Spring Break Day 5

After a not so restful night, Mason kept waking up scared, thanks to a "young" Indiana Jones tv show (oops, my fault) and eventually fell asleep in our bed. Not to mention, my allergies are really bothering me and Owen has an unexplainable irritating rash+fatigue. BUT EJ had the day off and I was determined to make it a fun one.
The kids received gift cards to BN for Christmas from their book-loving, librarian - Great-grandmother and I thought today would be the perfect day for them to shop. I knew I could not do it alone with all four.
Perhaps some siblings would line up perfectly and stay all together and not pull books off the shelf that they weren't going to buy. But not my kids. They like to go in four different directions and Avery likes to take off her shoes as soon as we look like we may stay some place and before you know it I am being handed books and I have no idea where they belong. It wasn't exactly how I imagined it in my mind and I did not even bother to try to take a picture for fear of losing someone. And that was with EJ there :)
Needless to say, on the way home as I internally battled against my mothering failures, I realized that each of them got the perfect items and wasn't that my intention?
So instead of capturing a photogenic moment of my children ever so delicately pulling a book from a shelf, I decided it would be fun to capture their personalities by their actual purchases. Thankfully they complied.

Owen took his "book" store gift card seriously and insisted it be used for books. Love, what that says about him :) Three large chapter books, I can hardly believe it and he was genuinely excited. There is hope for my other 3!
He loves Big Nate and has read a lot of those. His newest love is sports books by Tim Green. And this is his 3rd in the Lemonade War Series. He mostly reads books about football and basketball, but sometimes he surprises us :) He started Big Nate first. Today was a good day for reading as he is really under the weather. I took him to the Dr this afternoon (not part of my "fun" day plan) it was not a strep related rash, so we can only assume a viral thing, not super helpful. He has been the first asleep the last 3 nights. That says a lot.

Ah, this boy. Not a single book ;) His love for Legos far outweighs his love for reading. He could not resist. It was his gift card, so I kept my mouth shut. He put it together quickly and has been talking about it all day. He has such a wonderful imagination (part of the reason for his bad dreams) and we can't wait to see how he uses it as he gets older. He wants to be a lego creator. I told him that was fine as long as he doesn't move to Denmark.

One toy, one book, I still have a little influence on this boy :) My animal lover. He wanted something about horses or dogs. Somehow our family doesn't own many Biscuit books and they are really great for early readers, so I seized the opportunity. He has started "reading" to me, he has an even wilder imagination than Mason. Oh, my the stories he tells.
He loves searching for bugs and now he has a home for them. I don't love bugs and am hoping he doesn't find any ;) My guess is he'll find plenty.

I mean... where do I start? This picture cracks me up. I thought I was getting better at pig tails until I saw the pictures. Good grief.
This girl, barely sits through the reading of a tiny board book and she usually tears paper pages. It's getting better, but she must have a flap to flip. So that's what I got. About a lion who has lost her roar. Ha! Avery has not lost her roar and uses it quite frequently. I knew the Lord would not give me a little girl who would sit around all day and look at books, but I had no idea she'd be busier than ALL 3 of my boys at this age.
Over the past several days we've noticed big changes in times that used to bring on major tears. Alleluia! I didn't even realize how much it was stressing me out until it stopped. I know that a lot of her attention span issues will gradually change. At least I am already used to wild and crazy.

So, thank you Mimi, from the bottom of my heart, for allowing me this opportunity to capture my children's personalities, even if just for this day. They grow up and change so darn fast.

We ended our day at our church's Good Friday service. No child care there, so we sat as far away from the crowd as we could. I could write a whole post about all the gymnastic moves Avery tried. Needless to say, for a few short minutes, I was surrounded by several of my littlest ones "singing" praise songs and it was all this momma needed. What a great way to end our spring break and start our Easter weekend.
Happy Easter!