My second favorite day of the year

If you know me, you know that Christmas is my most favorite day of the year. I like the start of winter. I like the cooking and the giving of gifts. I do my shopping all year round and am always done by Nov. 15. Things are wrapped and tagged and shipped to family by Dec. 10. It eliminates a lot of stress for a woman who hates standing in line, large groups of insane people and, well, traffic. 

My second favorite day of the year has become the annual Center for Children's Books sale held by the Graduate School for Library Sciences at the University of Illinois. And today is that day! 

But before I swing by and pick up Quigs for the festivities, I have to get a large amount of homework done for school. At 10:30 a.m. I'm observing my focal child. I have to type up my observation of the class I visited last Wednesday for my program planning class that's due tomorrow. (I wrote it on Friday while I waited for my tires to be changed, but I forgot to take my laptop, so I've got to type it and put edit it.) 

I also failed to finish my psych reading, so I have to do that and take an online quiz before the 11:55 p.m. deadline tonight. 

Thank goodness MacTroll is home this entire week. Its the first and only full week in February he's home. So we've got a lot going on before he has to run off again. 

Oh, and by the way, if you see my son around, he's a bit birthday obsessed. He's very excited about being three. He's very excited about his special day, and unlike his mother who has terrible birthday karma and wishes, most of the time, that the day would just come and go unnoticed, X-man loves his birthday. We've been practicing blowing out candles without spitting with my birthday cakes. Like at Christmas, I love watching X-man get excited for special days. Special days that are all about nothing but fun and enjoying them with the people you love. 

But the coolest part is that X-man was born the opening weekend for Jarling's in 2006, which means his birthday is always likely to coincide with that date. And if Jarling's is opening then warm weather is just a few weeks later. I don't call anything before May 1 a guarantee of warmth because I've had school canceled as late as April 26th for snow... 

So, hooray for good stuff like books, birthdays and frozen custard. 

Update: Nearly $400 worth of new children's books for $96. It was awesome to read new books with X-man all afternoon.