Friday again!

The grandchildren and I are getting into somewhat of a Friday afternoon/evening routine, and I like it very much. They are dismissed from school shortly after 3:00 and I meet them nearby their school and then take them back to the Beach House with me.

I've been making a habit of visiting the Plainfield library on Thursday afternoons to pick out some good reads for our weekend. My niece, Shelley, has a blog entitled The Book Diaries which I use on a regular basis. Shelley reviews all kinds of books, most of them children's books, and even lists her favorite titles and authors.

I can't always find the exact title Shelley has recommended ~ so I have to go on-line and request those from other library locations. However, I find many alternative titles by the same author. This week, I picked out: (1) "Big Chickens" by Leslie Helakoski, (2) "The Odd Egg" by Emily Gravett, (3) "Wonder Horse: the true story of the world's smartest horse by Emiy McCully, (4) "The Bravest Knight" by Mercer Mayer, (5) "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Numeroff, (6) "The Scarecrow's Dance" by Jane Yolen, and (7) "Hush, Little Horse" also by Jane Yolen. I also went over to the Young Adult section and picked out several Star Wars stories for Chris and Matthew. We do a lot of reading when the kiddos are over! I think our favorite read this week was "Big Chickens" ... we laughed and laughed at this funny story.

We also did lots of art and origami folding, along with piano playing ... but I didn't even get my camera out until it was almost bed time! I had, sadly, completely forgotten to take any pictures. The kids had been telling me all about a pep rally over at their school that day, getting all the children excited about the high school football game that night. They decided to show me some of their "moves."

 Matthew doesn't really aspire to be an athlete ... but he enjoys tumbling and jumping and kicking his feet in the air as well as any other child ...

 Christopher has a big-time aim to be a professional football player. These "moves" are how he gets his body ready to play a big game!

Ems hopes to be a cheerleader some day, so she has been practicing her jumps and stretches so that she can eventually do the splits.

Believe it or not, the children finally settled down, got into their pj's, and listened carefully to our Bible story about the woman at the well. We've been talking a lot about how Jesus came to rescue us from our sin and from the darkness of this world. We had a nice time reading about how kind Jesus was to this dear woman and how many people came to faith in Christ because of her testimony.

Afterwards, we got out our sleeping bags and snuggled down for the night. We watched the movie, "We Bought a Zoo," and then drifted off to sleep ...