Buy all the books!!

Ok, so the January blah's have hit. Ugh. I'm in fake it till you make it mode. I need sunshine.

But in an attempt to shake the blah's, we took a family trip to the bookstore last night. Nothing cheers me up like a room full of books. The boys got Barnes and Noble gift cards from my mom and stepdad for Christmas this year, so we decided to take them on a little spending spree with their money.

What I realized immediately is that we don't go to bookstores and libraries nearly enough, which I'm ashamed to admit. For someone who loves big rooms of books as much as I do, it's weird that I don't spend more time there. Our house is full of books and someone is always reading something,  but most of the time it's easier just to order them from Amazon or get the digital version for our plethora of Kindle capable devices. I'm a big fan of Kindle books. I should be taking my kids on weekly trips to the library, but they have school libraries and we can check out e-books from home and we always have books available, so it just never happens.

But last night at the bookstore was pretty awesome. Josh likes to read fine, he reads a lot of books for school but it's not his favorite thing to do for pleasure, but Matthew is my book reading kid. Matthew inherited my crazy love of books. Matthew is the kid who will read all afternoon and then lay in bed at night and read until someone finally comes and forces him to turn off the light. Matthew walked into that bookstore last night and literally gasped. And my heart melted because it's exactly what I do when entering a big room full of books. That is my child.:)

We went over to his age appropriate book section and I told him he had $30 to spend and to have fun choosing. I thought he was literally going to die from excitement right there on the floor. He looked like he just wanted to inhale all the books. I know that feeling. Seeing that same reaction in him made my heart smile. It's not like the kid never gets to pick out books. He goes to the school library once a week. He picks out books all the time. But getting to buy books at the bookstore is way more fun. It's a book lover thing.

Josh wandered off to find a book for a book report, Shawn looked at books with Clarissa and I got to help Matthew narrow down the choices for his books. Hanging out with a fellow book lover at a bookstore is kind of the best thing ever. We looked all all sorts of books, looked at prices to find the most bang for his buck and had a grand time. He finally picked three books and I left him to go help Clarissa for a minute.

A few minutes later Matthew came running over all excited that he had found the shelf with one of his favorite book series and he was so excited he could barely get the words out. Then I remembered that he still had $10 that he had gotten from Shawn's dad for Christmas. I told him to go pick out another book. I think his head almost exploded from the excitement, lol. Shawn and I got a good chuckle out of his enthusiasm. You would have thought that kid had never seen a book before for as excited as he was at the bookstore. I loved it because it was like watching myself as a kid. I used to constantly beg my mother to buy more books. Getting the Scholastic book order form was like Christmas. I would spend hours examining it and picking out the perfect books. When I was about Matthews age I spent a weekend developing a card catalog system for all my books on the shelves in my room. Nerd alert. :)

So we all had a fun time picking out books. Spending the evening at the bookstore was the perfect family activity with the kids and a nice way to break up the January blah's.

We got home and Matthew immediately started reading. I don't think I'm going to see much of that kid for a while. Not without a book in his face, anyway.

I got a Korean novel that has been translated into English called Please Look After Mom that looks interesting. I think I'm going to bury my own nose in a book today. Maybe I can read away the January blah's. February is almost here! Yay! :)