Blessed Jewels: This and That

When we were in Virginia, we were fortunate to make friends with Addie's Awana teacher, Mr. Buddy. Last week we received a nice letter and gift of money for the children from Buddy and Coleen, and decided to spend the money at the bookstore. The kids thought this was the perfect choice - we all love our books around here!

Here's the haul we took in with our gift money. Addie chose the princess movie projector book and a paper dolls book, Bella chose a doodle book and novel, Jacob got a Biscuit book collection with audio CD, Will got the trains book, and the boys together got a three pack of Thomas trains. What a score!

I also used some of the money to buy a JFK book for President's Day, and added it to the other two books I had purchased a couple weeks ago for the holiday. In the past I haven't really done much for holidays with our schooling, but ever since I rediscovered my love for Barnes & Noble I have tried to teach a little history about various holidays.

Speaking of books, Jake's parents sent this book for the children last week. It is an audio book where they recorded themselves reading the book to the children. For each page, there are light sensors that detect which page the book is open to. It is a really awesome gift, and the children love it so much! The only weird thing is that it totally catches me off guard to hear Gramma or Grandad randomly speaking in our house. Smile.

One night after I put the kids down for bed I found these balloons on my computer desk, along with the accompanying note from Bella:

The note translates as: "To Mom, the balloons were bugging us. I was going to put them on the floor, but I know Sarah would get them."

At Bella's soccer game, Will was running off toward the parking lot when a man walking along told Will to come back to me (I was trying to get him to come from my spot on the sidelines). I guess Will felt intimidated by this stranger, because he spent the next 20 minutes within 3 feet of me. At first, he watched the game from between my legs, so I bent over and snapped this shot:

I'm not sure if I like it better the way it was shot, or rotated right side up:

Not long afterward, he had wandered a bit and came back to hang on my leg again, except he started hanging on another parent instead:

I tried to capture the moment he realized that it wasn't me, but was about 5 seconds too late. He then quickly resumed his clinging on the correct mama's leg.