The Heat Is on

Summer is here. The calendar and the heat advisory that is now in effect shows that my favorite season has arrived. What do I love about Summer? I can think of many things. Here are my top ten.

10. Having weeks and weeks to get my act together
9. Being able to read a book from start to finish in a day
8. Cooling off in the pool.
7. Going to the lake in the middle of the week when it is not crowded.
6. 4th of July picnics and fireworks
5. Sleeping in until after 7, at least until the second week in August arrives
4. The big family vacation
3. Day trips on any day of the week
2. Sharing meals out on the patio
1. Spending hours and hours each day with my family. I can't seem to get enough hugs once school starts.

Did I ever mention before that I love Summer?!?!

Mending

Well I don't mend socks, but I am hoping that I am going to get better soon since I actually don't feel worse than I did yesterday. Unfortunately, I don't feel better yet either.

It feels like winter has decided to make an early appearance. Today is the final day of autumn and typically should be a day with a temperature that reaches above the freezing point. Joe took Rick, Steven, Raymond and Daniel to Olathe so the older boys could finish up their shopping today. They visited Toys R Us, The Great Mall, Wal-Mart, Target and had dinner at Ryan's. While they were at the mall, the boys found a Bookcrossing share book, "The Twits" by Roald Dahl. Raymond is excited to read it and then report his find on the internet before passing it on to the next lucky recipient. If you have never heard of Bookcrossing before, it is a very interesting way to pass along books and then track their whereabouts. Santa was at Ryan's and Daniel told Joe that this Santa was a fake because he had a Ryan's tag on and the real Santa is not an employee of Ryan's. They did not get home until late and we had to wake Daniel up for the surprise of the day and to get the cookie off the cookie ribbons. Both boys saved their cookies until tomorrow as they had eaten a large meal and dessert and they were pretty tired.

I stayed home to rest and continue recovering from my cold. The antihistamines that I take to stop my nose from running also have a tendency to knock me out and today was no exception. I rested with frequent naps, some Lifetime Christmas movies, a couple of podcasts and my trusty box of Kleenexes with lotion. I am so thankful that I had some handy, otherwise I would have a much sorer nose than I already do.

Tonight's surprise was the story, "Santa's Christmas Surprise". It is a cute book that has Santa creating a surprise that ends up being the book we were reading. Daniel was barely awake for the story so I am sure I will share it with him again later.

Pages Turning

We are on the last page of the 2008 calendar. Daniel turned the page as soon as he got out of bed this morning. This has been his job since last spring when he started watching the days. He tells me about past events now by telling me the number that was on the calendar when something happened. We went out to eat at the China Inn on 2 and we had a day off from school on 26.

I read somewhere over the weekend about the idea of wrapping up 24 books and having your child open one book each evening from December 1st until Christmas Eve. I have more than that many Christmas themed story books on hand, so I thought Daniel would really enjoy it as we have been doing the traditional story time before bed each night. I used three different colors of wrapping paper and wrote a short message on a post it note tag on each. It took about 20 minutes to get them all wrapped and into the basket. The little boys didn't see the basket until this morning and were excited to open their package (book). They were both wanting to open it as soon as I came in the door this afternoon. I made them wait until dinner was finished. I will make them wait until bedtime tomorrow night, but I had to go out to a PTO meeting this evening so we did it earlier. Raymond read the tag (Open on Dec. 1 ~ There are 24 days until Christmas) and Daniel opened the first package. I have the rest of the packages in a flat basket on top of the game cabinet in the dining room. Inside tonight's package was Eric Carle's Dream Snow. Raymond was kind of put out that it was just a book, and one that we had packed away last year at that, but Daniel did not lose any enthusiasm. Raymond was right with us as we settled in to read together. Although he reads a lot on his own, he still enjoys me reading to or with him. The boys are not sure what is in the rest of the packages. Raymond asked me if there was another book, but I told him that he would have to wait until tomorrow. He gets to open the next package tomorrow night.