Family Reading Night

Each spring, everyone looks forward to Family Reading night at the school. The kids start preparing for this night weeks in advance as they all have the opportunity to take part in the huge book swap. For 2 weeks before the big night, the kids can bring in books that they want to donate to the book swap. For each book that they bring in, they will receive a ticket for a free book at the book swap!

Every year, Darrin bring in a huge pile of books from his ever growing collection and replaces them with "new" ones. However, in the last few years, he has been finding it harder and harder to find books that he wants at the swap - many of the books are for younger kids. He has always been an advanced reader and many of the books were just too simple for him! We figured that this year was going to be tough for him to find many books at the swap.

But then he had a great idea! John and I had recently reconnected with an old friend and found out that she has a 5 year old son that, at 18 months old was diagnosed with an in-operable brain tumor. As any young child, Jayson LOVES to read and play games. Darrin decided that instead of picking out books for himself, he was going to pick out books for Jayson and then we would send these to him. I was very proud of his generosity! When he went through the books on his shelf, he ended up with 2 bags of books to donate to the book swap - 48 books in all!!

Now, with Family Reading night upon us, Darrin was on a mission to find books for Jayson.

This evening was filled with all kinds of exciting events, including a petting farm, open mic night, the book fair, basket raffles and of course the book swap. I think most of the kids spent the majority of their time playing with the animals in the petting zoo - including a snake!

By the end of the night, we found about 5 books at the book fair (gotta love when they book fair features buy one get on free books!), bought a bunch of raffle tickets for the basket raffles and found 30+ books to bring home - some for Darrin, but most of them were for Jayson... another fun successful family event at the school. With this being Darrin's last year at this school, we are going to miss the many events that they put on for the kids!