Lincoln's Birthday

This morning we had THE biggest Lincoln Birthday Party in Hall County - no question about it!  I don't have proof of this, but I've never heard of anyone doing all this for our sixteenth President before, so that's how I make my claim.  What did we do, you ask?  

Last night before bed, it started with the fact that Mommy had ordered a couple of Lincoln-themed activity books for Madison some time ago.  These were ordered with the thought of, "Hey, we're already ordering something else and these aren't all that much - let's add them to our order."  

And so we had the booklets.  And then we remembered the Lincoln Logs.  But we didn't have all of our Lincoln Logs around, so we were somewhat limited there.  As you can see from the picture, we made it work.  The big finish was the penny.  Daddy used an image from an old KPTV episode where Lincoln was our guest, and taped the penny to his hand as if he were presenting it for the big day.  The theme of the video was about "shaking the earth" so we went with that for a card.

All of this was waiting for Madison when she got downstairs.  Her first words were something like, "Wha?"  Which is pretty much what we expected.  But she still enjoyed the odd surprise, and the activity booklets do have some mazes and word searches in them - she was doing some of those tonight before bed.  And there was some information about Lincoln in them, real information.  We tend to use Lincoln a lot in KPTV, randomly appearing to tell people this moral or that.  And she's seen Lincoln in the second "Night at the Museum" movie.  Other than that, history is not something she is seeing a lot of lately.  She's only in second grade though.  Still, as a huge fan of history growing up, I wonder when we get to start talking about all that...

We had another big chill today.  This was the sort of cold we had a few weeks ago, the kind that plunges southward and lets us all know winter isn't finished with us yet.  We had a carpenter outside all day, bless his heart.  The poor guy was replacing wood on the front of our house, and even repainting it.  All of it looks great, including our new roof.

Madison carried in to school her "Frozen" themed Valentine's Day box from last year.  Tomorrow, everyone will get to exchange cards.  Madison has them already filled out, with special candies and surprises for her teacher.  She's quite excited about that.

After school, we went to speech therapy together.  This was Daddy's first visit in quite some time.  Madison was working with the letter R today, just like a good pirate.  Her teacher says she's very willing to learn, and showing good progress there in a quick way.  But this will be a longer haul, we know.

We went straight home to grab a bite to eat after this - a quick meal before an event at the school.  Tonight, Madison and the other children (and all of us parents) were at the school for a campfire.  It was in the cafeteria, so of course it wasn't real.  But the feeling was that of a campfire, and a guy playing the guitar as we told scary stories, funny jokes, and sang songs.  We even had s'mores, which were about as messy as you are picturing in your mind.  The kids were invited to wear pajamas, which Madison did.  They all brought blankets to sit on around the campfire, and everyone had a great time.  The scary stories the kids told were hilarious - it might have been all the chocolate or something!

It was time for bed after that.  Madison was already in her pajamas, so that was easy! All of us went to bed a bit earlier tonight, jumping under the warm blankets and quickly drifting off to sleep, happy from another fun day.  Happy because Mommy is healthier, and that Madison isn't sick or with lice, and happy that we are together as a family.