Eight Twenty Eight - a biased book review

Yes, I took this picture straight off Amazon. How did you know?! But hey, now you know for sure that you can get it on Kindle, should you so desire.

I finished this book late at night a few days ago. Sometimes I wonder if I should just rate books according to what hour of the day/night I close the cover/turn off the Kindle for the final time. The later it is, almost without exception, the better the book. After all, could you really give four or five stars to a book that wasn't good enough to have kept you up the night before, but instead you waited until a normal hour of the following day to finish it?

I reviewed Eight Twenty Eight on www.goodreads.com earlier today, and gave it my honest opinion, critiquing the writing a bit and, while giving it a strong score of four stars, I wasn't raving. So if you want to read that, go here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20522291-eight-twenty-eight
And if you want to read what others say in Amazon reviews or to buy the book on Amazon, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Eight-Twenty-When-Love-Didnt-ebook/dp/B00MELILBS/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

But for the purpose of this blog, I want to be a bit more enthusiastic. For one thing, it's just plain fun to read about people you know and your own town! The authorial couple attend our church right here in Indiana, PA, and a lot of their friends, who are mentioned in the book, are people we've gotten to know. At one point Warren Road was referred to, and I looked out my bedroom window and saw Warren Road. How wild is that? I've sure never had that experience before when reading!

But of course, those points might not sell you on the book, since chances are you don't live in this town. What you might care about, though, is that it's a just plain stick-in-your mind book that you won't forget, and don't really want to forget, either. Brief summary: college kids meet, fall in love, and are thinking about marriage. Then the guy is in a serious car accident and has a major brain injury. The girl sticks with him, he starts to recover, and after like four years of very, very slow progress, they get married. He's still in a wheelchair and can barely talk, but they have remained in love and have a lot of faith in God. At the time the book was written (which was very recently), they'd been married for four years. How could you not be drawn into a story like that? If it were fiction, nobody would believe it. Try it, you'll like it. It's a story about love that didn't give up, faith that didn't give up, and two people who are still engrossed in the joy and struggle of their lives even now.

Indiana County Fair 2014

Andrew's office (Penn State Extension of Indiana County) does a lot with the county fair. One day he came home with his fair book, basically a big list of everything one could enter in the fair. He said, "Hey, why don't you enter something?"

I said, "What am I going to do, raise a lamb on our apartment porch in a mere four weeks?!"

To which he replied, "You can bake some cookies. You make great cookies."

And so my first-ever fair experience began! I made a lot of test batches, got friends from church to sample various options for me, and became rather excited about the whole thing. I read food blogs about cookies, experimented with recipes, and finally came up with what I thought was the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie. And when I baked them the day entries were due, they came out perfectly! And as a little side bonus, I made a cake, too, just for fun. These fine specimens got entered in the fair:

End result: Nothin' at all for the cookies, and the cake got second place. That was exciting at first, but then I realized that there were only two entries in that particular cake category! Oh well - maybe next year!

And I wasn't the only one who got into the fair - Zarya thought it was a pretty amazing place. She toured all of the animal barns admiring pigs, cattle, horses, and chickens. The poultry barn was the surprise hit - she thought they were pretty fun, with all of that squawking:

I thought the entire fair experience was really fun. Everything seemed pretty clean and well-maintained, and although there were a lot of people there, it didn't feel crowded. We went to a rabbit show, horse show, swine show, dairy show, photography exhibit, home economics exhibition, Christmas tree display, and harness racing. It was just plain fun! Oh, and they even had a kiddie barn, which Zarya loved. Her favorite activity there was digging around in corn with toy tractors and shovels:

We're all looking forward to the fair next year!

Soccer girl

Soccer skills don't really run in either side of the family, but maybe Zarya will be the notable exception in the Smith and Sandeen clans. She spends a lot of time playing outside, and sometimes as a special treat we let her take her big orange ball along.

Birthday tart and baby belly

It was my birthday on August 3, and Andrew made me a beautiful birthday fruit tart! It had a shortbread crust, cream cheese spread over that, then nectarines and blueberries with a lime glaze. YUMMY!

This belly is not entirely due just to eating lots of birthday "cake" - little Jerod Ezra is growing away inside! He's about 20 weeks along in this picture, so halfway there. I feel much bigger much sooner than I did when pregnant with Zarya, which isn't exactly fun. But feeling him kick and wiggle inside is always kind of cool, even if he has made me rather chubby!