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I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby is a coming of age memoir by a woman who grew up in an isolated religious community and grew up to become a news anchor. The book begins with a bit of an explanation of why the author decided to take this trip down memory lane, and then leads into how her parents grow up, got married, had children, and eventually reaches the point where her parents decided to take their many children and leave the Hutterite colony in which they had lived, and also how Mary Ann herself reinvented herself to become “English’, and eventually became Mrs. Kirkby and established herself in the news business.

I’m really not a memoir reader. I dislike most non-history non-fiction. For some reason, I keep choosing memoirs from Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program, and I’m not sure why (perhaps because there isn’t much fiction in my preferred genres). However, I loved I Am Hutterite. It read like a novel, and had very little of the “but that was to change all too soon” in it.

While I’m pretty familiar with Amish and Mennonites (I grew up in and live in Amish Country in south-central Pennsylvania), I’d never even heard of Hutterites until a few weeks ago. I’d heard them all grouped together and was intrigued, but assumed that it was simply another sect like the Amish. Within days I noticed I Am Hutterite appear on Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze page and immediately grabbed it. I’m so glad I did. I read the whole thing through on my recent vacation to Walt Disney World (and those who know me know that I rarely have time for reading there), and have just passed it on to my mother for her vacation. I highly recommend it.

Links of interest:Thomas Nelson’s Product Page, Book Preview

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of I Am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby from Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program for the purpose of reviewing it.

My husband and I do not celebrate Valentine’s day. We’ve both disliked the holiday since before we met (in fact, a friend and I used to get together over Valentine’s day weekend and make hearts out of black construction paper and write “Happy February 14th” in white out on them). However, we both have a kind of guilty feeling on the day if we DON’T get each other SOMETHING even though we both agreed that it’s stupid.

I’ve heard the suggestion that Movado Watches make great Valentines gifts for those who think in riddles (Love that lasts a lifetime, love for all time, etc), which is actually pretty traditional. Just think of the Victorians and their fan language, or the language of flowers, and so on. Lovers have always sent secret messages to each other in these types of ways, and BlueDial.com makes it easy by including free 2nd day shipping to the continental US and free sizing with each watch sold.

To hubs, however, the ultimate in classiness is a Cassio watch, and I don’t wear watches. There’s one Seiko watch that I think I’d like, but I still can’t see me wearing it. I’m perfectly happy with my Christmas Mickey Mouse watch and my Nightmare Before Christmas watch. I rarely even wear bracelets, and I make those!

No, if I ever feel the need to wear a watch, I’ll probably just make one.

Most of my life, my family has rented. The house I grew up in was actually the only real house in a trailer park (when my parents were expecting me, the landlady moved out of the house and into a trailer, and rented the house itself to my parents). From there, we moved to a rented half house, from there to a rented whole house. Eventually, my parents bought a townhome, and a few years later, I moved out.

Now, my husband and I want to own our own home for different reasons. Me, I hate being stuck with “landlord beige”. Luckily, the townhouse we’re renting now only has the lame eggshell wall paint (flat, of course, so everything marks it), but the carpet is actually more of a tan. SOOOOO much better than landlord beige! I want to be able to paint walls, buy quality carpet, choose my own washing machine, clothes dryer, oven/stove, dishwasher, maybe even bathtub if finances would permit.  Hubs just wants privacy. No maintenance guys having keys to our apartment (though all the maintenance guys here are great and the kind of guys hubs would invite over for coffee if he were the kind of guy that did that sort of thing), a detached so we’re not listening to the neighbors having band practice and they can’t hear hubs crank up the volume on his video games, movies, and music.

We really want to buy, but because of finances, we can’t. Not yet anyway. The housing market hasn’t come down far enough, and the economy gave the bosses a good excuse to not increase our financial situation for a while. I hope that’ll change soon, but since we’re having so many problems with our rental (the building itself), we’re looking to move again and may not be able to buy before we snap. That means hunting for apartments again. Luckily there are some amazing apartments just up the road. They cost a bit more, but they sit on a golf course and have their own little village shopping center right in it! Pizza place, needlework supplies, a bank, post office, and gift shop. Not too shabby!