Summer Reading Program

 This summer our local library's theme was "Dream Big - Read." Part of the competition was about reading of course - every 100 minutes read got the kids a star on the board, which then entered them into a drawing for a Kindle.  The other part of the competition was to draw a picture that illustrated the theme.  The winning picture would be placed on t-shirts that all the kids would receive.  My eight year old won the drawing contest :)

 His drawing was of himself, sleeping in bed, dreaming of a horse reading.

 He was really excited to win ;)

 For the closing program at the end of July, they had a magician in the park.  He called our eight year old up to the stage to help him get some coins in his magic bucket.  The coins were gathered from his armpits...

 his ears...

 and out of his nose.

 This was probably the best magician I have ever seen - especially for the kids (not that I have seen many magicians, mind you).  His name was Al Lampkin.

He gave him a paper - fake money - that had several tricks on it that he could try at home.

 Here are all the kids that came to the closing party, all wearing the shirts with my son's design.  My eight year old is at the top right - not sure why he was so far from the rest of the group :)

 Speaking of being far from the rest of the group, this was the best I could do to get the group photo with my three year old in it.  Remember he's afraid of everything - especially crowds lately.  So I put him in this spot, then quickly ran back a couple steps to snap a picture before he could run back to me.  It took a couple of tries, but we got it!

 After the magician show and the group picture, they drew the name for the Kindle.  We didn't win that, but I'm okay with that.  I think he would have been more into playing games on the Kindle than reading it, and since there seem to be few kids books available for free on the Kindle, it's just as well that we didn't win it.  I hate having to pay for an e-book - especially when it costs as much as the print edition and they had no cost in producing it.  It's the biggest rip-off out there.  Okay, probably not the biggest one, but a pretty big one.

The library also provided a picnic lunch for everyone - pizza and fruit.  We had the daycare kids with us, too.  It was a good way to spend a morning.