Fun Friday and An Amazing Company!

Today was a kind of a lazy Friday. We normally have co-op on Friday's but we didn't today. The bulk of our homeschool studies we do Monday thru Thursday, so it was nice to have a day without too many 'to do's'. Faith Elaina hasn't been feeling well, her usual struggle to get through these germ ridden winter months. So we passed up an opportunity to go on a field trip to the Children's museum up in Seoul, which left some of the Adams children a bit disappointed. I had to quickly find a distraction that would bring the smiles back....so we built a really awesome fort. :)

Our fort took over the living room for the day and the smiles came back. They quickly forgot about the field trip we were suppose to be on and enjoyed playing all sorts of games and pretend inside our creation. 

Here is the long tunnel to get in. Even I  had to crawl in this way...it was the 'rule' according to Joy.  :)

We still did manage to sneak in a little learning and enjoyed some time exploring our World map. We talked about direction and named the different continents and oceans and found several countries.

Joy is still amazed looking at the map at how far away we moved to South Korea....I think I am too!

Later in the day Daddy came home with some packages from the mailbox! One of them was from All About Learning, a fantastic company with awesome products and with even MORE amazing customer service!! We own their original 'Bee-Hive' reader and All About Spelling Level 1 and have loved it the past couple of years. When we first got it, I use to read it to the kids and we'd all enjoy the beautiful pencil sketch art work inside of it as well as the fun stories.

Then Joy started reading, and has read all of the many stories in the book several times over again. She has really enjoyed it and now Joshua has begun to read it on his own as well.

When I heard back in the fall that they had a new reader out, I had to get it. So I put in my order for the next book and didn't think about it again until after the new year when I got word that another new reader was coming out. I realized that I never received my book. I promptly emailed and asked about my order and got back a response within hours that they would like to mail out another book to me at no charge and a second note that they had also tried to call me to confirm my address and such. Our number is an international number and is a little tricky to figure out how to call from the States.

The next day my phone rang and it was Mr. Greg Rippel himself who had worked very hard to figure out how to call me, clear over here in South Korea. He was calling to confirm and correct my missing order. He was so nice and so helpful and never once made a big deal about the fact that it had been months since I first put in the order and was only now letting them know that it never made it to me. I decided to go ahead and order the newest book and have them both sent together since they were reshipping my last order anyway.  :)

Well, they shipped them out right away in a priority box and they arrived today! And what a perfect day it was to receive them...it being a 'fort' day and all in our house today. When I showed Joy and Joshua, they each took one into the fort and started pouring over the pages, getting excited about the new stories to read and admiring the artwork. Both of the books are just as great as the first one, only each is a little more challenging than the one before it.
Here is Wolverine Joshua enjoying the 'Run, Bug, Run!' collection of stories, reading aloud to Mom.

And Joy is reading to me from 'The Runt Pig' collection...

So we ended up reading A LOT today. The big kids both read aloud several of the new stories to me and I read several of them to all the kids. Even Faith Elaina, who's only just about to turn three, loves to hear these stories and see the beautifully detailed, but still pleasantly simple pictures drawn inside. All this to say, I HIGHLY recommend these books, their All About Spelling curriculum and the All About Learning company in general! My experiences with them and their products have been wonderful and I will definitely buy from them again because of it. (...No, I did not get any compensation to say that.)  :)
If you sign up to receive their emails they will notify you when their products are on sale and helpful teaching tips as well.

*My favorite moment of the day...when Joy, Joshua, Faith and I all crawled into the fort and snuggled up to read our new books together. It was one of those sweet moments with your kids that you hope they'll remember as much as you know you always will.*