The Awesomest Book

The other night, my roommate walked through the living room with a book under her arm called "An Awesome Book." I, of course, asked if it was an awesome book and she stopped what she was doing to make me read it. By the third page, it was already in my mental Amazon cart. And halfway through, I had to start the book over and read it out loud to our other roommate, holding the book up like a librarian to show the pictures. Oh, and I was kind of choked up by the end.

Guys, it's that good.



"An Awesome Book" is by writer and illustrator Dallas Clayton, who wrote it for his son. I think it's a pretty big deal in the world of children's books, but as a grown up and a non-mom, I hadn't heard of it. It's about dreaming big, and how sometimes people stop dreaming big and instead dream of things like matching silverware (oops. guilty!).



You can read the whole book online here and I highly recommend that you do. I think this is my new go-to baby shower gift!

A Birthday Date

Earlier this week I took some of my favorite kiddos out for a belated birthday date. I've been taking each of my friend Kristen's kids on a special little outing for their birthdays, and it worked out well that the youngest two, Jones (now 6) and Lael (now 4), were born two days apart.

Since my camera died, I snapped a bunch of photos on my phone that I wouldn't normally post here because they're lame cell phone photos. But now that Instagram is available for my Android phone, I thought this would be a good opportunity to play around with the app!



When I originally asked Lael what she wanted to do for her birthday date, she said "Go to Shake Shack, then Starbucks, then my house." I decided to stick with just Shake Shack :) After picking them up, we headed over to the bus (them on scooters, I was on foot) and took a short ride over to the requested destination.



While we waited for our burgers and frozen custard, I pulled out the one trick I had up my sleeve to make it a "birthday" date: rainbow striped party hats. I was really not expecting the excitement that followed, they were thrilled! Lael ripped off her warm hat (which we put back on a little later) to wear the party hat, while Jones went for an over-the-helmet look.







All in all, a lovely time with this hilarious brother-sister duo. And a fun first try with Instagram!