Speaking Volumes

First and foremost, I would like to apologize to my adoring public (by which I mean my dad) for failing to blog for the past 2 (3?) weeks. Sorry! A lot has been going on here at the library, including a recent 'Teddy Bear Sleepover,' where I was in charge of a whole sleuth of unruly teddy bears while they camped out at the library for the night. Before leaving their bears in my care, the children of Columbia made them nametags and bear-beaded necklaces. We also enjoyed teddy grams (eh - cannibalism?) and some bedtime stories. By the way, there are a ton of great bear/teddy bear/sleeping bear books out there so it was hard to choose, but I ended up reading Ira Sleeps Over, by Bernard Waber, and The Bear Snores On, by Karma Wilson. Two no-fail options for sure:

    

Anyways, it was after the kids left that all the fun began. To put it simply, the bears were bad. They didn't sleep wink, they were loud, they wanted to play on the computers, they made a huge mess, and they ate a ton. They started off the night tucked into our tent by their loving parents. They look sooo innocent, don’t they?
 
 
 
Yeah, not so much…

  

   

Narcissism: Bolt watching 'Bolt,' starring Bolt, & and Panda reading about pandas....

       

   

 
 
Some serious carnivores in the crowd…

   
 
When kids came back the next day for pick-up, each bear had an envelope to give them with a letter and pictures explaining what they were up to all night. This is the best part – one kid laughed so hard I thought he was going to pee his pants. So, even though it is tiring and it means supervising bad bears for a night, I will continue to do the Teddy Bear Sleepover each year just to get those awesome reactions from the kids.
 
In other recent news, I have read quite a few WONDERFUL books lately which I'll be blogging about, and we had a cutthroat cupcake decorating contest here with 4 lucky ‘Golden Spatula’ winners, which I will also be blogging about in the upcoming weeks... so stay tuned!