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I’ve been waiting to use that line ever since first seeing the movie Juno. The loverly Jen @ Our Daily Big Top has finally given me the chance to fulfill that goal – because she awarded me with the Honest Award yesterday! How great is she?

So here are the award’s rules:

• Write a post about the award, link back to the person who gave you the award.
• Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
• Add links to those blogs on your blog.
• Leave a message for the nominees on their blogs.
• Name 10 honest random things about yourself.

Okay so honestly…

1. I am terrified of the dentist – I know that normal healthy people make it a habit of seeing a dentist regularly, but they unnerve me and I’ve had such awful dental experiences, some of which I am still convinced were more the dentist’s fault than my own, that I now avoid going as long as possible. Yet I plan to somehow avoid passing that paranoia onto my own son, don’t ask me how…
2. I am not much of a housekeeper. I try to keep things modestly clean, but to be honest, I hate vacuuming, mopping, cleaning the bathroom – all the usual things – the only chores I seem to be good at doing regularly are doing the dishes, the laundry and general tidying up. Anything involving a deep scrub and I probably haven’t done it recently.
3. I actually make dh clean our bathroom, because he was raised by a germophobe and I know he’ll do it right the first time.
4. I don’t know how to whistle, roller skate, use a yo-yo, and several other things that most kids learn as, well, kids.
5. I’m a terrible swimmer – and will not go into water where my feet can’t touch the bottom.
6. I have probably kissed more boys than you. Sorry, but it’s true. I’d be really surprised if it wasn’t. I was absolutely boy-crazy growing up and infatuated with finding love, so I looked everywhere and considered pretty much every guy I knew my potential perfect mate – in retrospect, I kind of wish I’d dated less looking back now.
7. Speaking of being boy-crazy, I was a huge teenie bopper as a tween / teen – my favorite all-time band for YEARS longer than I care to admit was the Backstreet Boys and I was pretty obsessed.
8. I hate reading the news. That’s kind of bad because not too long ago I was the News Editor of my school paper and went on to become the Managing Editor and even Editor-in-Chief for awhile (I was a terrible EIC which surprised me, but I was more than happy to go back to Managing Editor after finding out). I can tell you it is really hard reading all those articles when they are slightly completely boring to you.
9. I spend way too much time online – sometimes I know I should be doing something else, like playing with my kid, but it can be really, really hard to tear yourself away some days. You guys are addicting!
10. I am just as terrified of this pregnancy as I am excited – I think maybe I’ve read too many bloggers’ experiences now and the fear of miscarriages or any other kind of complication are all too real. I was literally holding my breath waiting to hear the baby’s heart beat for the first time and I know I’ll be just as nervous at the ultrasound today.

Phew – that was actually kind of hard – I hope you guys all still like me after that! Well I know seven of you will HAVE to like me, because I’m passing this award onto:

• Kailani @ An Island Life: her post about playing hooky with her daughter was so sweet and so true. I think we can all relate!
• Jen @ Daily Mish Mash: wrote Trying To Find The Brightside as she attempted to find that elusive silver lining in the middle of a stomach bug (something I’m now all-too familiar with!)
• Jean @ Working Momma 247: was very real about her recent display of organizing skills in her post, Organizing Christmas Decor Chaos.
• Tena @ My Therapy: only just yesterday wrote another honest post about her college years and meeting her husband, entitled Hold Tight, this really isn’t all about me.
• Karen @ Write From Karen: Is always very honest about herself, her parenting style and well everything – this recent post called Walking The Son really showcases that I think.
• Auds @ Barking Mad: really made me laugh with her brutal honesty in her recent post, Death by “Sound of Music.”
• Jen @ Cheaper Than Therapy: wrote a post about New Years Resolutions that I could really relate to, called My 2009 List of Things I Probably Won’t Accomplish.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to blog about for this month’s Children’s Classics carnival @ 5 Minutes For Books. But as I finished reading The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe last night it occurred to me that it was both a children’s book and a classic – it was simply a slightly older read than the things I’m reading to my own son who is just two years old. Still it does qualify even if I haven’t been reading it with a child (just a child at heart). I do hope to read this to MM when he gets older and I hope he enjoys this story as much as I have.

First, to be honest, I didn’t love this book as much as I’d expected to – I read The Magician’s Nephew first and liked it more – but I think that is only because The Magician’s Nephew was a new read for me – The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe is a story I already knew well, and I’d seen the movie adaptations a couple times. I have a very hard time reading a book whose movie I’ve already seen, but I did read and enjoy this book. It is possible I liked the movie more though – but really, in a book this small, it was easier I think to give more details in the movie, something that rarely happens in a book-to-movie adaptation. The length of the movie and being able to see it all unfold in front of your eyes was magical and the recent movie especially was very well done. So while I did like the book, I think I handicapped my own enjoyment by seeing the movie first.

But I love C.S. Lewis’s writing style and the book is very well written and perfect for children. I think it will be a very fun book to read aloud to my own children someday and the story is truly a classic that anyone can enjoy. I recommend both the book and the movie.

For more reviews of children’s classics, head over to 5 Minutes For Books for a list of participants.

Grade: A +

I haven’t read many memoirs but every time I do, I typically think, “Memoirs are wonderful – I should read more of them.” But being non-fiction, somehow memoirs are harder for me to get through, even when I’m enjoying them – a good novel I can typically plow through in less than a week, given appropriate reading time. A good memoir will take me at least 2 weeks, probably more. I started reading Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews shortly after Christmas and finished it two days ago. Being sick with the stomach bug gave me more time for reading (when I wasn’t doing stomach bug things) but it still felt slow going even though it was good.

I’m often amazed reading a good memoir that all those remarkable things can actually have happened to one person. All the same elements of a great book are usually present – comedy, love, drama, tragedy – and it’s all miraculously true. Andrews delivers a powerful punch in her memoir, which tells not only the story of her childhood and first several years in theater, but also the stories of her parents, grandparents, great grandparents and aunts and uncles – not to mention back stories to several of her friends and acquaintances. Andrews reminds me a lot of my grandmother and my mother-in-law, in that she seems to have taken the time to truly know everybody she meets – a quality I greatly admire – and I think it really added something special to her story.

I loved learning so many things about Julie Andrews that I never expected, like about her time in World War II as a child, and her parent’s rocky marriage(s), about how early in her career she thought she’d never be good at acting at all and considered herself pretty unspectacular – a word I don’t think anybody would use to describe The Julie Andrews! She also includes a lot of factual tidbits about voice training, the theatre, history and even housework tips! This memoir really had it all and I thoroughly enjoyed and recommend it.

This was the first book I read this year for the In Their Shoes reading challenge. For more information on the challenge click here.