Their Favorite Time of the Week

There's nothing the kiddos and I love more than sharing an amazing book together. We have countless favorites and sweet memories wrapped up in each one, it's too hard to choose which we've liked the best. I love, love, love reading aloud to them and I love even more how much they enjoy it. And when they ask "Plllllleeeeease Mama, read to us?" I never can say no! 

But, there is something a little more special than Mama reading, cause they get to hear that everyday,

 and that's when DADDY reads. :)

When Daddy is home, he reads often to them before bed when his schedule allows. But since being deployed the children have really missed it...Daddy does all the cool voices for each character... 

(WAY better than Mommy does! LOL!)

So their awesome Daddy decided to start recording himself reading aloud and is 

sending us a chapter at a time to listen to. The kids are THRILLED!

Their sweet Daddy snapped a picture for me to use while he was recording a chapter for them. :)

He sends them to me using Dropbox and I can open them up and play them through the Jambox. 

The incredible technology of this day and age and this amazing little speaker brings Daddy's voice into our home from the other side of the world and allows us to share stories together, 

something we Adams' treasure. 

I waited until he had recorded several chapters before I surprised the kids with it. 

I knew it would be torture for them if I only had one chapter and then we had to stop.

Sure enough, that first chapter ended and there were wails of sadness!...

"Oh no! Is there more? Please let there be more than one to listen to tonight!" 

It was pretty awesome for these kiddos to be able to connect and share something with their Daddy while he's so far away. We are thankful for the phone calls, mail and Face-Time too, but this is extra special for them. We have finished all the chapters we have so far and eagerly await more! 

When we read aloud they often like to draw or crochet or build, so that's what they did for awhile, while they were snuggled down enjoying every word and then one by one they stopped being busy with their hands and just listened. What a comfort to a military kid to get to regularly be read to by Daddy while he's deployed. Hearing his voice makes him feel not so far away. I'm so thankful for Peter for taking the time to do this! The kids have said many times how this is their very favorite thing and they hope he never stops sending new chapters! (So Honey, there's no foreseeable end to this or you are going to have some disappointed kiddos! Better plan ahead for that next book!)

Summer Reading Club

We have had the opportunity to be a part of an amazing summer reading program over here at our library. Our friend who is leading it is doing a wonderful job and the kids are so excited about going to their 'reading club' every Friday!

The theme this summer is "A Midsummer Knight's Dream." The kids all recieved fun shirts to wear the first week we went and they've been wearing them every Friday since.  :)

Every week they do a great storytime with wonderful books and crafts and then the kids get prizes for turning in their reading logs from the week. We record the books they've read and some of the ones that I read aloud to them too. This week, their prize was a giant bouncy ball that lights up and changes colors. The kids thought that was pretty cool, and then were even more excited when they got fuzzy caterpillar stuffed animals just for being there!

My kiddos were already 'book worms' before, but the incentive of the reading program has them reading ALL THE TIME! 

Even Faithy, who's not reading for herself yet, will bring me stacks of books so she can add more to her reading log to turn in (since books that Mom reads count too!) Of course Joy is always willing to read aloud to them also. She's such a good big sister.  :) 

Samuel Clark

Our little Samuel has now lived in South Korea for more of his life than he was in the States. Some of our family has never met him and those that have, have not seen him in a long time except through pictures. The little ones change so much during this age, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of him from recent weeks.

Doesn't he look like a mini Joshua is this one with the computer?

He enjoyed painting with the big kids this day...


And was quite proud of his picture when he was finished! :)

We've got another book lover!

Samuel enjoys his own special activities during school time.  :)

He's such a sweet boy!

Read Across America & Dr. Seuss's Birthday!

Today was Read Across America day AND Dr. Seuss's birthday! Two great reasons to have a little extra fun with our books. :)

This morning, before I even told the kids what today was and what we were going to do, I found them all huddled together enjoying a book that Joy was reading aloud to the other kids...SO COOL! I think it is great that already they have such a love for books!

They were so excited when they found out that today was going to be a special day!

We pulled out all of our Dr. Seuss books to read and realized that some of them are missing....hmmm....maybe in storage somewhere back in the States? But we still had many of them here to enjoy! (Fun fact about the Adams family....Mr. Adams use to dress up as the Cat in The Hat, make appearances and read 'his' book at kids birthday parties! That was back in our youth pastoring days. :) We were kind of sad that he doesn't have it here with him in S.Korea...that would have been SO much fun!)

The crew was excited to pull out their Dr. Seuss characters that they got along with a few new books this Christmas!

I think between Joy and myself, we read every one of them aloud today! We did some of our other school work and then it was time for lunch.....We had Green Eggs and Ham of course!

Well, it was technically Green Eggs and Bacon...but just a fun and yummy! :)

Everyone took turns cracking eggs and then Faithy stirred as Joy and Joshua added the blue food coloring. I made them guess and figure out what we needed to add to the yellow eggs to make them green. They got it pretty quickly.  :)

I think they turned out so pretty! After dumping our usual applesauce all over them... (I know some people think that is strange, but it's how I've always eaten my eggs for as long as I can remember...must be a Churchill thing!)....Joshua was SO surprised that they tasted the same as yellow eggs!

Joy gave me the thumbs up and a dramatic, "Say! I like them! I like green eggs and ham!"

And then there was Faith. She was pretty hesitant to try them and sat there for several minutes making the most disgusted faces at her plate! :) But after seeing her siblings enjoying them, she decided to give them a try...

Though she continued to eat them until her plate was almost empty, she repeatedly said, "I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am!" With a scowl of course! I kept telling her, "It sure looks like you are enjoying them, they're almost gone!" But she insisted, "Nope. I do not like green eggs and ham." :) It was a very fun lunch!

We colored some Cat in the Hat hats and did some writing projects. I asked the kiddos what they would tell Horton if they were a little WHO on his clover. Joy said that she would "Tell him to calm down because her world keeps going out of control every time he jumps!" Joshua told me he would tell him to "Get me somewhere safe! And fast!" We did some practice rhyming words and making up silly rhyming sentences. Then each of the kids told me which Dr. Seuss book was their very favorite and what they liked best about it.

We read some interesting facts about the real Dr. Seuss and his life and answered Joy's questions about his books having three different names for the author. I explained to her that Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel and Theo Lesieg were all the same person, he just used different names when he wrote the different books. To which she replied..."Oh, it's kind of like the Trinity." (She said it so matter of fact as if she already understood the Trinity and it made perfect sense to her. :) I love how how her brain works! And I got a good chuckle out of that one too! )  :)

We continued our Read Across America (and South Korea...Joshua corrected me!) and Dr. Seuss's birthday celebration with an adorable snack that we made!

It's a sugar cookie on the bottom and 3 mini chocolate cupcakes stacked on top of each other to make The Cat in The Hat's hat. :) We had some friends over to enjoy them with us, but by the time I thought about taking pictures, they had already devoured most of it so I don't have any pictures of the feast, but they were yummy!

Then we ended our day by watching the 'Horton Hears a Who' movie!

It was an all around awesome day at the Adamses! :)

End of the Month Kid Picks...

When we changed over our calendar this morning Joy reminded me that we had to put pictures up for Grandma's and Grandpa's of their 'Favorite Things' from February like we did back in January. It was all her idea to do it in the first place, so it didn't surprise me that she remembered! So here they are...

When I asked Joy what her most favorite thing that she did or made in February was, she said, "Discovering Mommy's old books!" She has now read BOTH of Shel Silverstein's 'Where the Sidewalk Ends' and 'A Light in the Attic' from cover to cover! They've been on our shelf for years and I've pulled them out every now and then and read the kids one of my favorite silly poems or rhymes, but we've never read them extensively. So my hungry little reader, searching for something new to read came across these and devoured them both in the last week.  :)

Whenever we took a break from school time, Joshua would run off to play and Joy would pick up one of these books and curl up in the big green chair. She read many of them aloud to me and it brought back fun memories of when I was first given them....

She loved reading the notes inside from my Mom and Dad and asked me if next time I get her a book, if I would please write her a note it in because she thinks it will be more special if I do. :) She's right, I LOVE going back and reading the notes in my books that I've been given as gifts and I was able to pull a few off the shelf and show her some notes in ones she's already been given from grandparents. That made her happy.  :) 

Hearing her giggle as she read through and enjoyed the silly pictures was so sweet. It made me want to run over every time and see which one she was reading at that moment! :)

She got to the end of the second book and saw a picture with a description of another one of Shel Silverstein's books, 'The Giving Tree', and asked me where it was! We don't have that one yet, but I'm thinking it's going to have to go on the list.  :)

Joshua's favorite thing this month was very sweet. He uses workboxes for some of his school day. He loves to see ahead of time what he gets to do and enjoys seeing what's still left when he's accomplished something. Even when 'school time' is over, he likes me to fill his boxes with things to do just because he thinks it's fun. Well, sometimes I run out of ideas for things for him to do to place in the box, so every so many box fillings, I'll stick a note inside one with directions for something to do. It may say "20 min. computer game time!" or "Bring Mom a book to read to you!" or "Hey Big Brother! Please read to Samuel for 15 minutes!" So guess what his favorite thing was this month...

After the timer went off he hollered, "Mom, can we keep reading?!" Of course I wasn't going to stop that! Most of the time, he's not actually reading, but just looking through the books and talking about the story and pictures, but Samuel doesn't care one bit and just LOVES this time with Joshua!

The next day, Joshua asked me if I could put that note in his workbox again! :) Of course I said YES!
I tried to sneak a pic without being too obvious but it's pretty dark...

I'm praying that they'll continue to love reading together for a long, long time!  :)  It's SO SWEET!

Faith Elaina said that "Drawing people was her only favorite thing."  :)  And her people sure are cute!

Of course Samuel can't tell me what his favorite thing is yet, but if he could, I think he'd definitely say reading books with his big brother and playing with the piano!