July Books

I've been reading a lot lately. So much I've been neglecting other stuffs I gotta do. But who ever really vacuums or cleans out their refrigerator anyway?

Here are the books I've read lately:

I could not stop laughing while I read this book. This guy is a Catholic comedian, so it's pretty clean. And absolutely hysterical. It's about him living with his 5 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment in New York. Greg and I would read together at night. Greg was finishing up Boys in the Boat and kept looking over at me because I couldn't stop giggling. 

This is a great book. It's about how our culture doesn't value cooking at home anymore, but there are a lot of benefits in doing that sort of stuff for yourself and now always being a "consumer." I like cooking, but this books still changed the way I thought about things. I do think American society today sort of has come to the conclusion that we should be paying other people to live our lives for us. We pay other people to decorate for us, cook for us, fix stuff in our houses, whatever. So while I didn't necessarily agree with all of Pollan's discussion points, I do like his overall theme that we shouldn't be afraid to live for ourselves. Really, that's a huge part of how I understand the gospel, too. 

This is the first time I've read any kind of Tolkien. I know, I know, I'm a book nerd and I should like Tolkien, blah blah blah. I have a lot of respect for Tolkien. I mean, the guy created a world, invented a language, and pioneered a genre. That's cool, you know? But...while I will finish the entire series at some point this year, I was not as impressed with The Lord of the Rings as I expected to be. Maybe I should have tried harder to keep track of all the bizarre names and stuff. (I didn't try that hard). I like Sam as a character and Strider, but that's kind of it. Frodo seems whiny to me. And what the heck is a balrog? Does anyone know? I guess it just wasn't as insightful as I wanted it to be. Epic-ly epic? Yes. Super insightful? Meh. 

I read this book as part of my family's book club. A sad book, but it ends with hope. I don't think Genova is an amazing writer necessarily, but she definitely is capable of taking something that seems distant and abstract--like early-onset Alzheimer's--and making you come to terms with the fact that this is a real, concrete problem for real people. That's a very valuable talent. 

I never know how to end these booky posts. So now I'm done. The end. Sayonara. Time to go make dinner. 

Her Dad Thinks She'll Play Sports

I know I shouldn't teach her to play ball in the house, but come on. Those laughs are worth anything.

June Books

So this post is more for my own personal benefit than anything else. I still want to keep track of the books I'm reading so I can go back and review them at the end of the year. Now my inner book-girl nerd is coming out for the world to see. I'm okay with it.

I thought this was an excellent book. I thought maybe I wouldn't like it as much because it is about the invention of the airplane, and as much as I think airplanes are cool and all, I get bored reading mechanically-type stuff. But this book was never boring. The Wright Brothers have always been kind of enigmatic to me. After reading this I have a lot of respect for them. I would definitely recommend this one.

So I read this book in a couple hours this past weekend. It's about what you would expect for a middle grade novel. I read Surviving the Applewhites as a kid and loved it, so when I heard there was another one, I always was kind of on the lookout to read it. I was a little disappointed. Again, not sure if the first one was way before or if my response just has to do with the fact that I'm 15 years older and I have a degree in English now. Deep down inside, I'm still very satisfied I read it though. I had to see how the Applewhites were getting on these days. 

Playing Catch Up

So, big things for the Zollinger family lately. But I obviously haven't been blogging about any of them. I have lots of good excuses though.

First of all, we moved from Philadelphia to Jacksonville, and one of the things that we lost in the move was my laptop charger cord. Not that it really mattered anyway, because right before we moved my laptop decided the internet was bad and it wasn't going to get on there anymore, nope. So I've just been floating around in an internetless abyss for the last few weeks. Oh, yeah, I've had the iPad and my phone, but I hate blogging on those.

Besides the things we're missing ("Uh, where's that one lighthouse picture, Greg?" "Not sure. Where's the dustbuster cord?" "No idea...") the move went good. So now we're back in Florida. We couldn't be happier about it. Greg is back in YM and I'm back in the primary presidency, and that's so fun for us. Sometimes it feels like we never left, except this time we get to introduce Brynn to all that Florida has to offer.

We bought Brynn a raincoat, because hello, it's Florida. So here she is flapping her wings: 

That's the other big thing for the Zollinger family. Brynn is 10 months old! Well, now almost closer to 11. She finally has 2 teeth! Her hair is long enough for darling little ponytails. Seriously, I can't even handle the cuteness. 

It's also pretty awesome when we take the ponytails out at the end of the day. It's like unicorn meets Gerber baby. 

I can't believe how big she's getting, and that her one year birthday is coming right up. Brynn is finally drinking well out of a cup, which means I've sort of starting weaning her. While I know it's not the right move for everybody, I can't express how grateful I am that I've been able to nurse her this long. I was scared before she was born that I wouldn't be able. Infertility has never made me dislike my body, and I mean that. But women with PCOS tend to struggle with supply issues. I wanted to have the breastfeeding experience with Brynn, and it's great I've been able to have that. Sometimes I want to be done, but usually I think that finishing with nursing will break my heart. We'll just have to see how it goes. 

Other milestones...she now dances every time music is playing by bouncing up and down. No walking yet, but she still manages to get into everything by being the fastest little crawler out there. She says "Meh," "Baa," and "Yeah!" and that's pretty much it. She says Yeah to everything though, so I'm not sure she means it. Me: Did you have a good nap? B: Yeah! Me: Do you want to eat lunch? B: Yeah! Me: Brynn, where are you going? B: Yeah! Me: Don't play in the toilet! Brynn: Yeah! 

You get the picture. 

Eating blackberries: 

We love our Sweetums McGee (no idea where that nickname came from) and we're so happy to have her in our home. And we're happy to be back in Florida. Happiness all around. 

Hey There, Lady Liberty

Last week we took the last of our little day trips here in the Northeast. We did the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island tour, and it was super fun.

People always say the Statue of Liberty is smaller than you think it's going to be. Maybe because I've heard that so many times, I was preparing to be a little underwhelmed. Honestly, when the boat got close enough, I thought Lady Liberty doesn't really get a fair shake. The statue isn't small, and she really is beautiful.

The Manhattan skyline from the island. The biggest building is the new One World Trade Center. That's the one thing on the East Coast that I didn't get to do that I'm a little sad about--the 9/11 Memorial Museum. 

Brynn was all tuckered out after the Statue of Liberty. She took a few naps on the go that day. 

We actually spent a lot more time doing Ellis Island than we did the Statue of Liberty. I read so many nerdy historical fiction books about immigrants when I was a kid. Dear America, anyone? Anyway, I LOVED coming here. This is the registry room, where immigrants had to wait before their medical and legal inspections. Can you see the herring bone marble tiles on the ceiling? So pretty. 

The skyline from Ellis Island. 

All in all, a great way to finish all the crazy trips we've done lately. Now, on to Florida. We move on Saturday. Time to go home. 

Man's Search for Meaning

This was my family's book club book for May, and I did finish it sometime last week, I just haven't had time to write about it. I have read books about the Holocaust before, but never one where the author then gave so much commentary about living in the concentration camp. Thinking about the event in the abstract actually made the Holocaust much more real for me, if that makes sense. I thought this was an incredible book.

One thing I kept thinking was how much of the concepts Frankl explained in discussing logotherapy and his camp experiences were gospel-centered precepts. At one point, Frankl discusses how the goal of psychiatry should not be to reach a "tensionless" state. Opposition has a purpose in refining us as individuals, and that doesn't have to make us sad. That's such a major part of my understanding of the gospel. Frankl's ideas reminded me God has designed us to thrive--or just be able to survive--in certain ways, and understanding these ways can come from so many different sources. The interesting thing is that unlike most books about the Holocaust, instead of convincing me of how much evil there is in the world, this book helped me to remember how much good there is. I think that's a testament to the amazing humility with which Frankl approaches his understanding of what happened to him.

Another concept I kept thinking about after finishing the book was Frankl's thought that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast should be mirrored by the Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. This was especially poignant to me because we actually just went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island this past weekend. A focus on responsibility would do so much good for our society, but a focus on the complementary nature of liberty and responsibility would do even more. I think living with the personal strength that these two things bestow is what encourages us to practice meaning-making in the powerful way that Frankl describes. To me, meaning-making that drives us to certain action is a good definition of courage. Courage comes from knowing you have not only the ability to act but also the responsibility to do so. Most people would say that those in concentration camps had neither of those things, but because Frankl sees meaning-making as man's highest purpose, he was able to understand, in kind of a reciprocal way, how he potentially also retained a shred of liberty and responsibility for his actions and his attitude, even in such a soul-crushing environment. I'm not sure I'm explaining this all very well, but I've always thought that courage is one of the most important values I could teach my children. It is courageous to be able to face your own suffering with the nobility that Frankl did. I think courage enables us to live with all of the other values that are important--faithfulness, kindness, anything.

Again, I'm not sure I've explained this all very well, but I'll just end by saying that I am very happy I read this book.

Zollinger Adventures: Maine Edition of the Boston Chronicles

Prepare for another picture overload. Just prepare. 

After we did all the fun stuff in Boston, we drove up to Maine so we could really say we got the full New England experience. We stayed for one night in a seaside town outside of Portland at the Old Orchard Beach Inn, a cute little place built in 1730. Yeah, for realses. I took pictures, but somehow those get deleted off my phone before they uploaded to my cloud drive. Dag nabbit! Anyway, this is what it looks like:

 

The Maine coast was beautiful, and I saw my first lighthouses! We took a TON of pictures of The Headlight. It is one of Maine's most iconic lighthouses, commissioned in 1790 by the one and only George Washington. So, without further ado, here's the picture overload, as promised. I have a hard time limiting pictures, okay?! 

When we get back to Florida, we're going to do some kind of wall with printed out photos we've taken of all the fun things we've done on the East Coast...and I'm sure we'll add some of the beaches in Florida, too. I'm really excited to have such fun pictures of photos I actually took! 

After the Headlight, we did the waterfront shops in Portland. If you ever happen to go there, by all means, make every effort to go to Gorgeous Gelato. It's a little shop started by a family that came here straight from Milan, and it is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth, no contest.