Once Upon a Read-a-Thon Day 1

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It’s the starting line of the Once Upon a Read-a-Thon hosted by Candace at Candace’s Book Blog, Angela & Loretta at Reading Angels and Pure Imagination.  It runs from NOW, 12:01 am on July 8th to 11:59 on July 10th.  If you haven’t signed up, hurry and do so HERE. You will be entered into an awesome giveaway just for signing up!

Some Inspiration

My goal for this read-a-thon is to do tons of fun reading activities with my kids over the next three days like library trips, library crafts and going to the bookstore.  I was really inspired by something Ally Condie said at her book signing for Crossed. She said that she did a lot of reading while she was growing up because her dad would have reading parties where they would all get a new book and a treat and they woud read together.  Ever since she said that, I wanted to do that for my kids.  I got the idea to do it for an online read-a-thon from a post from Dewey’s 24 hour Read-a-thon.

My goals

I want to have fun with my kids! We are going to get their free books they earned at Barnes and Noble for their summer program (and I’m going to finally get Siege and Storm and start it today!). Then we are going to read a few books without it seeming like I want to read. Because then they will totally rebel.  I’m going to have to make it seem like their idea….Maybe with a clubhouse/tent thing with flashlights. We’ll see how it goes :)

I will tweet pics and stuff on Twitter and Instagram.

In the evening I plan to read Siege and Storm! Well, first I need to finish this really long and boring chapter in Atlas Shrugged. I only have 9 pages left and then I seriously need a break from it for a while.  I’m on page 1062 so I’m almost done!!  We’ll see if I can finish both books by Wednesday.

Breakfast

I had a lovely Gluten-free banana muffin with cream cheese frosting while I read the really boring chapter I’ve been pluggin through from Atlas Shrugged.

 

Book Haul

After breakfast, my two boys and I headed to the local Barnes and Noble.  The lovely books we got! The boys got their books for free from the Summer Reading Program.

 

Actually, my youngest changed his mind about the Lego book and got Pete the Cat instead. I just forgot to take another picture. >.<

The boys saw the Thomas train table in the kids section so of course we stayed for an hour. We have massive amounts of train tracks and trains at home. *shrugs*

I read some more of my Atlas Shrugged on my kindle while the kids went nuts with the trains.  Hopefully they weren’t too loud. I’m not the best judge of what is loud anymore LOL! (Also, am I allowed to read my kindle there??) I’m thinking that I might actually finish this book today. It’s starting to get good again now that the lecture is over.

 

Then we came home for lunch. I made fried rice aka leftover rice with whatever was in my fridge. I found peas, corn, taco chicken, thai chicken, and sweet and sour chicken. And added some soy sauce. Voila.

 

My kids didn’t eat it. They ate more muffins and now they are gone. The rice wasn’t bad really.  Kind of more vinegary than usual, but good.

Then we had some reading in the clubhouse.  I grabbed all the books they like from their rooms and a pillow for the hard plastic ground and just went and sat in the tiny clubhouse. I didn’t say a word. Of course like little curious magnets, I could see them irresistibly drawn to me.

“Whacha doin mommy?”

“Are you reading books?”

“I wanna read books!”

“Me too!”

And that is how you get kids to do a lot of things. Don’t invite them and they immediately want to do it.

We read in that clubhouse til every part of my bum fell asleep.  We read 5 1/2 books. I was very impressed that their attention span lasted that long!

We read:

• Today We Will Fly by Mo Willems
• Should I Share my Ice Cream by Mo Willems
• Pigs Make Me Sneeze by Mo Willems
• Dragontales: Music is Magic
• Pete the Cat: Play Ball!
• Dolphins (half of it)

Then I did some dishes….and chopped potatoes for my roasted potatoes for dinner….and we read in the clubhouse some more.

• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Dr. Daisy MD
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Look Before you Leap!

And during every bathroom break and downtime I had during the day I finished Atlas Shrugged!

Totals

Time Read with kids: about 40 minutes

Total Books read with kids: 7 1/2

My Time Read: 1 1/2 hours

Total Pages Read: 135

I’m off to bed to start Siege and Storm. Can’t wait for tomorrow! We are going to the library for more Mo Willems books :)