When our kids were in school, May was one of our busiest months. We had end-of-school-year recitals, plays, programs, and parties.

Now May is a relatively quiet month. I love that it’s still technically spring. It’s warmer than April but not as hot as June.

I told a friend recently that it seems the older you get, the more doctors’ visits you have, even when you’re healthy. I think May was the first month this year that I have not had any kind of medical appointment. Yay! I have three in June. But that’s life.

This month we enjoyed Mother’s Day, a lunch with morning and afternoon sessions for women at church one Saturday, getting a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis, and getting spring plants in as well as regular family gatherings.

Making

The first card I made this month was for Mittu for Mother’s Day:

The daisies are multi-layered stickers. I had a little different design idea in mind when I started, but it eventually involved into this. It happens that way sometimes. I was pleased with it. I tried to use a decorative punch on the corners of the “Happy Birthday” part, but it messed up—so I just lopped the corners off. 🙂

This was for Timothy’s end-of-fourth-grade celebration:

The “4th Grade” letters are puffy stickers.

Watching

We enjoyed quite a few good films this month.

The Match was based on true events about a Nazi prison camp that arranged a soccer match between the prisoners and German athletes to celebrate Hitler’s birthday.

Hugo was about a boy living in a Paris train station in 1931. His father had worked in a museum and liked to tinker with inventions. He brought home a mechanical man found at the museum and tried to get it to work, When his father died, Hugo was given to the care of an uncle who kept the clocks at the train station. When the uncle died, Hugo continued to wind the clocks but remained hidden from the station inspector, stealing food from vendors. He becomes friends with a girl named Isabelle whose grandfather runs a toy shop in the train station. The older man turns out to be Georges Melies, a pioneering filmmaker (if you’ve seen the iconic image of a moon face with a rocket stuck in its eye, that’s his work). The film starts slowly at first, but eventually becomes quite interesting. Isabelle refers to a lot of literary classics, which was fun as well. The station inspector has some lines of double entendre, but otherwise the movie is clean.

The von Trapp Family: A Life of Music tells the story of the family from The Sound of Music, but from the viewpoint of Agathe, the oldest daughter. Matthew MacFadyen plays the father, who is a little less intimidating but also a little clueless in this version. Several points in this film are quite different from The Sound of Music, leaving me wondering which was closer to the truth. I have a book about the von Trapps in my Kindle collection, and this film is motivating to read that sooner rather than later. But as a movie and story, I enjoyed the film.

One Life is about the real-life Sir Nicholas Winton, played by Anthony Hopkins. The younger “Nicky” was a broker who had gone to Czechoslovakia in 1938 and saw families who had escaped from the Nazis in Germany and Austria but were living in desperate conditions. Worse, Czechoslovakia was under imminent threat of invasion. Nicky worked with a small crew to try to get as many children out to freedom as he could before the borders closed. The point of view goes back and forth between the older and younger Nicki. The older Nicki has a scrapbook he kept with all the details about the children he saved. He thinks it should be given to some historical site for preservation, but it ends up in the hands of a BBC television show. As I watched this scene, I realized I had seen a real-life clip of it in a video somewhere. This was quite a moving story. It makes you ponder the influence of one man. Nicky didn’t act alone, but if this telling is correct, nothing would have happened without his initiative and convincing others that it was possible. Yet he felt guilty for not doing more.

Lastly, one night Jim surprised me by suggesting we watch the 2007 film version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This is my favorite of Austen’s novels. I like the 1995 film version with Ciarán Hinds and Amanda Root much better, but it was still fun to revisit the story (except for the worst movie kiss ever in the 2007 version).

Reading:

Since last time I finished (titles link to my reviews).:

• Be Satisfied (Ecclesiastes): Looking for the Answer to the Meaning of Life by Warren W. Wiersbe, nonfiction. Very good.
• The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done by Kendra Adachi, nonfiction. We tend to go all out to solve problems (the genius way) or decide they are not worth the bother (the lazy way). Kendra suggests combining approaches to know what needs effort and what doesn’t–which may differ from person to person.
• Now and Then and Always by Melissa Tagg, fiction, audiobook. Mara is running from several hard life circumstances when she ends up at a Bed and Breakfast owned by a woman named Lenora, who takes her in like a daughter. Lenora goes on a trip leaving Mara in charge, but ends up being gone for months with no way to contact her. Meanwhile, Detective Marshall Hawkins ends up at the B&B when placed on administrative leave from his job. He helps Mara with renovations while trying to overcome the crippling grief of losing his daughter. Good.
• All My Secrets by Lynn Austin, fiction, audiobook. When an elite 1920’s family’s patriarch dies, his mother, wife, and daughter discover that the family’s wealth will go to a near male relative. The mother thinks the daughter should find a wealthy suitor before news of their financial ruin gets out. The grandmother thinks they should embrace a simpler lifestyle. Both try to influence the daughter. Very good.
• Yours Is the Night by Amanda Dykes, fiction. A solider, fake chaplain, and reporter are all tasked with taking a French woman to safety during WWII, and the journey changes them all. Very good.
• For a Lifetime by Gabrielle Meyer, Fiction, audiobook, third in her Timeless series about time crossers–people who live in two different timelines and have to chose one when they come of age. These time crossers are twins in 1692 as the Salem Witch trials begin, and one is a reporter and one an aviatrix in 1912. Very good.

I’m currently reading:

• Be Complete (Colossians): Become the Whole Person God Intends You to Be by Warren Wiersbe
• Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis by Douglas H. Gresham
• Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own by A. J. Harper
• Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri
• The British Booksellers by Kristy Cambron, audiobook

Blogging

Besides the weekly Friday Fave Fives, Saturday Laudable Linkage, and book reviews, I’ve posted these since last time:

• A Servant’s Heart.
• God’s Love Compared to a Mother’s.
• Supposing.
• Song of Solomon.
• Old Age Syndromes to Avoid.

I look through my spam comments occasionally, because, for inexplicable reasons, sometimes legitimate comments get in there. However, lately I’ve had hundreds of spam comments each time I look, most of them from the same IP address. WordPress doesn’t seem to have a way to ban that user. So I’ve temporarily closed comments on any posts older than a month. I hate to do that, because sometimes I do get comments on older posts. But spammers seem to target older posts. I haven’t had any spam comments since, so this tactic seems to be working. I may turn all the comments back on in a few weeks.

Writing

I had a couple of good sessions with my work-in-progress. It seems like the more I do with it, the more I see needs to be done. But step by step, hopefully it will eventually get done.

As we get ready to turn the calendar page, June will be a bit busier than May, but not too bad.

Has was your May? Are you looking forward to anything in June?