My weakness.

Book sales. I cannot resist book sales.

I only allow myself to visit BookCloseouts.com once a year. If you like books, do yourself a favor and don't click on that link. The prices are so incredibly low on most books that I want that even with shipping it's half of the price of Amazon. In fact, I shouldn't have gone there to get the link - there's a banner there proclaiming an extra 50% off of kids books. KatrinaDaisyPetal, help me, I don't think I can stay away.

But yesterday it was a library book sale that we went to. It was at the small, rural library in the town we used to live in. I wandered around while the girls sat at the table in the kids section and tried to figure out which books they wanted. At three books for a dollar, they could each get nine books.

There were the usual sections - Geography/History, Westerns, Health, Biography, Fiction, you know the drill. Then, in this teeny, tiny, rural library sale I came across this section -

(The picture's a bit shaky because I had a five-year-old tugging on my arm asking if I could read a book title to her.) I asked the volunteers and apparently there are a few local Scientologists who donate a *lot* of their books to the library. The librarian only keeps a select few. This section wasn't exactly being picked over.

The broad religion section had an awful lot of Book of Mormons for sale for fifty cents each which made me smile because the Mormon missionaries hand those out freely. They weren't flying off the shelves either.

Then I came to this section -
(Sorry the picture's so shaky. I had a two-year-old asking me if she could buy a book on sharks.)
Actually, the first of THREE of these sections.

(Sorry the picture's so shaky. I had a one-year-old pulling on my hair.) And here you have the reason that we paid the out-of-town fees to our nearest 'big town' library instead of supporting our local library (we lived just far enough out that we had to pay out-of-town memberships no matter where we went). Harlequin romances made up almost one-quarter of the local library's adult section. 'Tis what happens when you have a lonely librarian and no buying oversight. (Also, the very small children's section was overrun with Disney and other licensed character books.)

Add lots of women locally who read and then donate these books to the library, and these romances made up one-quarter of the sale books also.

I was doing fine, only had three books in my hands, until I hit the cookbook section. Then I was done for. Ask my sister about our foray into the big city's library book sale and my encounter with their cookbook section. Or don't. Maria, you're not allowed to comment on this post.

I had some interesting conversations with the librarians about homeschooling - even the ex-teacher librarians are homeschooling fans. I got quite a few children's books, some because they looked interesting, some because they were ones I want in our library, some because the artwork was so lovely. I have a problem.

But it's a problem I'm passing on. The girls couldn't even wait until we were on the road to start digging through their books. If my kids are going to have to be in therapy, I want to pick the reason they're there.

Hannah found a George and Martha book. We love George and Martha. We've read it seven times since we got home.

After the book sale, we went and picked up more plants for the butterfly garden.

And then the kids had a Daddy night while I went with some friends to watch Harry Potter. Clearance priced books, 50% off plants, and Alan Rickman. Yesterday was a very good day.

The best part of the day.

This is one of those days where I'm afraid your interest will wane because, well, we went to the park.

How many park pictures do you want to look at?

You're probably there with your kids every other day and if you've seen one park, you've seen them all.

But stay tuned, because this little guy made a break-through today.

First, I want to tell you about this girl - we'll call her Ariel.

We were at a park one day and Ainsley - who is notoriously aloof around new kids - and most kids she's met many times - immediately started playing with her. They ran around that playground giggling, holding hands, and jabbering to each other, not seeming to mind that one was jabbering in Spanish and the other in English. When Ariel and her parents started to leave I ran over and gave them my phone number explaining that my daughter really doesn't take to a lot of kids and I would love it if they could call next time they came to the park.

Luckily, they did, and we've been slowly building a friendship. All of us.

When we go back to the town we used to live in (tonight it was for some lawn work at the old house), we call and meet up to play.

Last time they visited our new house, I gave them some banana bread (I was trying a new recipe from A Homemade Life) and it was so good that Ariel's mom asked for the recipe. Today when I handed her the recipe, she handed me a plate with four pieces of 'Mexican custard' on it. Oh, it was so good. Hannah ate one piece, I ate one, Ainsley tried a bite and didn't like the texture. I gave Grayson a few spoonfuls and he seemed to like it ok. I wanted to talk to Ariel's mom, so I gave him the spoon and he started doing this -

Then I got distracted talking and he dropped the spoon - I think it was slowing him down -and started taking handfuls. By the time I regained control of the plate, there was only a quarter of a piece left and his hands and face were very, very sticky.

Now, about Grayson's breakthrough. Do you remember this? The passive-resistance-I-hate-swinging-and-you-can't-swing-me-if-I-just-hang-here pose?

Oh, yes. That was so last week.

This week, with the discovery of big kid swings, the world's looking very, very different.

What a change. He watched the girls climb onto the swings and tried to climb on one himself, so I put him up there and started swinging him. Fifteen minutes he swung there before I tried to take him off. Then he made a noise that made me stick him right back on for another five minutes until he was ready to go. He was in heaven. Explain that to me.



Of course, it could just have been that his hands were so sticky that he couldn't let go.

So the most exciting part of the day for Ains was getting to play with her friend, the most exciting part for Gray was either discovering Mexican custard or discovering that big kid swings are the best things ever, but the most exciting part of the day for Hannah was discovering a real, no kidding, honest-to-Murgatroyd, ain't no one foolin' here fairy ring.

It was on the lawn and it was very unusual. A complete, perfectly shaped circle with mushrooms (maybe toadstools?) all around the edges with none inside or outside the edge of the circle. Fairies certainly danced here last night.

Oh, yes, Magic entered her life today. This was almost as good as seeing a real fairy. She's a believer, my girl.

So it was just another ordinary day at the park.

If you believe in ordinary days, that is.

I'm glad you let me tell you about it.

Sweet dreams.

One of those artsy kind of days.

Remember how I mentioned last week that my girls are not really into coloring books? Well, today they very much were. They even colored during lunch.


Hannah is working on a storybook, so she has a collection of all of the pictures that she's colored today from four or five separate books and tomorrow we're supposed to make them into a book and she'll tell me the storyline.

When it got really hot this afternoon, I stopped weeding, grabbed some supplies, headed to sit under a shady tree and called the girls over to do something I've been wanting to do for awhile. I gave each girl a sketch book and a pencil and told them to draw something that they saw.

Hannah drew a tree.


Ainsley drew a boat. A big boat - on waves.

I was not really surprised at how enthusiastic the girls both were about the activity. What surprised me was how *studious* they both were.

I've never seen Ainsley sit cross-legged voluntarily before. That was cute. And her arms, and her face ... that's another part of our artsy day. Her sister is trying her hand at body art.

We had company.



The cat inspired a portrait by each girl.

Ainsley's -
Not bad for a two year old. She got the spots at least.

Hannah's -
Later she added a vole the cat was chasing and an apple falling on the cat's head.

It was my first time doing this and I'm a bit ... um ... too obsessed with detail maybe. I painstakingly finished one in the time it took them to joyfully draw three. I figured if I was going to put the girl's drawings up, I should put mine up also.

I need practice.

So today we put our first entries in our first nature journals.

He had a very long day.

It's hard work chasing your sisters with a butterfly net.


Forgive the exposure on the top picture. I do not know what is going on with my flash.

Summer rituals - The Reunion.

Our weekend started off with cousins visiting on their way through to the reunion.

Pony rides are obligatory.

Then off to go camping!

Making fairy houses with cousins.



We spent a day at a lakeside beach.

In the water ...


out of the water ...
building sandcastles ...

destroying sandcastles ...

pondering ...

(not my baby, but she was too cute to pass up)

Back at camp it was s'mores and reading by the fire.

The next morning was investigating junebugs while eating breakfast. Yum.

Then a full day of playgrounds and fishing that I have no pictures of because I forgot to take my camera. *sigh*

That evening we had Homer the Clown come visit - Hannah was in stitches. She was also thrilled that she got to go up and help him do a trick.

I didn't get any pictures of how hard she was laughing during his show, but look at this little cousin - they were laughing just about as hard as each other.

Then there was the Spongebob pinata ...

the only casualty was Spongebob. Ainsley got his leg. She was pleased.

And then we slept like the dead.

Until Grayson threw up. Then I got up and walked him around for hours on end.

It was a very fun weekend.