storytime

so you may have noticed a little blog-makeover this week...i've been working hard to make my online home better reflect my real life. it kinda felt like when you move the furniture around in a room and it looks totally different...even though it's the same old stuff! i realized that i've been talking about all of these concepts over the past year, now i'm just giving them a breath of fresh air. and i'm making good on my promise to connect more with the creative women who inspire me every day.

if you've read my blog before, you know that i've tried to do a new discovery post every week over the past year. well, with jodie's playground, my goal is to engage others to join me in adding play to our daily routines, and friday will be the day to check in and see how we're doing. i imagine my flashback friday's will be similar to my discoveries, but focused on what i'm doing to nourish my childlike spirit.

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this week i'm going to talk about one of my favorite subjects: reading. as a 20-something i started collecting children's books--you know the ones:

• the very hungry caterpillar
• corduroy bear
• alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

i don't know what made me start doing it, but my mom and i had such fun flipping through dozens of amelia bedelia's mishaps! thinking back on those books reminds me how much i loved reading as a kid...hours spent at the peoria public library, lounging on bean bag chairs, checking out mountains of summer reads.

my cousin was recently in town for a week and finished 3 books on her trip (p.s. she's a teacher and has a master's in reading--she reads FAST). once she finished one, i took it and i actually finished a whole book that week too (and i was working!) it made me think of those awesome summer reading lists...and how i devoured words like candy back then, a sugar-high when my heroine saved the day.

and last week i realized that i still get that high. that feeling when you're at the peak, not knowing what will happen next. and then the depression that sets in when the last page is turned, and i must bid farewell to  my new friends. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an incredible book...i highly recommend it for the last lazy weeks of summer. and if you don't have time for that one, then maybe one of shel silverstein's poems will do the trick. 

what are you doing this summer that makes you feel like a kid?