Full Disclosure by Dee Henderson

I LOVE Dee Henderson. It can't really be said any other way. I'm pretty sure I've read just about everything she's published and was very excited to see she had a new book after several years. Full Disclosure comes out on October 2 this year and I was stoked to get an advanced copy to review.

Ann Silver is the Midwest Homicide Investigator and travels all across the country helping law enforcement agencies solve murders. She has also made some powerful friends along the way. What originally seems to be a routine car accident in the town where she is acting as temporary sheriff turns out to be anything but and leads her to the office of Paul Falcon, the FBI's top murder cop.With Ann's help one of Paul's biggest cases is about to bust wide open. Even with his hands full working the female murder-for-hire case, Paul can't help but be interested in Ann and have a deep desire to get to know her better. But Ann has secrets. Big secrets. Can the two work everything out in both their professional and personal lives?

Full Disclosure is different from many of Dee Henderson's books in that it's not quite as action packed. Because of this it took me a bit to get into the story, but once I did I was hooked. I think if you go into it expecting that then you'll love it from the very first page. If you've read Dee's other books you'll recognize many of the characters from her series, The O'Malley's and Uncommon Heroes, but in a way that you don't expect. I wish I still had all my other books so I could re-read them but they're in a good home with a friend now. Paul and Ann were great characters, and you really couldn't help but root for them. The plot just kept twisting until the very end. It was a great read, and I can't help but hope for more books from Dee Henderson.

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A special thanks to Bethany House for my ARC copy. All the opinions posted are my very own.

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Kacie Woodmansee is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com

Give With Target! - Donate to Schools!

If you'd like to give to local schools here's your chance! Target is giving away $2.5 million in gift cards to K-12 schools and you can be a part of it. For every 25 votes a school gets, Target will give that school a $25 gift card up to $10,000. You can vote once a week until September 8, 2012 (or until the $2.5 million total is reached). You do have to be on Facebook and allow Target access (like pretty much anything else on Facebook), but if you're okay with that then click here to get started or click on the banner above to vote for the school I'll be teaching at. Every school may not be on the list, but it doesn't hurt to look and vote. Have a good one!

Fairy Tales

Hello all! I hope everyone is doing well and you aren't as hot as we are here! Hopefully it will cool off here in the next few days, especially since our air conditioning isn't working too well. Other than that, things have been going quite well.

Well folks, I have a job! I'll be teaching math at Southern High School here in Louisville. I don't know exactly what course I'll be teaching yet, but I'm super excited. There's so much to do in the next month and a half, including finishing up the class I'm in. I'll keep everyone updated on all that, and as always, I covet your prayers.

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July. We got to spend some time with the lovely Penick clan. Hero, however, hasn't been enjoying the festivities. Hero is slightly afraid of the fireworks...and thunder...and pretty much everything, but mostly fireworks. He's been acting even more strange this year. He's been hiding under the covers, and under the bed, and recently he's tried to hide in the closet. Here's a picture of His Weirdness. Our dog is quite odd, if you haven't noticed.

In other news, I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately and some of the books I've been reading are from the Once Upon a Time book series. If you know me, you know I LOVE fairy tale stories. These are for young adults and are very short and simple to read. So far I've read Violet Eyes by Debbie Viguie which is the princess and the pea story, and The Diamond Secret by Suzanne Weyn which is the Anastasia story. Both are fun reads and I look forward to reading some of the other stories. My favorite fairy tale book ever is Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, and I also enjoyed the Healer's Apprentice and the Merchant's Daughter by Melanie Dickerson. Do any of you have favorite fairy tale books? I'd love to try them out while I still have time!

Every Good and Perfect Gift

So, Lee and I decided to study the book of James this summer. Now, Lee and I do bible study completely different. This can cause friction some times, but most of the time it's awesome because we each have a different perspective. As soon as we decided to do James I knew I wanted to do Beth Moore's James study, and thanks to my super fantastic BFF, I was able to get the book and even the videos. I love Beth Moore studies, and two weeks in, this one promises to live up to my high expectations. For this study she has it broken down into levels of participation. I'm doing Level 4 which means I watch the videos, do the homework, handwrite the entire book of James, and read the amazing extra articles (Level 5 is memorizing the entire book of James, which I decided not to do...yet). So far Lee is doing Level 1 with me, which is just watching the videos. His reactions to the girliness of it all is priceless, but he seems to be getting something out of it. He's also doing his own study of James.

I wanted to share one of the exercises that I did today. Today's passage was James 1:16-18. I do my study in the ESV so here's vs 17 in that translation: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." Most of us have heard this verse before and tend to blow past it. Just before this James talks about temptation and how God doesn't tempt us, but our own desires do, which leads to sin and death. All bad stuff right. Verse 16 is a turning point and says, "Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers." Bad things happen as a result of sin in the world and we tend to focus on those things. Sometimes we even tend to cast blame on God and get so bogged down in the awful things that we are deceived. There is good in our lives and all of it comes directly from the Lord. We should remember those blessings and the one who blessed us, which is what this exercise is about.

Take your present age and divide by 4: 26/4 = 6.5 (yeah, I'm a math person)

Divide your life into quarters and list blessings from each time.

Newborn to 6.5 years:

I was born into a wonderful loving family.

 6.5 to 13 years:

My family moved to Arkansas so I was able to see extended family more often. I became a Christian.

13 to 19.5 years:

I graduated from high school and attended the UofA on full scholarship. I made amazing friends at school and began to develop a true relationship with Christ. I met this guy named Lee.

19.5 to 23 years:

I started dating and eventually married that guy named Lee. I graduated from college (twice), and I now have the opportunity to go BACK to school and be a teacher.

These are just a few of the many blessings God has given me. I just think it's so neat to see how God has been giving me gifts throughout my entire life. He is constant and He doesn't change. Yes, there have been some hard times too. But those trials have made me into who I am and have created a steadfastness in me like it talks about in James 1:2-4. How about you? How has the Father of light blessed you throughout your life?

Transitions

Sorry it's been forever a month since I last updated. I lot has gone on as you can probably guess. I figured I'd update you a bit, but let me apologize in advance for my lack of pictures and the fact that this post is just a huge block of text. The Kentucky air has done nothing to improve my photography skills.

Lee and I got an apartment and we quickly moved in on June 1. It was an adventure to say the least. A big shout out to our friends who helped us pack and unpack (especially you Joy)! It was enough so that we'd contemplate moving again in, oh, maybe, 10 years. Maybe. Anyway, we got moved in okay and our apartment is set up like we want it now. It's amazing to me, though, that you can move all your stuff that filled one apartment to another and still find several things you need. I guess that's just how it works. 

I started classes on June 4. I have 3 hours of Summer Institute and 3 hours of UofL classes 4 days a week. I've done a lot of reading, some practice teaching and even got to work with some real live kids. I spend half my time being super pumped about starting teaching in August and half my time afraid out of my mind of everything this will entail. I keep coming back to the fact that I know this is the path God has for me so He'll get me through it, one way or the other! I have had a few interviews, but there has been a bit of a backlog on hiring here so I'll update as soon as I get officially hired. 

Lee has a job, and he'll actually be working quite a bit this summer. He was pretty bored for the first few weeks, but it also allowed us to get a lot done to move our residency over to Kentucky. He also signed up for his seminary classes and I think he's getting pretty excited about those. 

We've also been looking for new churches which is interesting for us since we've never looked for a church as a married couple. We've been a few places and are discussing what we're looking for. We're praying for a church that has sound teaching and is a place for us to serve and be served. You can imagine with a great seminary in town that there are a plethora of wonderful churches. I'm confident God has one in mind for us. 

For my book loving friends, I have been doing quite a bit of reading (besides my teaching textbooks) and I went and got my library card pretty quickly after we moved. Living in a city that's big enough to have more than one branch of the public library is bizarre to me, but I've mostly been reading the free ebooks anyway. For those who don't know, if you have a library card, see if you can check out ebooks from your library. I'm a huge fan of this to say the least. 

Now, I need a few things from my teacher friends. First, any helpful advice since I'm a month and a half away from my first teaching experience? Also, and this is especially for the high school teachers, what kind of rewards and consequences do you find effective in your classroom? There is so much more that goes into teaching than I ever realized so I'm doubly appreciative of every teacher I know. I'll be teaching in an urban setting which is completely different from anything I know, but any advice would be appreciated. 

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this transition Lee and I are in and keep those prayers coming!

Review of The Messenger by Siri Mitchell

Hannah Sutherland is a Quaker, loyal to her faith and family. When Hannah’s twin brother joins the Colonial army and is captured and imprisoned, she’ll have to make a choice between these two loyalties since the Quakers oppose war and have decided to not help the rebels. Jeremiah Jones is a Colonial spy, and is loyal to struggling, war-torn America. When he is asked to do the impossible, he’ll have to decide just how far that loyalty will go and how much more he’s willing to sacrifice. And he’ll need Hannah’s help. Hannah and Jeremiah have too many differences, but they’ll need each other in order for a daring escape plan to succeed. In the process they’ll discover they need each other for a lot more too.

I’ll be honest, I had a hard time getting into this book. It had a bit of a slow start and I didn’t particularly care much for Hannah or her family. Their religious legalism didn’t cause me to have much sympathy for them and they seemed very hypocritical. Jeremiah is very brooding, but even in that he was more likable than Hannah. About halfway through, though, Hannah began to redeem herself, mainly because of Jeremiah.  The last half of the book was more action-packed and suspenseful, although the ending seemed a bit abrupt.

I didn’t know much about Quakers before this book, and I’m sure I still don’t know all that much. I agree with many things they believed, but completely disagree with a lot as well. We can draw many parallels to Christianity today though. It’s all about activism and taking a stand politically and Jesus is lost completely. Social issues are important, but they’re not what Christianity is about. Yes, it’s important to help orphans, to stop human trafficking, and to give equality to women, but if you lose sight of Christ what’s the point. I think that’s what Hannah figured out at the end, and that’s why she became a better character. It’s a good reminder to us all really.

I thought this book was okay, but it wasn’t one of my favorites. I’ll give Siri Mitchell another shot though if anyone has any suggestions.

Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for providing me with a copy of this book to review. All opinions, however, are my own. If you'd like to receive books from Bethany House Publishers to review please go here.

Road Trip

So, Lee and I went on a little road trip last week. We drove all day Tuesday (it's a 9 hour drive from Fay-town to Louisville). We spent most of the day Wednesday looking at apartments. Lee and I have been incredibly spoiled by the apartment we've been in for the last 3 years. It's a great size, great rate, and good location. Finding an apartment with all this in Louisville is difficult to say the least. But, we found some we liked and applied to one and are hoping to hear back this week. 

On Thursday we met with our good friend Joy over some Chicago style pizza. The food was good, but the company was better. I'm looking forward to seeing more of her. That afternoon we drove to a nearby county to visit with the Assistant Superintendent of that school district and tour the high school. I'm embarrassed to admit how long it's been since I've been in a high school. It was a good experience. I'll have to keep everyone posted on the job front because I still don't know where/what I'll be teaching.

We also drove all day Friday down to Charleston, SC. A friend of ours from college was getting married and we figured since we were close closer (as in 9 hour drive instead of 16) we would pop on over. Saturday we did a little driving in downtown Charleston and got to see the harbor and Battery Park. Of course Lee was giving me history lessons the whole time. Then we went to the wedding and hung out with friends and family afterwards. I know Lee was glad to see some of those guys again. 

Lee and I at the waterfront in Charleston

Sunday was a LONG 16+ hour drive home, and Lee actually let me drive some. He had stayed up too late having a slumber party with his friends. Hehe. This is my last week working in the lab. Then one more week and I'm in Louisville. It's going to be a crazy few weeks and an even crazier summer for sure. But we're excited for the adventure!