Books = LOVE on Paper

It is no secret that our Whitterbug might be a bit spoiled overly blessed. I can honestly say that most of her toys were hand-me-downs from friends and family who's kids grew up while we were still waiting for Whitney to come home. GREAT friends, huh? They have essentially stocked her toy room through her 4th birthday :)
But there is one "toy" that I truly do not think a kid can ever have enough of:

I LOVED being read to as a young child. My dad used to sit on the edge of my bed and read the same books night after night. "Number 18 Rue Petite", "Big Dog, Little Dog", "'Stand Back', Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!'" were some of my favorites!
In elementary school (and even in middle school if Im being honest), I LOVED all the Babysitters Club books. The Super Specials were AWESOME, and always seemed to come out just in time for summer vacation so I had a good, long book to read on the way to the beach.

I always enjoyed the books assigned for Mrs. Horton's History class, Mrs. Koehm's English class, and I still have a few of the books Miss Lyon recommended in Junior year Religion class in high school.
College found me reading more Grisham, Patterson, and Higgins Clark than text books. (whoops!)

I've always loved reading. Now, I have far less time to read the grown-up books I'd like, but I am happy to exchange James Patterson for "Pinkalicious", John Grisham for "Fuzzy Bear's Bedtime", and Dan Brown for "Little Miss Spider". That's one of the nice things about books....they dont go anywhere. They wait for you, right where you left them. (My nightstand is their current waiting place.)

So my love and affection for books is one of the things I really want to pass on to Whitney. T and L were very excited when we met them the first time and shared a picture of our collection of children's books. (Teaching 2nd grade helped me grow my collection fairly quickly!) They both lit up and said that their other two children LOVE to read and LOVE story time each night. My heart may have skipped a lil beat when they shared that with us.

Whitney definitely has favorite books already. She squeals at the same pages each time we read her favorites. She giggles in the same spots. And she grunts during other books until we exchange it for one of her classics.
All of this babbling leads me to tell you about a Christmas gift Whitney received in the mail last week. Our good friends, The Millhollins, sent Whitney this ADORABLE tote bag with her name on it.
Cute, right?

And if that is not great enough, look what Mandy filled it with:

Whitney and I couldnt WAIT to get our hands on all those fun stories, pretty pictures, and exciting pages to turn!


"Tell Me Again about The Night I was Born", "The Christmas Sweater" by Glenn Beck (GREAT, GREAT Story!!), and "A Blessing from Above" are some of our favorites, but Mandy packed it with AWESOME books we can share with Whitney for years and years.
THANK YOU, MILLHOLLINS!! We love you guys!
Whitney wanted to get right down to business, reading to Bailey :)

And then she settled into her chair, ready to dig right into the first book :)

She was so serious, studying Glenn Beck's book. We read that one right away and decided that it wont just come out at Christmas since it has a good message for the whole year. :)

I told Whitney we needed to send Kisses to the Millhollins....she kissed her new book instead, since Mandy, Matt, and Brooklyn are sooo far away :(

Whitney sends BIG KISSES and THANK YOUs to our favorite "Belgians"!