Sunday, January 23, 2011

Belated Christmas

Sometimes Christmas around here is a little spread out. We have the big day, of course, but we also had a few things come later in the mail. It's actually a little more fun that way. When the Christmas toys lose their charm a little, new ones show up in the mail!
We had a box from Auntie Verna and Uncle Randy (from Oklahoma. We visited them this summer, if you'll remember).
 You should have seen the boys with these 2 toys! Bingo cage for a boys obsessed with numbers? It was a perfect match! Then Jeremiah and Iron Man? Jeremiah's been doing the Iron Man thing for a while now and it doesn't show any signs of letting up.

We also got a card with some spending money from my Grandma and Grandpa.  This worked out really well since we can use it after Christmas when every single toy in creation is on sale. To continue with the Iron Man theme, Jeremiah found this beauty. It was the missing piece to his ensemble. Iron Man heart, check. Iron Man gloves, check. Iron Man mask? Check!
Joshua just used his to order a Monopoly game for his DS. We had the good idea (read: bad idea) of teaching Joshua how to play Monopoly one night. It was a pretty fun night but it was followed by day after day after day of, "Will you play Monopoly with me??" Unfortunately for Joshua, there's a pretty low limit to how much Monopoly we can handle. He's counting down the days waiting for it to arrive here at the house.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Operation Paperback

While Phil was still deployed I heard about this organization:
http://www.operationpaperback.org/
I signed up for a box for the boys (since we can never seem to get enough reading material around here). This evening a knock came to my door. It was our postman carrying a box FULL of books for us!

We won't be able to use every single one of them (the Goosebumps series I think may still be a bit much for Joshua) but there are a lot of fun ones in there. Some of them I wouldn't have picked out myself but the boys seemed interested in.
There were a LOT of books! I read the letter that came with it to the boys. Here's the important part:
"These books are a gift from supportive citizens around the United States. It is our way of saying thanks to military families for the incredible sacrifices they make every day."
Funny thing is the boys don't really realize they've made any sort of sacrifice. They will some day, though and I'm hoping that things like this help them realize that people are grateful for the things they've given up.
There was one that was a favorite of the boys. We have some geekiness issues over here.