Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Here’s a double book review and giveaway!  These two books had the common theme of family and loss so I think they fit well together.  And I find the holidays to be a time that I always think about my family, and those who are no longer with us…is that just me?  I always get so introspective and a little depressed…

Celia’s Journey
by Heather Muzik

Celia’s Journey is the story of a family who loses a child in a tragic accident and how their lives continue from that point on.  I’m not going to lie, I cried more reading this book than I had from a book in a really long time (I’m thinking the last Harry Potter book…).

The Strane family (Lindsay, Jerry, Adam, and Max) have a wonderful and easy life until a tragic accident takes one of the boys.  Everything changes as the family members struggle with their grief and pain, and try to continue with life and put the pieces back together.  The book is a difficult read because of the subject matter, but it’s a really good read.  I highly recommend it.

Out and Back
by Diane Strong

Out and Back is the story of another family, but this from the point of the view of a daughter who loses her mom to cancer and how she copes with her life afterwards.  Amber is a mom and a runner (a synopsis I found online referred to her as a “obsessive running/fitness junkie”—I prefer “runner”) who has, as most of us do, a challenging relationship with her mother and struggles to create a “perfect” life for herself and her family.  (I definitely related to Amber in this book.)  The book jumps back and forth from earlier in her life to the present day to tell the story of her life and how she copes with her loss and other family problems.

Like I said, I enjoyed both these books.  Celia’s Journey is a harder read, but REALLY good.  Out and Back was more relatable for me since I’m a runner (and perfectionist too…or at least a failed perfectionist.)  I recommend them both.

More stuff: Heather Muzik wanted me to tell you about a promotion for some of her other books that starts tomorrow (Christmas Eve!)—these books will be free on kindle on December 24, 25, and 26 as part of a promotion. She said the “2 Till” books are light and fun, and the other book is dark and twisted.  I know I’ll be taking advantage of the promotion!

You can find some other books by Diane Strong here.

All her books have a running theme.  Diane is a runner, triathlete, and also participates in adventure races.  Crazy, right?

Another of her books:

Giveaway time!  GIVEAWAY CLOSED:  WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL! Okay, for the first book, “Celia’s Journey,” I am giving away a kindle or e-reader copy of the book OR a real paperback copy (mailed to US residents only).  For the second book, “Out and Back” I am giving away three kindle copies of the book.

Leave a comment below to win and let me know if you have a kindle or e-reader (you can read on your computer too and a variety of other ways).

I’ll choose the first winner randomly, and then choose three more winners who are up for the kindle copies (somewhat randomly, but funny, touching, or properly spelled comments would have a higher chance of winning!)  Winners will be notified by email.  This giveaway runs until 10 pm CST Sunday, December 30.

As thrilled as I am to be on vacation from teaching for over two weeks, that doesn’t mean I don’t love my students.  I do. 

Last night I said something like “Thank goodness I don’t have to see any children for over two weeks!”  My friend Laura looked a little insulted and said she would do her best to keep Benjamin out of my way on Christmas.  Mothers get so sensitive about these things.  I may teach him to play the violin on Christmas Day, just to spite her (he’s 8 months old, so it would be a stretch, but he’s a smartie, and I’m a really good teacher so it could work.)

This was a gift from my student who wore the horse head mask to his lesson one day.

And this from his mother!  The whole family is amazing and really gets me.

Then my friend Sarah sent me this picture.  Even better, she let me know that she followed the truck around the Tempe Marketplace for at least five minutes, waited for it to park, and then got out of her car to take that picture for me. 

Oh, and a note to recently married people:  keep your wedding registry up to date.  I found out my Mom sent us something from it and I hadn’t updated our address…since I didn’t think we’d be getting anything else.  Oops!  Thanks anyway, Mom!

Does anyone else have this problem?  It’s a wonderful problem to have, but still a problem.  You feel like you’re too busy with work and other stuff (you know, working out, taking pictures of your cat) to meet up with your friends, and when you do, you have a great time, and you say, gosh, we should do this more often! and then weeks go by again.

(FYI: I’m going to intersperse random photos I’ve saved to share with you into my blog post today.  I’m feeling super random, so you’ll have to spare me and you know, get over it.)

I’ve been overwhelmed this week.  It’s the last week of teaching before “vacation” (which officially isn’t until about the 29th for me as next week is chock-full of gigs) and that’s fine, but then I have been packing all kinds of extra stuff in and I don’t even know where the week went!

Let’s see, I’ve been teaching, practicing, figuring out last minute Christmas presents, trying to hang out with friends who are going out of town, figuring out our anniversary trip (Chicago! Need more restaurants suggestions and don’t say “The Girl and the Goat” because it is booked up), working out, acting as virtual virtual coach for Rose, baking, eating, and reading a bunch.  Basically nothing really important and just procrastinating a lot–I’m only “busy” in that normally I don’t do anything 3 pm and this week has been different 😉

(You can read Rose’s blog post on my virtual virtual coaching of her.  Nutshell:  she owes me $1.99.  Longer story:  we’re failing pretty hard at her training plan and we keep rationalizing it.  I blame her for accepting running advice from me.)

Oh, and this morning I played assistant to Sarah Crowder for a video shoot.  It was great fun and I will share the video with you when it comes out!

Oh wait, that picture is related…shoot.

I just found this on facebook.  I’m very delighted by it.

This is either me really excited about the Hobbit, OR somebody just tried to take the one ring from me and my eyes bugged out and I went crazy.  No seriously, I’ve been chugging coffee all day in order to be awake and alert for the midnight showing of the Hobbit tonight.  Yeah.  I’m old…midnight is really late these days.

We have Red Bull in the fridge.

I do believe the last midnight movie I went to was Return of the King.  So it’s been awhile.  That was a great show…but I recall being SO tired by the end.  Then again, didn’t the movie last approximately five hours and fade to black countless times?  I presume tonight’s show will be less cheesy and shorter? (There’s probably a way to find out how long, but I’d rather be surprised.) (I’m pretty sure we went to the show after an Akron Symphony rehearsal.  Anybody able to back me up on that? I don’t have my calendar from 2003 handy…

Last night we met up with our Canadian friends Vanessa and Russell at Sasha’s on Demun.  Russell is a great jazz trumpeter and he sat in with the band there a bit.  I may be biased AND know nothing about jazz trumpet, but he sounded great.  Chris knows much more about jazz and he also thought Russell was awesome, so there’s that.

Chris and Russell.  One of the greatest pictures ever!

I look like I have lazy eye here.  Vanessa got a great haircut!

We tried to make our own flower photo, but failed in a variety of ways.  I blamed the photographer, but he didn’t think that was fair…it may be more than I had too much wine before the photo taking sessions happened? 😉

One of my students brought me this yesterday.  She said it was a gift, but she also said I needed to hang it on the cabinet in my room.

I found this at Target today.  Chris was thrilled when I showed him.  It’s a Bobble head “Holiday Darth Vader”. I misspelled Vader on instagram today and I think he is considering leaving me.  Or making me watch all the Star Wars movies again.  I’m not sure. He was definitely embarrassed to be married to me.

Look, I’m foam rolling.  And yeah.  Grey.  Also my thigh looks weird and gigantic.  Hmm.  But there’s the proof (#proof?) that I’m continuing to foam roll, so I’m leaving it up there.  It’s hard to take a self foam rolling portrait.

Okay, other blog happenings, if you are behind:

Two book giveaways (seriously, enter if you like to read, I don’t sell your email or anything, and there’s no obligation):

The Painted Bridge

Hot Chocolate

And, if you haven’t checked out my sister Carrie’s kickstarter campaign to help fund her quartet’s trip to Norway to study and increase their exposure, please do!  I wrote a blog post about it, or you can click here to go directly to it.  She’s pretty awesome.  (In fact, she is the best thing that ever happened to us!)

Anyway else going to see the Hobbit tonight?  I’d bold this question, but I saw Rose do that earlier today and I figured I’d be different than the rest of the internet.  You’re smart enough to figure it out right? ANSWER IN THE COMMENTS PLEASE! OR COMMENT ON MY PICTURES.

(It’s a fine line between mocking other bloggers and being exactly like them.  I try to walk that line, but I know I err on the side of generic narcissist rather than being unique.)

If you don’t like book reviews, I apologize.  Like I said previously, I absolutely LOVE reading and my new blog project is to do a bunch of book reviews and giveaways.  Check back soon if you are BORED—I’ll be posting about something different, like food, running, my cat, or you know, my favorite subject, ME!

Quick plug: please look at my previous blog entry about my sister Carrie’s kickstarter project!

Attention book lovers: Today’s is a particular favorite of mine.  Once I started this book I couldn’t put it down!  I may have mentioned I’m a fast reader?  I think I finished this one in about 3 or 4 hours.  It’s a page turner…or whatever it’s called when you hit that “forward” button on your kindle 😉

“Hot Chocolate” by Dawn Greenfield Ireland

Hot Chocolate is the story of the wealthy Alcott family.  They live in Houston and have a chocolate empire.  The three middle-aged sisters are the main characters:  Lila Mae, Madge, and Dorothea.

As the book begins the sisters are deciding whether or not to move their 92 year old father Bernie into a home as he has become too much to handle.  They ultimately decide it is for the best but they are worried about how to deal with letting go of his full-time nurse Bambi (her actual name!).  As they expect, her husband Jimmy Ray ends up suing the family for wrongful termination even though Bambi was given a generous severance package.

Luckily and unsurprisingly, the Alcotts have a great lawyer and he is able to get the lawsuit dismissed, much to the chagrin of Jimmy Ray and his lawyer.

Then things take an even worse turn for Jimmy Ray and he ends up being murdered in his own bowling alley!  That’s where the mystery really begins–who killed Jimmy Ray?  Why? And you won’t believe what the murder weapon is!

I obviously don’t want to give anything more away.  The rest of the story is a fun read—there are great twists and turns, lots of great detail in the writing, wonderful character development, and of course, lots of chocolate and other recipes.

The author admits to being inspired by Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series (which I really enjoy) and her writing made me think of some of my favorite food mystery writers like Joanne Fluke and Dianne Mott Davidson.  If you like those authors, you’ll probably love this book as well.  The author assured me that all the recipes she included are tried, true, and dear to her!

The book, Hot Chocolate, is only $3.99 for Kindle, so even if you don’t win the giveaway, it’s VERY affordable.

Oh, and the sequel, “Bitter Chocolate” will be coming out in mid to late Springtime.  I personally can’t wait to read it.

One lucky reader can win a copy of the book, “Hot Chocolate” in digital OR paperback form (US and Canada only for paperback form), plus the author will autograph and mail a postcard to the winner.  US or Canada residents only for the paperback, but anyone can win the postcard and book in digital format!  Contest runs until 10 pm CST Tuesday, December 18. (contest is now closed, winner will be notified by email shortly!)

This is going to be one of those contests with multiple ways to enter—you can get up to five entries, and please leave a separate comment below for each one.  As usual, I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner, who will be notified by email (so make sure the email address you use is valid!)

1.  Leave a comment on this post: write something about chocolate!

2.  Follow the author, Dawn Ireland, on twitter.

3.  Follow the author on Facebook

4.  Like “Hannahviolin” on Facebook.

5.  Like the book “Hot Chocolate” on Amazon.com

I was not compensated for my review other than the free book.  All opinions are my own.