Last few books. . .

I have been really bad about posting lately, as I am sure if you look at my blog have noticed. Here is a quick update.  Michael and I are back to school and both working.  Michael is still working at the preschool, which he loves and I am still at Costco.
Since reading Shadow of the Hegemon I have read Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind all by Orson Scott Card. Also if you saw my last post I just finished Divergent. I recommend reading the Ender and Bean series but be aware it takes a lot of time.  There are even some short stories that are apart of this series that I haven't read yet, but I need a break for now.

Divergent

I final finish the Ender's Game series, which I loved, but was a long read.  I wanted something that was quick and consuming for my next read and I found it.  Divergent only took me a few days to read and it only took me that long because I have a life that needs a lot of my attention. 
I really enjoyed this book. It is a lot like the Hunger Games, in the future, part of a three book series (the last one isn't out yet), and a strong girl as the main character. Plus there is a love interest. There are plans on it being a movie series after they finish the Hunger Games movies, so if you want to be a head of the craze go read it now. The second book is waiting for me as I speak, so I got to go. :)

Pictures of the animals

It has been awhile for some cute animal pictures so here are some.

Shadow of the Hegemon

I finished this book awhile ago, but haven't had the time to blog about it. It is in the same series as the last few that I have read. This one was not my favorite in the series, but I still enjoyed it. I love this series. Michael has started to read more and is also reading this series. It is so great to be able to talk to him about them. Because of this though I am not going to go into any detail of this book because Michael hasn't read it yet. I recommend this series to anyone who loves a good SciFi story.

Animal pictures

It has been a while since I posted pictures of our adorable animals, so here is some of the more recent shots. Enjoy!

Boston

Michael and I have started a tradition of spending New Years in a place we have never been before. Last year we were in San Francisco and this year we went to Boston. Michael has always wanted to see the Mighty Mighty Bosstones in concert and every year at the end of December they have a three day music festival called the Hometown Throwdown. So this year we decided to go. Here is some of the pictures we took there!

This is the first plane we took from Prescott to LA. We left the day after Christmas, so we spend Christmas in Prescott with our family and left from there. Luckily, my parents watch all four of our little ones while we were away.

On the plane is were we did most of our reading!

There was no snow there which I was bummed about, but it was cold and windy.

We walked almost everywhere we went.

Found Chinatown!

The concert was at The House of Blues right across the street from Fenway Park.

Michael's birthday lined up with our trip too! This is him on his 29th birthday!!!

This is where we spend New Year's Eve. It was an amazing night and we meet some really cool people.

We had a great time in Boston!

Ender's Shadow

I am a little behind on my blogging, so let me catch you up. I finished reading Ender's Shadow, technically I finished it on January 1st, but since most of it was read in 2011 I am counting it. That makes a grand total of 16 books read in 2011! This was not the goal of beating last years total of 18, but I am still happy with that number. This year I will try to beat 16 and with full time school and work I think that is a pretty good goal.

So for the book, I had a hard time deciding what book to read next in the Ender's world of books. For those of you who are not familiar with the series, there are actually two series in this same fantasy world and it can be read in many different orders depending on who you talk to. One follows Ender and one that follows Bean. This book is the first one that follows Bean and takes place during the same time as the last book I read Ender's Game, which follows Ender. I think I made the right choice in reading this one next, but I will update you on that after I read all of them.

I actually liked this book more than Ender's Game. This book gave Ender's Game more depth and gave me more understanding. I love these books and highly recommend them!