Banner day!

What a great day.  I was up early, exercised even longer than I planned (when has THAT ever happened before?  I could stop right there!), vacuumed early (another almost-never ... I hate vacuuming), and worked a little via e-mail.  I ran my errands, including picking up a book I had on hold at the library - "Healing Water" by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn.  This is the second book in the "Sullivan Crisp" series, and while I'm not far enough into this one yet to know for sure, the first one (Healing Stones) was absolutely terrific.  As much as I read, it takes something pretty special for me to recommend a book this highly! 

Anyway, my afternoon suddenly stretched out in front of me, so I grabbed up Lexi from school and we hung out.  I picked up her Easy Bake Oven from her house, and we set to work making sugar cookies.  The oven had to "preheat" for 15 minutes - I had no idea a lightbulb runs this thing.  Meanwhile Lexi mixed the batter - a packet of mix + 3/4 tsp of water.  That alone should tell you how little dough actually resulted.  We split it between the two pans, then cooked the first one.  For 10 minutes.  Then it had to cool in the "cooling bin" for 10 minutes.  Then we put the other one in.  And cooked for 10, then cooled for 10.  Do the math here, folks, it took 55 minutes to make TWO cookies.  They crumbled coming out of the pan, and were generally disgusting.  We cook together almost every time she comes over, and I'm thinking we'll go back to the old-fashioned way, which takes much less time and produces several dozen delicious cookies!  She actually lost interest as soon as the dough was mixed, so her attention was captured for approximately 2 of the 55 minutes.  So look out girl, we're back to reading recipes and learning fractions next time you're here!

Last weekend at a conference, I picked up a book called "The Princess and The Kiss."  It is a beautiful story of how God gave the princess' parents her first kiss to be held until she was grown up.  Then they pass it on to the princess, with the encouragement to save it for the man she will marry.  Many suitors come to her, but she saves the kiss and dismisses them all (for various good reasons), until she meets the farmer who loves her just for her and has saved his own kiss for her.  Needless to say, they share their kisses at the wedding and live happily ever after.  There is a companion book for boys, "The Squire and The Scroll," that I haven't seen but suspect is just as good.  It was a great way to dialogue with her, even at six years old, about how precious her kisses are and how important it is to save them.  (We did talk about the difference between the kiss in the story and the kisses she shares with mommy and daddy, etc.)  She re-told the story to Papa with surprising accuracy when he got home, so it seemed to make an impression on her.

Then we got her library books out of her backpack.  One of them was for her to read to me, and the other I read to her.  Hers was about a garden, and how some veggies and fruits grow above ground and some grow below the ground ... one page had a picture of a mole (and various other critters) burrowing around under the ground, and she said, "Did you know moles are nocturnal?"  I might have known that, I'm not really sure. 

We played Chinese Checkers, Uno, Go Fish, and Old Maid for a couple of hours.  She won some and lost some - remarkably, she's a very good loser!

Of course there were a couple of cartoons and some art thrown in for good measure.  I love the special bond I have with this child, different from the special bond I have with each of the other two - hard to explain but oh so true. 

And last but not least, we had chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy for dinner!  How's THAT for undoing the hard work on the treadmill this morning!