Michael - CFA and B&N

Michael in May 2009
Myrtle Beach

Last Monday I decided to take Michael to Chick-fil-A and Barnes & Noble since most of our outings here lately had been only to see Mema and Pop. I picked him up after he finished most of his school work, and we headed to CFA for the first time in a long while! I had one of those calendar coupons so the 8-piece chicken nuggets were free. I bought some waffle fries and a Dr. Pepper for him and got ice water for myself. He told me he loved salt so he was glad to see salt crystals on his waffle fries. :)

We stayed there a while -- Michael sat at the table playing with his Transformer and showed the nice lobby worker how it transformed after she showed some polite interest in his toy. (The workers at CFA are incredibly sweet and helpful!) I think the Decepticon Shockwave was the toy with us this day. I read a bit in my book, The Faith Club. The CFA cow came inside and asked Michael for a high five which Michael sheepishly gave with a smile and a look that said, "This is embarrassing. You aren't real!"

Next we drove over to Barnes & Noble where Michael located a "find these things" Superhero book which entertained him for the next 15 minutes or so. Even I was drawn into helping him find certain objects and characters on the colorful, busy pages. I glanced through a few Middle Eastern and Arabic language books out of curiosity, and Michael spent time in the children's section looking at books on snakes and castles and knights and mummies. Actually he brought the mummy book over to show me and since the back cover had a colorful picture of a decomposed body which had been mummified, he refused to place the book in his lap. No way would a picture of a body lie on his lap. He put it on the chair's arm instead. He seemed pretty creeped out by it, quickly put it back on the shelf and got something lighter and funnier -- a Sponge Bob coloring book with lots of stickers. I ended up purchasing this for him because he told me he really would like it, could make comic books with the stickers and it was the last one. Indeed when I took him home, as soon as he got there, he started working on his comic books. Stephanie said he did that all evening except for the hour they were at the library where he read to Emmie the golden lab. Yes, a real dog who likes having children read to her on Monday evenings!

Last weekend Michael had his friend spend the night with him. First of all they went swimming at Blake's house for about 4 hours on Saturday then Steph and Will picked up both boys and they had a good time that evening playing at Michael's house. Steph made them go to sleep around 11:15** and they were asleep within 15 minutes (probably all that swimming!) The next morning was church (they know each other from there) and then they went to the Winston-Salem air show with Will. So it was a fun and busy weekend for them.

** Contrast this with Austin who spent the night this summer and Steph heard the boys running through the house after midnight. They came into her room, asked if they could do some exercises in order to get tired enough to fall asleep. :-) Steph and Will heard them talking. Austin said, "Now, Michael, if you wake up and are scared just wake me up and I will hug you." And then they talked about "even now Jesus and Santa are watching over us."