Books to Movies

I am a huge book fan.  It all started with Green Eggs & Ham (who's with me on that?) and I haven't stopped since.  Books always took me far away from whatever was going on around me, whether that was homework (shhh), music drifting thru the house from the dance studio, and even my diabetes.  I am one of those "fully-immerse" readers and I love it.  The characters and scenes leap right from the page and go directly into my brain and for whatever amount of time I am reading, I am in that book's world.

One of my favorite series of all time is the Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin.  I had every single book in  this collection- this includes 132 regular books, 15 Super Specials, 26 Mystery books, 4 Super Mysteries, 3 Special Editions and 6 Portrait Collections.

I loved these books more than anything and could not get enough.  I asked for the books for my birthday and Christmas; I saved my allowance so that I could get new ones whenever we'd go to the bookstore.  I remember propping the book behind my cereal bowl in the morning so that I could read a few more pages before school.  My love for these books is real and it's deep.

You can imagine my excitement and pure joy when they announced that they were making a Baby-Sitters Club movie...a MOVIE!  Ohhhh my goodness, I could barely contain myself.  I started re-reading the books and counting down the days until I could finally put a face to the ones I had painted in my head for so long.

The day had come.  I was in the car headed to Hot Springs (the nearest town w/a movie theater) and I was bouncing in my seat, I was so excited.  The movie started and I held my breath.  About 20 minutes (okay maybe I breathed a little in between) into the movie, it came whooshing out of me in disappointment.  It was just all wrong...the baby-sitters didn't look right, the kids didn't look right, Kristy wasn't bossy enough, Stacey wasn't sophisticated enough and the list went on and on.  It was a huge letdown (well, for a 12 year old, at least) and I remember feeling cheated out of my imagination.

I think this caused me to be very wary of book series that are turned into a movie franchise.  Luckily for me, I didn't read Harry Potter or Twilight until AFTER the first movie had come out.  This meant that the character's images were already in my head when I read and the books and that I'm saving myself from the heartbreak of the movie creators' failure to recreate my brain in their films.

On that note, I am very excited for THIS to start:

The bottom line is, books will always be #1 in my heart...no matter what number their movies are in the box office.

Have a great day, y'all!  Now go read a great book!

Thirty Day Photo Challenge!- Day Eight: Flowers

Man, these last couple of weeks have been crazy!  I know y'all all know what I'm talking about- Christmas parties, gift shopping, gift wrapping, and the list goes on & on!

I always love the week before Christmas, not only for the hustle & bustle of everything, but because I also get to celebrate my wedding anniversary!  When Sebastian & I got engaged, I definitely had visions of poinsettias & Christmas colors dancing in my head!  We both love this time of year so much, that we loved the idea of being able to celebrate our anniversary during this special time (although I'm not sure if all of our family appreciated the traveling right before Christmas...but they did it, 'cuz they love us!).

I woke up to these beautiful flowers (hence the photo challenge post):

This year, we went out for dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Grand Lux Cafe (if you've never been, go NOW and order the beignets for dessert!).  We went to town- fried pickles, flautas and all of that stuff that's REAL good for you! :)  As you may have guessed, my favorite thing about Grand Lux is the dessert.  They fry up fresh beignets (New Orleans style) and bring you 3 different sauces to dip them in and they are UH-MAY-ZING.

Sorry for the darkness!

After dessert, he handed me a box to open.  I knew it was a jewelry box, but had no idea why I was getting it.  When I opened it, there was a ring I had seen back in Stuttgart (Arkansas) in August while I was visiting my family.  I drooled over it, but wasn't able to get it.  Well, after he heard me talk about it, he got in contact with my Aunt Gayla and cousin Darby and they pulled off a mission impossible!  I say this because...I am nosy.  There's really no other way to put it.  I always find stuff out and it's really hard to surprise me, but man!  They did it!  I was so shocked and touched.

After dinner, we went to catch a movie (he was going to endure "New Year's Eve" for me- now that's love!), but realized when we got there that the movie wasn't starting for another 2 hours!  And since we are old souls, we decided that would get us home too late.  :)

It was an amazing day and a great way to celebrate 6 wonderful years with my very best friend.

Christmas Traditions

Since this week has been one of pulling out Christmas decoration boxes, putting up Christmas trees, wrapping gifts, etc., I've been thinking a lot about my family's various Christmas traditions.  Since they are traditions, I don't usually analyze their meaning or why we do them, they just ARE a part of our holiday.  And I find it so interesting that no one really has any of the same traditions as I do.

A lot of my friends do things with their families that I have never heard of before.  My husband's family, for instance, do not do stockings.  In Chile, this was never a tradition.  They do; however, go to midnight mass and when they return home, Santa has already visited their house.  A lot of my friends have a big Christmas dinner, whereas my family always has a big breakfast and then that's it for the day.  I know people that have a tradition of doing all of their shopping on Black Friday, and then others that do it ALL on Christmas Eve.  The spectrum is so wide and I love that!

Sebastian and I have talked about the kinds of traditions we will incorporate into our own family someday.  Which ones we'll keep from our two families, and which new ones we'd like to add.  For example, we will still go to my mom's house to help her put up her tree while we exchange holiday pajamas and listen to the Kenny & Dolly Christmas album.  This will happen every year.  On the other hand, neither of our families ever had real Christmas trees; they were always the big artificial ones that you dug out of the attic and spent an hour straightening out the smushed branches.  :)  For the past two years, we've gotten a real tree, and we can't wait until we're on our way to a Christmas tree farm to choose a tree in the snow with our family.

There's something pretty magical about the whole "carrying on" of family traditions.  In a world full of growing up and growing out of things, these traditions have a certain pull that can bring us back to a really special place, even if only for a few weeks out of the year.

So here's to you and your family's traditions- whatever they are and wherever you may be.  Merry Christmas!