
86. Ulysses (James Joyce)
87. Saints at the River (Ron Rash)
One Foot in Eden
The World Made Straight
88. A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
All 13 – some I read to the kids and some Tim Curry read to all of us
89. Dracula (Bram Stoker)
This Audio book on a road trip to Ohio is what got me addicted to audio
90. Jordan County (Shelby Foote)
Follow Me Down
The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy
91. Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (Eudora Welty)
92. Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
93. Black Elk Speaks (Black Elk)
94. The Republic (Plato)
95. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest HemingWay)
96. The Messenger (Lois Lowry)
The Giver
Gathering Blue
97. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy O’Toole)
Absolute genius!
98. The Plague (Albert Camus)
99. The Adventures of a Simpleton (Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen)
100. Candide (Voltaire)

Let Us Suppose

Adaab! My friend, Aftab, is being very patient with me as I struggle to learn a few urdu phrases. In this process, I have discovered that there are many wonderful urdu poets that I have never known...begging me to discover them. Lucky for me, I did find a site that has translated some of the poetry for me. Below is just one example:

Let Us Suppose

by Amjad Islam Amjad

translated byTariq Masoud Qasmi

Suppose we were

Two lonely stars,

Twinkling at distance,

Glancing at each other,

Now and then.

And then one day,

Would break and fall,

In the Abyss of oblivion.

What if we were

Two separate currents

Of the same river,

Rushing towards the

Merciless hands of ocean.

Under separate magic

Spell of blind, over savage

and intolerable land,

Together, yet far apart.

What if we were

Birds of early morning,

Flying together,

Touching each other

For a brief moment

And vanish beyond

The far Horizon.

And what if we were

Gusts of spring breeze,

Melting into vague dreams

Of seasons, and turn away

To separate directions,

Carve green lines deep

In the palm of dry and barren

Land, plant our dreams unseen.

Shed our tears in solitude,

And fall into eternal sleep.

Suppose we were not,

What we really are today.

LISA - Opening a New Window on the Universe

Have you ever wished that someone would just tell you your reason for being? What is your mission in life? What does it mean to be you? How exactly do you work? Well NASA has the answer for me and all of my Lisa sisters in the world. We are your tool to study the universe.

This is LISA aka "Laser Interferometer Space Antenna":




LISA works well with others:




This is the for what that LISA searches:




Images Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.