Gifts from home !!!!!

 Elijah and Mercy hugging Faith on their birthday.

 Faith is happily cuddling her new blanket from Great Grandma Lue.

 Elijah, Faith and Mercy were so EXCITED to get an entire dufflebag full of books from Elijah's best friend Jordan. He is such a sweet boy and for his 10th birthday, he asked all his friends to bring books for Elijah, Faith and Mercy instead of a present for him. I cried so much the day his mom emailed me to tell me that story. Thanks Jordan - my kids were so happy with their books that they did not want to open the other gifts from home.

 Thanks Josh, Katie and Olivia for the books (and Sammy too)! Thanks also Sammy for all your work in the secret gift too. You are awesome!

 Mercy was such a good girl during school today, she quietly looked at all her new books from my mother while I taught Elijah and Faith.

 Then we had some cheese nips from Sandi and they were so good and cheesy that Elijah had to close his eyes and savor the flavor.

 Showing off some of his new books. He surprised me because the first book he wanted to read was Black Beauty because he wanted to know if it was the same as the movie he watched once.

Peek-a-boo, Faith got a few Junie B Jones books from Randy, Lynae, Ethan, Josiah and Levi! She was so excited (and thanks for the pants and stuffed animal too) Elijah was very excited to get a few new magazines and sweat pants too! Thanks Meyer family.

The kids got mad at me for taking so many pictures so I do not have pics of all their gifts from friends at home, but really want to say thanks to the Kroll family (the cards and kool-aid and yummy things for cooking), Vern and Dianne (they loved their bendable dolls and already ate one of their bags of M&M's and I am stocked again with my favorite cooking items from home), Sam and Bethany (I have never seen those cherry candies before but they are awesome and I have hidden the Reese's pieces from my family members because they are one of my favorites, hahaha), Thanks Paige, Kelly, Kristin and Rick for the birthday presents for the kids. They were already asking me when they could sign up for the webkins web page ;) and Mercy loves the baby critters. Elijah's walki talki's actually work great and are such an awesome thing to have on campus (we better watch out or Bryan and the staff might "borrow"them). Thanks Haven Library for all the books and the cd, that was so thoughtful too.

Our kids library has grown so much and I was overwhelmed with gratitude to so many friends and family as they pulled out book after book from the bags brought by the HCHS basketball team. I do have to admit that as a bunch of teens watched my kids stop what they were doing and get SUPER GEEKED about reading, they were not super impressed, HAHAHAHA!!!!! But I am happy and proud of my kids for their love of reading :) Thank you for your thoughtful gifts and for thinking of us all. The team will be blessing the staff and kids later this week with some gifts as well.