Autumn in PA

It's truly fall back east, which means the leaves are turning brilliant shades just before they fall and carpet the Pennsylvania landscape. To celebrate the seasonal change the Muldowneys went to Penny Packer Mills for a Harvest Festival. Everyone, that is, except for the invalid, John, and his babysitter, me! According to the fam it was a fun activity and they all had a grand old time. The girls had a particularly enjoyable afternoon because they were young enough to pick out pumpkins from the patch. Abe is long past those youthful times. Other activities they all enjoyed were the hay ride, eating cookies and candy sticks, throwing bean bags, seeing a cider press, and watching the old fashion tool used to de-kernalize corn do its thing.

Johnny boy survived missing out on the trip by watching "All Creatures Great and Small" (tv series based off of the James Harriot books - they're hilarious) and eating Sloppy Jose, French Fries, and Oatmeal Cookies. Overall, the 25th was quite a lovely day.

(above pictures taken at the Duck Pond)

Happy Autumn to everyone!!

Abraham raising an eye brow at the camera:

Lovely Mommy:


Abby and Beckah with their choice of pumpkins:


Abby's awesome mutant pumpkin, can you believe it actually came like that?

Down But Not Out

I've decided to stop writing in Third person. I think it's annoying when I'm taking about myself. That's really only secondary information though. Poor J-5 woke up at 5:30, when Abe and I got up for seminary, on Thursday crying because his ankle hurt. The kid couldn't walk at all and was obviously in extreme pain. He wasn't sure how it happened, but Mom said it was probably only a sprain. So we took out Johnny's old boot and crutches from a previous injury on the same foot. The next few days were painful for John but he made strides to recovery and was able to go to Church with only his boot. Today he is getting around with his boot with no problems at all. Our buddy is doing way better, although the cause of this injury is still a mystery.

Miserable after spending an entire afternoon on the couch:

Today, feeling so good he could dance:

This is for You Missy

History of Reading The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six. Bold and Italic are the ones I have read (59).

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (twice)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (3 times to various groups of kids)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling (4 of them)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (multiple times)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (twice)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (twice)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (aloud twice and once to myself- and most of her other stuff as well- fam favorites were Eight cousins and Rose In Bloom)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (weirdest book he ever wrote)

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (the vast majority)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (3 times to various audiences)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger( why is this one on the list?)
19 The Time Traveler's Wife
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (twice)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (once was enough)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (twice- it's the best thing he ever wrote)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I liked his The Resurrection the best)
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 (also a read-aloud)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (3 times altogether)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (3 times- twice aloud from cover to cover)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (4 times to various kids)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (twice- her best in my book- read them all though)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis(why does this feel like a repeat?)
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 (many read alouds)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (read this aloud too)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Dad read this)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (always meant to read this)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (read them aloud multiple time aloud)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (hated this book)
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 (big brother is watching you1)
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 (a serious downer)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (ought to finish this some day)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (3 times aloud plus lots of her other stuff)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (an undoable task)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (read almost all of them, many times aloud as well)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (twice, really loved it)
80 Possession - AS Byatt-
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (countless times)
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 (another read aloud many times)
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 (in french)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (read aloud twice)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (a bloody tale)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (read them all many times aloud)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (worth reading unabridged)

I find it very interesting that this list of important reads includes no non-fiction except the Bible- but then maybe they think the Bible is fiction too. Anyway, most of my reading for years has been non-fiction, but maybe I'll try a few of these I haven't read yet. Keep on reading! Mom

Keeping with Tradition

The age old Muldowney tradition of Daddy reading holiday picture books has just begun. The first selection, obviously being Halloween books, was made up of classics like "The Closet Gorilla" and "On Halloween Night". We kiddies never tire of Daddy's comforting voice or the stories we've heard 100x. Next group of books will be for Thanksgiving!!

September Birthdays

Lar Sharsh had her birthday party on Sunday Sept. 28th at our house. We rarely see her anymore because of her new school so we were really glad to see her again. Mike's birthday is the day before hers (the 23rd) and so they celebrated together. The meal was excellent (chicken stir-fry with rice) and the dessert was AMAZING (Lizzie created a nice little German Chocolate cake). After dinner we all hung out, chatting, dancing, and playing 'name that tune'. All in all it was an enjoyable evening celebrating the lives of two awesome people. We're so lucky to have Shana in our family!!


The making of a Culinary Masterpiece:


Before Mike and Shana blew out their candles:

Playing name that tune: