Kelley!

Sorry I didn’t post about it last night when I said I would. I all of a sudden got tired at around 8.30PM and just came offline totally forgetting to post about it. But anyway! Congratulations to Kelley! I hope she likes the book when she receives it. The next book contest will be next month so keep an eye out .

In other news, Meghan’s been running round the house like a crazy woman all morning. She woke up at about 7.30AM but I managed to get her to let me stay in bed for another fifteen minutes. Since we got downstairs, she’s not stopped running around (and falling over) and being hyper. She got hold of my hand and kept banging it on the cooker which she thought was hilarious. I didn’t see the fun in it really but it kept her happy for five minutes until I took my hand back to make a cup of tea. Looks like we’re going to have a fun day today!

She’s recently starting learning a lot when it comes to her language. She picks up words from songs by just singing it twice and you can stop at parts and she will ‘sing’ them. She copies things from the TV – like on Dora where they say “Say Backpack” she’ll repeat it and she tries her best at all the Spanish words too. She knows some words in the alphabet – I think she can say up to E but she knows where S and V are and we’re still only up to 10 in the counting. We’re getting there .

I’ve been thinking about the fact that we really need to get insurance for a lot of things. We still don’t have any contents insurance for the house (we don’t need buildings insurance as we rent) and the cat and the dog both really should be insured. I was then thinking about looking into cheap term life insurance but to be honest, I think I’m a bit young to be thinking about life insurance. Maybe Alex could look into it as he’s six years older than me (two years off being 30!) but I think I’ll be waiting a while before I start thinking about that.

I said last week that I would start doing contests soon and here we are! I will admit, I haven’t bought this book yet but I will do so in the next week or so while the contest is still active. You know, I don’t even own this book as I borrowed it from my library. I’ll have to buy one for myself too. I’m really excited about this actually. I love buying books for my friends for their birthdays – I actually bought this same book for my friend Suzi for her birthday – so giving a book away is just as fun.

The book is The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. I read it this year back in January and to begin with, I didn’t make much time to read it. About two weeks after starting it, I really started to read it – two or three chapters a day, and I fell in love with the story. The basic outline is that its based around an old lady called Grace who was a one time maid working at Riverton Manor back in the 1920′s. While she was there, she was the only witness to the death of a poet apart from sisters Hannah and Emmeline who never spoke again after the event. In 1999, Grace gets visited by a director who is making a film about the death of the poet at Riverton Manor. You will seriously love this book. You really care about each character and I cried lots at the end. If you’ve already read/got this book, enter anyway and give it to a family member or a friend!

Right, the rules. The contest opens at the posting of this blog entry and ends May 12th at 11AM GMT. You have until that time to post your blog entry on your website. All you need to do is copy the following below into a blog and then leave a comment on this entry with a link to that blog entry so I know where to look! Oh, if you don’t have a blog, just leave a comment here and let me know you want to be entered. The winner will be announced around 9PM on the 12th and once I have the winners address, the book will be posted to them that week. Make sure you add the links like I have, in the entry.

Katy is holding a contest at her personal blog – Faster the Chase – to win a book, The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. To have a chance at winning, all you have to do is head over to this entry at her website and copy the text at the bottom on to a blog at your website. Easy, right? This will be the first of many contests so make sure you check out her blog regularly. She will ship anywhere in the world so everyone is free to enter.

Good luck!