Having very little money, our family has been quite active this summer in our wonderful library’s programs.  Our library’s activities are so sought after, that people are constantly checking your ID to make sure you live in our town, it is crazy!

This is the first summer Tyler has taken part in the Summer Reading Club.  Of course he cannot read, I am reading, but he is right there with me, putting in the time.  Every week a child comes in to the library, shows how many hours he has done and he gets a little prize, sometimes bubbles, sometimes stickers, etc.  The kids love it, especially little readers like Tyler.  Tyler, while not reading, can memorize the books and it appears that he in fact is reading, it is quite amazing!

After a certain amount of weeks earned, the children are invited to spin a big wheel, which has some incredible prizes on it, valued up to $10!  Tyler stepped behind the librarians’ desk to spin the big, heavy (for him) wheel, I could not help him.  Tyler, never having spun a wheel before, gave it a pretty pathetic spin but landed on….a $10 gift certificate to Target!  There was much shouting and clapping in the quietness of the library!  I called Grant to see if he would want to come and watch Tyler spend his gift certificate at Target and we picked him up.

We all got prizes yesterday!  Target takes Food Stamps so we were able to pick up a few treasures such as salsa and organic fruit snacks.  I really wanted to buy Tyler underwear but the money was his to choose as he liked, he did work very hard to put in his hours reading.  I deserved a prize too of course, as I was the reader.  I chose a Mega Block Hello Kitty park with a swingset for under six dollars. Oh, how I looove Hello Kitty!  Grant got chocolate and Tyler chose a Marvel Super Hero Adventures Crime Cruising Car with Spider-Man and Hulk. It cost a little more than $10 but we were happy to add on to it for him.  He has been really working for everything he gets lately, including working hard to do good boy things which is a post perhaps for another time.

After we put together our toys all of us fell into happy naps with visions of Spider-Mans, Hello Kitties and chocolate dancing in our head.