Fandango Tapas Bistro 247 S Kalamazoo 226-9800 Fandango Website

Come join us for dinner and socialization at Fandango’s. RSVP to allisonpierce76@yahoo.com by November 11th

Moms & Tots is a playgroup for women and their children to get together to enjoy the fun activities Kalamazoo has to offer. It’s also a good chance for moms to socialize and children to play together. It meets twice a month. Times will vary.

Wednesday, November 5th, 10:00AM-12:00

Young Chef's Academy and Bookbug

Wacky Waffle Wednesday and Bookbug Story Time Enjoy making waffles at Young Chef’s Academy and story time with the Bookbug next door. Children will be able to measure ingredients, help cook their special circus icon waffles and enjoy eating the results! After, we will walk next door for story time at the Bookbug. Cost includes: lesson, waffle and milk/water.($4.00 per child and $4.00 per adult that eats) RSVP to allisonpierce76@yahoo.com by November 3rd

Wednesday, November 19th, 10:00-11:00 AM

Chuck E. Cheese 6175 S Westnedge Ave

Join us for some fun at Chuck-E-Cheese’s and stay for lunch. You can register online at the web address below and receive discount coupons. Many of the coupons are for 4 drinks, large pizza and tokens. We could split up and share the coupons. www.chuckecheese.com/coupons/get-coupon.php RSVP to allisonpierce76@yahoo.com by November 17th

Wednesday, November 19th,

Breakfast with Santa Registration

Registration is at 6:00 pm at the Portage District Library. Registration must be done in person. Limited to 3 children or 1 family. Payment is due upon registration. All children in attendance (including attending infants) will need to pay registration. Cost is $5.00. Three sessions (9am, 10am, 11am) will be offered on December 2, 4, 10th. If you would like to attend with the Mom & Tots group lets try signing up altogether for the 10am slot December 10th. What are you registering for?? Come dressed in you holiday best and have a visit with Santa Claus by the fireplace at the Moors Grille Room! After you have handed him you list you can enjoy some delicious pancakes and sausage. Bring your camera for this one! You don’t want to miss this scrapbook opportunity

Thursday, November 6th, 7:00 pm at Ashley’s house in Portage (look on the website calendar for the address) Bring your favorite cook-book or recipe and a dish to pass if you want to. We will also be briefly discussing the young adult fiction book series The City of Embers and The People of Sparks by Jeanne Duprau. (The movie of The City of Embers is coming out on Oct. 10th.) The dark city of Ember is a decaying place with no natural light surrounded by the vast Unknown. Although ancestors had arranged for information on leaving Ember to be made available after the inhabitants have spent 200 years there, a corrupt mayor lost the information many years before the novel begins. Two hundred and forty-one years later, Ember's electrical lighting frequently fails, supplies are dwindling, and the populace is growing increasingly frightened. Twelve-year-old Doon and his acquaintance Lina are intent on finding a way to save Ember. After Lina finds a mysterious and fragmented paper titled "Instructions for Egress," they think they have a way out. Can they escape from the villainous mayor and his soldiers? Can they figure out the missing letters and words in the message? Do they find their way out of Ember and up to a post-apocalyptic Earth?

The book is The Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack up and leave. The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighboring towns and villages, and prevent the contagion from spreading. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. With Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, she tends to the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence, and superstition. All is complicated by the intense, inexpressible feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Year of Wonders sometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction; Anna and Mompellion occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. However, there is no mistaking the power of Brooks's imagination or the skill with which she constructs her story of ordinary people struggling to cope with extraordinary circumstances.

Saturday, November 15th 6:30PM

As the holiday busyness descends upon us we’ll have the last two events of the year be dinner at local restaurants. Let’s try Oakwood Bistro for this month and if anyone has any suggestions for next month I would love to hear them!

If you haven’t been to Oakwood Bistro before here is a little blurb on it, it’s one of our favorites! Oakwood Bistro

Please RSVP by November 1st so I can make a reservation for our group. Thanks! Betsey

Monday, November 17th, 7:00PM We are meeting at St. Michael Luthern Church.

Don't miss this prelude to the holidays! Lynn Berkey from Design Solutions will join us to give tips on interior design ideas for the upcoming holiday season. She will teach us how to look festive without spending a fortune or having to store a basement full of holiday decorations for the next 11 months. Lynn will answer any questions you may have about interior design and will also give away a free in-home consultation to one lucky member. If you have any ideas for future meeting topics, or speakers, please let Co-President Shelley Edds know.