The Toy Box Years: I Love to Read......

The Creators of the Toy Box Years

The creators of the Toy Box Years are my two beautiful daughters and wonderful, handsome soldier husband.

"Nani" (our oldest) is a 11 year old 6th grader who loves Taylor Swift, ballet, books, fashion designing and sewing. Ask her what she wants to be when she grows up and it changes daily to anything from "an artist" to "a teacher" to "a singer/dancer". Nani is also currently fighting a battle against brain cancer -- recently diagnosed in June 2016.

"Nudgie" (our youngest) is a very smiley, very happy, very giggly, very spirited 8 year old 3rd Grader who's favorite toys are anything that gives mommy an anxiety attack - ladders, stepstools, the climbing wall at the playground. Like her sister, she has a love of reading and coloring, loves gymnastics and still provides mommy lots of snuggle time!

"My Marine" is my high school sweetheart. We've been married over 20 years and met when we were 17. (You do the math....) His favorite toys are Blackhawk helicopters, the lawnmower, our steam cleaner, and microbrew beer bottles. My husband is also my hero in that he proudly serves his country as a Blackhawk crew chief (hence his favorite toy!). And need I say that there is nothing hotter than my man in uniform!

All About Me......

Once upon a time I had a career and worked in the corporate world. Once upon a time, I dreamed about leaving that all behind to follow my true calling -- being a wife and mommy.

The first part of my calling was fulfilled in 1995 when I married my Marine (now soldier) and my love. Little did I know that being a military wife would change me in so many ways and that because of that, I would have an extended family all over the world from Japan, to California, to North Carolina.

The second part of my calling took a little doing, but I finally achieved that dream in 2004 with the birth of our first child, followed 4 years later by her baby sister.

So now, when someone asks me what I do for a living - I simply smile and say proudly that I'm following my calling - I'm a mommy and a wife -- and I couldn't be HAPPIER -- I'm living in the Toy Box Years!!

I love to read. I don't really have a favorite author or genre. I'll really read just about anything. But as I was looking over the books I have read in the past, I found that it was a lot of fiction and parenting books. Nothing wrong with that, of course - but I felt that I needed to expand a little bit.

After much discussion and many suggestions, I decided to challenge myself a bit for 2010 and create a list of biographies/memoirs to read.

It originally started off as a small list -- a list of six books. But as I started digging deeper, I found more and more books that I wanted to read and my list kept getting bigger and bigger.

What started out as six ended up as fifteen!

So, here, in no particular order, is my biography/memoir reading list for 2010.

"My Land and My People" - His Holiness, the Daila Lama of Tibet

"The Camino" - Shirley MacLaine

"The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova - Russia in the Time of Catherine the Great" - Jehanne Gheith

"Under the Duvet: Shoes, Reviews, Having the Blues, Builders, Babies, Families & Other Calamities" - Marian Keyes

"In Search of King Solomon's Mines" - Tahir Shah

"Rebel Without a Minivan: Observations on Life in the 'Burbs" - Tracy Beckerman

"The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific" - J. Maarten Troost

"One More Year" - Sana Krasikov

"Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life" - Queen Noor of Jordan

"Home: A Memoir of My Early Years" - Julie Andrews

"The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After" - Melanie Gideon

"In Spite of Myself" - Christopher Plummer

"Once Upon a Time: Behind the Fairy Tale of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier" - J. Randy Taraborrelli

"Sinatra: The Life" - Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

"Funny in Farsi" - Firoozeh Dumas

Happy reading everyone!

6 comments:

Samantha January 13, 2010 at 10:04 PM: what a great list! This is a good idea. Good luck in reading all these! :)
Kimberly January 14, 2010 at 8:28 AM: Everytime I try and make a list, it gets way out of hand. So I try to just set my hooks into one at a time and if I stumble upon another, yay me! lol

Good luck with all those. I would love to read Sinatra.
Missy January 14, 2010 at 8:47 AM: That is a pretty big list. Good luck getting through it. I love to read too, but sadly don't have much time these days. I do, however, carve out a few days in July to read the newest installment of Janet Evanovich's Numbers series.
Grand Pooba January 14, 2010 at 11:59 AM: WOW! That's a huge list! I used to hate non-fiction books but now biography and memoirs are my favorite kind! You'll have to let us know if they are any good!
Julie January 14, 2010 at 9:05 PM: Looks like a great lists!
Buckeroomama January 15, 2010 at 3:19 AM: I love (auto)biographies and was really into them for a while there, but now, I'm going back to my "easy reads." :)