The Baker's Secret by Stephen P. Kiernan ~ Book Review

When Emma was thirteen, she was apprenticed to the village baker because she had some baking skills. Working alongside him still at the age of 22, she has learned and became skilled herself.  But when Germany soldiers come and force her beloved mentor to wear the yellow star, life as she knew it changes.  Powerless to help her friend she can only watch as one day they take him away.  Now as the German's hear rumors of ally invasion, her small of town of Normandy is being overtaken with more and more troops.  Emma is forced to bake a dozen baguettes for the occupying troops. An exact ration of flour is given her to perform her task.  As Emma watches her neighbors suffer from starvation while she makes baguettes for the enemy, she fights back by slowly introducing ground straw into the flour so she can bake two extra loaves and share them with the villagers.  Slowly she builds a network of trading that keeps them alive.  While Emma feeds their bodies she struggles to keep hope that the whispered invasion of Allies will really happen.

Enjoyed this WWII story from the perspective of a young girl who reaches deep within herself to find the courage to help her neighbors right under the noses of the occupying troops. Through the perspective of her and the villagers the author takes you into the town of Normandy as anticipation of being rescued spreads.  The characters are wonderful and you are drawn into their stories of survival.  The author did a wonderful job in capturing the people of Normandy's everyday survival, courage and helping each other under the watchful eyes of the Nazi troops.  While I've read lots of stories of WWII with lots of upfront heroes such as spies, soldiers, and/or resistance groups this was the first I read of the heroism of those helping their neighbor to survive by taking on acts of quiet courage whilst living in fear on a daily basis. The main character is a flawed hero within her own story and it lends a credibility and realness to the compelling story.  

I gave it a 8.5/10

Friday's Fave Five *885

Happy Friday everyone!  Welcome to Friday's Fave Five. I don't know about you but I'm ready to look for some favorite blessings, and it won't be the weather on this list!  We had another snow storm blow through yesterday!  It plunged our temps down to -7*C (19*F).  Whoever is singing "Let it Snow" please just stop!  Spring needs to stick around already!  But ranting about the weather is not what we are here for.  We are here to look for blessings from the past week and be building a life of gratefulness.  So pressing on to the good!

~ tulips ~ Hubby blessed me with cut tulips last week when we ran into a certain warehouse store   that we all know for a few things.  He knows they are my favorite.  Alas, the sad little bunch is going back for an exchange.  They never opened up and just dried up in spite of me doing everything I knew to do.   This has never happened to me with tulips before.  Good thing they came from C*stc0 that takes returns pretty much no matter what.  I just want a bunch that will do what they are supposed to but the blessings is Hubby's thoughtfulness!

~ new spring  jacket ~ while at the aforementioned store, I snagged a great deal on a spring jacket that I was in need of.  I had been striking out at other stores that I usually shop at.  Nobody had exactly what I was looking for.  What a blessing to come across it quite by accident and on sale for a great deal.

~ new snack ~ Hubby found this great snack on a recent grocery shopping trip:  Nothing but organic coconut cut into thin strips.  They are so good and an easy healthy treat. Just like fresh coconut without the hassle.   Now if they would just make a chocolate dipped version!  

~ reconnecting with old friends ~  Friday afternoon we got a phone call from an old friend that they were in town for the weekend and wondered if we might have supper with them.  This couple were very close friends of ours.  He and Hubby grew up together, we went to the same church as young adults, we were Godparents to their oldest two girls, our girls were friends growing up too and he and Hubby had a side business together for awhile.  They moved away for his work and we haven't seen them in many, many years.  What a fun evening catching up with them.  It was like they never left.  Conversation and laughter just flowed.  So thankful they got in touch and we were able to spend time together.  

~ fresh haircut and color ~ my last haircut wasn't my favorite and I was very ready for my appointment this week.  I had her take it back a bit shorter in the back and it feels so much better.  I'm a long hair wannabe but can never handle it when it gets past a certain point.  Thankful I have a good stylist who gets me.  

What are your blessings from the past week?

• “The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.” 
• — Norman Vincent Peale

Friday's Fave Five #884

Welcome to Friday's Fave Five!  Thank you for spending time with this community each week looking for your blessings.  Writing my own list of five favorites and reading all yours, I have come to realize the myriad of forms that blessings from God come in.  Some are obvious and bold while others are subtle and quiet.  Some are huge and some small and simple.  Yet they are what lift us in this journey of our lives, that make us happy and feel loved and valued, make us feel present and get us through the harder times.  Gratefulness opens our eyes wider to things we might not have even considered before and the more we practice it the more we find.  If you have been lurking as a reader, I encourage you to try to your hand at developing the practice of intentionally pausing and looking for your blessings each week and joining in with us.  You don't have to be on a blogging platform, a simple notebook will do.  Just jump in.  And thank you to all of you who have doing doing this for any length of time with me.  You are a blessing in my week every week!

~ lunch date with hubby ~  Hubby and I had a lovely lunch date on the weekend.  Spending time together enjoying good food is always a favorite with both of us. So grateful we are able to get out and do things like this together once in a while.

~ lovely Easter lunch with family ~  There were 8 of us around the table this year.  My youngest daughter, my son and his girlfriend and my sister's family all gathered at my house for a nice Easter dinner.  I wasn't even sure if I would be able to host this year because of my knee but I'm thankful to say the knee felt great and I was able to cook a dinner of ham, ribs, potatoes, spinach/strawberry salad and asparagus.  And we watched our traditional Nacho Libre movie.  Don't ask me how that became traditional.  I have no idea, all I know is at some point it always makes it on.  I think this year is the first time I've seen it in it's entirety.

~ homemade everything bagels ~ my son makes wonderful bagels and he brought ones he had fresh made home with him.  They are sooo good.

~ live Artemis mission coverage ~ we've been catching bits of pieces of the live mission coverage of Artemis II.  Watching when they became the mission that went the farthest ever from earth was thrilling.  I have been fascinated with and read tons on the Apollo missions so watching this new mission to the moon was exciting.  

~ more technical support ~ well when they fixed the issue I had with google and email a couple weeks ago, unbeknownst to me until I tried to send pics from my phone to my email, was that something in the fixing messed up my email on my phone.  I  finally found the time to get on the phone with technical support again.  It took two sessions of an hour each to work out the problem.  I'm grateful for the agent who was determined to get it fixed for me.  It took that second session because I needed to borrow Hubby's cell phone to video feed with him so he could see what my phone was doing.  I'm grateful he phoned me back at a time that worked to have my hubby's phone available rather than passing me off to yet another agent who I would have had to explain the whole  mess to all over again.  Thankful for people who know what they are doing on the tech side as I have no clue and most of it is so over my head.

What were your favorite blessings this past week?

 

What a Difference a Day Makes

The classic definition of spring in Southern Alberta:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

(the kids and I worked hard to make those snowmen in the morning in a field of snow and by suppertime all that was left was our lonely snow family)

Thursday

Spring erratically trying to make her presence known.  How is spring looking in your neck of the woods?

Friday's Fave Five #883

 Welcome to Friday's Fave Five on this day where we reflect on the great mercy and love of God towards us in sending us His Son, Jesus, to die for us so that we can have eternal life with Him.  My prayer today is that your heart knows this truth.  

I will be joining in later today.  It was a busy week with work and other happenings and in all honesty I totally forgot what day I was on and didn't realize till bedtime that it was Thursday night and I hadn't written my FFF post.   Please go ahead and link you own posts and I will post mine as soon as I can.  

UPDATE:

Thanks for being patient.  I don't know how I forgot what day it actually was.  Too many things on my plate this week, I guess.  But onwards and upwards as they say.  Time to reflect on the goodness of God in my life over the past week.

~ Good Friday ~ as a believer, the great blessing in my life this week in what Jesus did on the cross.  He bore my pain, my sin and shame, He made a way to cross the chasm that exists between a Holy God and creator and His creation that falls into sin(me and you) so that we can be in relationship with our God.  He exchanged our filthy rags for garments clean as snow and gave us His peace in exchange.  Are we perfect? No.  But I now have an eternal hope and home.  And you can too.  The bible says in John 1 verse 12 

 "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God"

I will forever be grateful and thankful for that!

~ OCC regional team meeting ~ Tuesday night was an online meeting of Connect Volunteers in my region for Operation Christmas Child.  It was great to see faces from all over Alberta and Yukon who head up volunteer areas in OCC.  It was an hour of encouragement, information of upcoming events, and prayer.  It was the first meeting like this that I have attended and I really enjoyed being with others who have been involved in this wonderful ministry.

~ supper out with family ~ we had a spur of the moment dinner out with my sister in law and her hubby last Friday evening.  They wanted us to try a diner they liked to eat at.  The food was good and the company fun. 

~ taste of spring ~  we had a couple of beautiful warmish spring days this week before we were plunged back into cold and snow.  But I'm thankful it wasn't the harsh winter snow but the wet snow that signals the seasons changing so I know spring is on it's way.  Here the snow melted quite quickly, and I'm grateful for the moisture after a really dry winter.  My Japanese fern peonies are starting to poke through the dirt so full on spring weather is only a matter of time.

~ better mobility ~ the ol' knee injury has been healing and this week it has been feeling pretty good.  At least the area where the injury was.  I can pretty much go about as usual without being hyper aware of how I make every movement without feeling ache or pain from the injury.  Now if I could just get rid of the arthritis ache I might just think I'm 20 again.  Maybe.

~ fun projects with the dayhome ~ because it's Easter the kids were really wanting to do quite a bit of arts and crafts which I always really enjoy with them.  Sometimes it's a planned one but most times I just give them items and see what they come up with.   I love the creativity they have.  

I want to wish every a very happy Easter holiday and Resurrection Sunday!  Thank you so much for joining me weekly being grateful for the blessings God brings into our individual lives.

“Gratitude is an offering precious in the sight of God, and it is one that the poorest of us can make and be not poorer but richer for having made it.” –A.W. Tozer

Friday's Fave Five #882

Well apparently I should be putting my button with the snow back up but I just can't bring myself to.  Yes it snowed here again this morning.  And boy it was chilly today.  Spring weather please come back and stick around for good!  But weather being a blessing or not where you are, let's pause and look for those things that did bless us this week and be thankful to God for them.  Please join in with us.

~open windows~   funny enough I put this on my list on the weekend when it was gorgeous outside and I had my windows open for little bit to let the fresh air run through the house.  In spite of the snow and cold today I am thankful for those few days this week where it really did feel like the warmth of spring and I could throw open the windows for a bit.

-helpful agent- a very long and complicated story that started I think, during covid, when our internet service provider sold their email accounts to the big "G" mail and migrated all their accounts over there.  Long story short, I was really messed up in the migration and ended up with three different google accounts each handling different things.  No migration agent was able to get it all put together and I finally gave up trying and just used them the way they were.  Fast forward years later and  Monday night when it all went south as I watched in horror as one by one all my accounts shut me out no matter what trouble shooting I followed.  So reluctantly I called my provider knowing I'd have to try and explain the mess everything was in and hope they could at least recover my email address.  I was connected to a lovely, helpful young man who within 40 minutes had rearranged and diverted things and now I'm pretty much working under one account, even the ones they had left under the temporary migration address which technically should not have been working once the migration was done years ago.  I'm thankful for the patient and kind help I received and that the agent talked in a way I could understand and that he resolved in 40 minutes what spending hours upon hours on the phone with migration agents years ago could not fix.  

~ library time ~ I haven't been to the library in ages so was happy to have the chance to go on Saturday and spend some time browsing through something other than the kids section.  I find it a great stress release just to browse and see what's new.  I limited myself to only one book as I'm trying to make it through the piles of books I own.  I'm thankful I have a good library in my city.

~ phone chats ~ I received an unexpected phone call from my friend who sent me the lovely water color I mentioned a couple of weeks back.  It was so nice to chat with her and get all caught up again.  I' thankful that unlike back in the day, long distance within the country is free and keeps us connected.

~ lunch out ~ I had the pleasure of treating my friend out to lunch on Saturday.  We tried a new to us restaurant and found it delicious.  But most of all the company was great and again, it was nice to catch up with someone I hadn't seen in a few months.

What were your favorite blessings you are thankful for?

Friday's Fave Five #881

It's Friday and we're back to share our favorite blessings of the week.  If it's a great week, it's easy to come up with things to be thankful for.  But if it's been a most ordinary week, sometimes we have to look a little harder to take note and if the week has just been tough even the effort to do so might seem out of reach.  But if we develop the intentional habit of doing so then when those hard or uneventful weeks come we can still have hearts of gratitude.  We see things differently and what seems to be such a small thing is in our new perspective small miracles.  Please join in as we develop eyes that notice our blessings and hearts of gratitude.

~ more good days than hard ones with my knee ~ Praise God, my knee injury seems to be improving.  I still have some days where it's sore and tired but I haven't had any actual pain episodes all week.  Yesterday I was able to go for a decent walk and still have it feeling good. Stairs are still a challenge as is sitting in a chair with it bent for long periods, but I'm not getting the crazy pain with certain movements.   The good days with it are starting to outweigh the bad.   Hey, maybe it'll be totally cleared up by the time the knee injury clinic actually gives me a call for an appointment.  🤔🙄

~ Tux, the furball who needs his walks ~ I'm thankful for my dog who has got me out the door for walks.  Some days I was only able to make it around the school yard across the street and some days I could go a few blocks and yesterday was about 10 blocks.  If it wasn't for him, I'd be more tempted to put my feet up after work.  But he has got me out the door.  I'm sure the movement has helped with my knee.  I'm not walking as fast or as far but for both him and me, something is better than nothing.  

~ gorgeous morning sky ~  this was a gorgeous morning sky I got to witness.  Unfortunately around here the old saying "Red sky in morning: sailor's warning" rings true as we've had insane wind all week.  But I'll be thankful for eyes to see the beauty before it literally blew away.  

~ spring time treat ~ I try not to buy chocolates as a rule but I do like the occasional treat of a Lindor Truffle.  And springtime brings out the pistachio flavor which is one of my favorites.  Marshal's ( (Canada's T.J.Maxx) gets them in and for less money than anywhere else so how can one say no?  

~ great Sunday service ~ Sunday's message was so good and really spoke to me.  I'm so glad to be back at church after missing most of February.  Watching online is nice, but being there and getting to connect with others is what makes church special for me.  

What were your favorite blessings from the week?