Twilight

So I am currently waiting for some videos of my kids to upload.  My computer is painfully slow right now thanks to a problematic battery.  As a result, I have some time to post about silly things.  Prepare for a lengthy post without any pictures.

I’m sure you all guessed that this post is about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight.  For the past several years (since about the time I finished reading Harry Potter in 2007) most women I know between the ages of 12 and 45 have been reading this series and telling me to read it.  I resisted.  A lot.

I had my reasons.  First of all: I like to read good books. Secondofly: I have a very long list of those books that I want to read, and I couldn’t bring myself to bump Twilight ahead of the likes of East of Eden and Crime and Punishment (neither of which I have read still) and Count of Monte Cristo (which I did finally read).  Third: It sounded like a romance novel.  I’ve unfortunately read a romance novel by a Mormon author once t wasn’t a mistake I was ready to make again.  Fourth: I sometimes like to pretend I’m more mature and refined than adolescent girls.  Fifth:  I hate vampires.  I don’t like stories about them.  I don’t think they have ever made for books that are anything more than glorified romance novels.

In spite of all of these objections, I finally decided I would make a compromise and see the movies.  If only because I kind of like Kristen Stewart from her other stuff and it seemed like something good to watch for a girls night with my mom and my sister.  So, when I was in Utah this summer, my mom and I rented “Twilight” and “New Moon” and set out to watch them.  My dad joined us because he is a good sport and there wasn’t much else to do.  Not surprisingly, mom fell asleep about halfway into the first one and I ironically watched the first two Twilight movies with my dad. 

Can I just say Yipes?!  The first one was tremendously bad.  It was boring and went pretty much nowhere until that last half hour or so.  If I had to watch Robert Pattinson make a pained expression one more time, I was going to have an aneurysm.  It was hard to tell if he was constipated, or just trying really hard to not look at the camera or something.  I thought Kristen Stewart was believable, but the character was obnoxious.  At least I got some joy out of some 24 alums.  Sarah Clarke (aka Nina Myers) in a small role as the mom and Billy Burke (aka Gary Matheson) as the dad.  The score was terrible and did nothing to fill in the gaps, which was unfortunate since the whole movie was gaps.

I actually kind of liked the second movie.  Possibly because Robert Pattinson and his painfully pained expression left shortly into the movie.  While Taylor Lautner is not a particularly good actor, he was adorable and likeable in Pattinson’s absence.  Kristen Stewart was again believeable, but the character was still obnoxious.  At least they did a quick montage to glaze past the months of her pathetic moping, and the music was a lot better.  Actually, I should give Kristen Stewart more credit because she really dominated the screen time and somehow managed to make me not want to kill her character, who probably deserved it.

I watched the third movie by myself.  I liked it.  I’m sort of ashamed to admit it, but I did.  Taylor Lautner grew into his role, Robert Pattinson was grimacing less, and Kristen Stewart was good.  It helped that Bella was less obnoxious.  I liked the vampire family (except for Rosie).  I really liked Jasper and Emmet and Dr. Cullen.  The music was actually really fun, and the villains were interesting.  The middle was still painful to get through, though.

I decided I had to find out for myself if the characters were any better in the books, so I finally broke down and started reading them.  I also told myself that I was also really skeptical of the Harry Potter books and made fun of people who read them.  I was way off on that one.  I sort of skimmed the first three since I had seen the movies.  I was just trying to find the stuff that wasn’t in the movies.  While they were quick reads, and I didn’t absolutely hate them, I have to say that I was right about them. 

The characters lack depth and don’t really function as real heroes or protagonists.  Edward is definitely more likeable than Robert Pattinson makes him, but even then, not until the back end of the third book.  Bella is an annoying, love-stricken teenageer, which would be fine, since that’s normal for a girl of that age, but she’s supposed to be mature and an “old soul”.  I think Meyer just said that about the character so the reader could get behind her falling so desperately in love with a guy she barely knew and be so sure of it, even after he took off and came back.  Note: It’s hard to really get behind a teenaged girl finding true love with a creature that is, by all accounts, built to make people fall for him.  I never quite got what made her infatuation with him more meaningful than every other girl who would have dropped everything to be with him, other than the fact that he noticed her, as well.  Which is another problem, since he really only noticed her since her blood smelled super delicious to him and he couldn’t hear her thoughts. 

The writing is straight forward and unimaginative and tends to drag in all of the books.  They are driven in good part by internal monologue, which doesn’t work very well when the writing is bad and the characters are uninteresting.  Stephanie Meyer has a bad habit of making sure nothing really interesting happens until the last 10% of the book.  Even when interesting stuff happens in the middle of the book, she manages to make it seem boring.

Ultimately, the books had a couple of chances to be good and maybe even have some substance, but missed the mark.  I guess I shouldn’t have expected more out of books for young adults, but I sort of did after reading Hunger Games.  I kept waiting for there to be anything thematically of value, but it just didn’t come.  It really is just a love story about a girl, a vampire, and a werewolf.  I can see how people like it, as it is better than most other love stories for that age group, but it’s unwise to look for anything else out of it.  I guess I’m glad I read them, because it definitely did add something to the movies.  The characters are easier to understand, and the vampires are given more depth and back story.  Also, I can now honestly say that I don’t particularly like them and have it be an informed opinion.  I have to say that I agree with Stephen King’s take on Meyer’s place in the juvenile literature worl: "the real difference [between J. K. Rowling and Meyer] is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer, and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."However, King understood the appeal of the series, adding, "People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it's very clear that she's writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because it's not overtly sexual." (Link to the article)

That is all. Look below for really cute videos of Ben and Penny, as a reward for making it through this post.

Cute Videos

So, here’s a cute video of Penny walking.  She’s really getting good at it.

And here’s a super cute video of Ben reading with Jon.  He loves this story and he loves when Jon reads it with him.  It’s kind of fuzzy looking because of a smudge on the camera lens courtesy of a very curious Penny finger.

Quick Little Penny Video

So, I know I still owe people pictures and video from Christmas, Penny’s Birthday and a lot of other things.  To make matter worse, I have a loaner phone that has a terrible camera on I, so I haven’t been texting pictures either.  So here is a quick video of Penny being silly to tide you over.  Oh, and FYI, there is an adorable video of Ben helping Jon read the Three Little Pigs on the horizon.

Penny being her cute, silly self. Sorry about the bad picture, there was a nasty smudge on the lens.

The Quiet Books

So, earlier this year, my mom got me a sewing machine.  I was determined not to make the same mistake I often make when I take on a new hobby which is to jump into the deep end, get frustrated, and give it up.  I have a tendency to try to do the hardest thing first, rather that starting out as a beginner.  I did pretty well at first.  My first couple of projects were really simple and pretty hard to screw up.  They helped me learn my way around a sewing machine.  The extreme importance of setting the tension correctly, and the frustration of having kids around that sometimes changed settings when I wasn’t looking.  All was going pretty well.  Then I started to frequent some crafting blogs and saw this quiet book at homemadebyjill.  I fell in love and had to have one for Ben.  I started looking around the internet for cute ideas and did tons of research before starting to put together my own sketches and ideas.  Then I had the brilliant idea of just making the thing in triplicate so my nephews could have one too (one for us, one for my brother’s kids, and one for my sister’s kids).  I decided they would be Christmas presents.  It’s been difficult, frustrating, and surprisingly fun, but I finished (sort of) in time for them to be Christmas gifts.  Sadly, I have not quite finished Ben’s yet.  I sort of put it off to make sure the other two got into the mail in time.  It’s close, though, and I hope to have it done shortly after the new year.  Also, I made them 3-ring style, so I can add more pages as I finish them.  Now that Christmas has passed and the recipients have seen them, I can show it to you.  Enough talk, though, here is a tour:

The front covers.  The little frame holds a picture.  I left them empty because I didn’t have great pictures of my nephews to put in them.  The strap has three sets of snaps for use as it grows in size when I make more pages.

You can’t see it very well, but I embroidered the spines to say “The Merrill/Grant Family Quiet Book”.  Considering that before I made this book I had never embroidered before, I feel pretty good about how it turned out.

Inside front cover/Page 1: The inside cover is a tree that I got from homemadebyjill.  The only thing I changed is that I stitched on little labels with the family’s names onto some of the leaves.  I love the gumball machine way of doing the color matching.  I got that idea from craftychic.  The circles just velcro on to a matching circle on the bottom.

Pages 2 and 3: The counting page just had shank buttons on some ribbon.  I honestly can’t remember where I got this idea, but it wasn’t mine originally.  I did have to put a stitch down the middle of the five bigger numbers and separate out the buttons so the ribbon didn’t sag.  I like the cute way of teaching how to count, though.  The Noah’s Ark I saw on a lot of different blogs.  I kind of combined a lot of them into my own.  It unzips and has finger puppets inside.  I did not make the finger puppets, I got some really cute ones at IKEA  Also, you can’t see it, but the inside of the boat is lined with a cute animal fabric to give a little color and make it more sturdy, since felt tends to stretch.  This page was probably the easiest to make.

Pages 4 & 5: This is most definitely my crowning achievement for the book.  I got the idea by following the links on quietbook.blogspot.com to her little sister’s, the Egberts.  The layout is almost the exact same, but my pages are a little bigger, so I had more to work with.  Also, I used tiny (1/8th inch) ric rac for the yellow lines.  I think it adds something.  You’ll notice each house has a garage (three of which have my nephew’s names embroidered on).  Each garage has a Micro Machine in it (thank you Ebay).  Also, the stop lights are plastic snaps that come off.  The soccer field is a pocket to put the snaps or cars in or whatever.  I’m particularly proud of the fire truck and ambulance, on which I embroidered the details.  I toyed with making them removable, but I was too proud of them to risk them getting torn apart.

Pages 6 & 7: The shapes pages is pretty straightforward.  The shapes snap on with standard, sew-on, metal snaps.  You can see a little Penny hand that was very excited about the heart.  The football player is another one I’m pretty proud of even if it does look a little off.  I decided to do a football to lace instead of the traditional shoe.  I got the idea from modestmaven’s quiet book.  I just modified it because my pages are so big, it didn’t make sense just to have a football.  So I decided to add a buckle of some kind and that led to a football player.  And yes, you may detect a Broncos theme.

Page 8/Inside back cover: The pockets hold puzzles I made out of craft foam.  Each of the pockets snaps onto the page with plastic snaps, so the puzzles can be easily distributed to different kids.  The little frame is meant to be a puzzle board for making the puzzles, but the puzzles can be done on any surface.  The puzzle board also removes.  I’m pretty proud of the Broncos puzzle, you’ll have to check it out in the album at the end, as this post is getting very lengthy.  The last page has slots for twistable crayons and a little pocket with a notebook in it.  I put a Cars notebook in it that I got in the dollar bins at Target.

The back cover is just plain with a pocket to keep miscellaneous items in or any pieces that fall out when you grab it as you’re leaving church. 

All in all, I’m very pleased with how it turned out, especially considering that I really bit off more than I could chew.  I have a lot of fun ideas for more pages, but I have other projects I want to do before I expand this one (most importantly, finishing our book).

And, here is an album with more pictures of the book in closer detail, including the puzzles:

Quiet Book VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I will do my best to post about Christmas and Penny’s birthday as soon as I can.  I hope to have some pictures up today, but it might be a while before I get the videos up.  We took a lot of video and it’s taking me a long time to sort through it and edit it.

Penny Walking Update

Hey all.  I just thought I’d do a quick update on Penny’s adventures in walking before things get too crazy with Christmas and Penny’s birthday (I can’t believe she’s going to be 1). 

Here’s a video we took at the beginning of November when she was first taking steps.

Some of Penny’s first steps captured on video. It’s tough to do without a tripod or another adult to hold the camera while we encourage her. Sorry for the cutting off of the heads.

Penny hasn’t been too motivated to adapt walking as her primary means of getting around as she’s so fast at crawling, but yesterday she started walking across the room without any encouragement from me. It’s adorable and amazing.  Ben was pretty pumped and wanted to get in on the action.  This is one of my favorite videos we’ve ever taken.  See for yourself.

Pretty much the cutest video ever. And yes, I know it says Pwnny. That’s what happens when you upload videos with a baby on your lap.