New Parent Advice: Read to your kid

Goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush"

Today, we are visiting our sorta-granddaughter.  One of our exchange students stayed in the country, got her degree, found a nice Russian immigrant to marry, and settled down.  Since she is the closest of our "kids", we get to see them more than our own progeny.  Sophia was born on Friday, and we finally get to go see her tonight. 

We are going to bring her a couple of traditional English language books since both her parents are natural Russian speakers.  Then, we will sit down and read to her. 

As our children were growing up, we read to them constantly.  They would crawl up on our laps, relax and listen to the stories.  And we collected stories. 

The public library once put a hold on Gail's card because she had the maximum number of books checked out (60).  Valerie came home crying one day because her teacher had given the students homework of counting all the books in the house.  I taught her about estimation that day, for the total we came up was north of 1000.  The girls were reading Harry Potter books in second grade. 

All of my children are eloquent, and all still read.  I firmly believe that reading to them stretched their mind, as well as formed the parent-child bond both physically and mentally.  So, put down the phone, remote, video game controller or dirty dishes, and read to your kid.  You both will feel better. 

Christmas Candle

After our children grew up and went to college, we began to host exchange students attending a local community college.  Some stayed all year, and some only a few months.

During 2014 and 2015, the college had an agreement with a high school in Herning, Denmark where an entire class would come over to study in America for two months.  In 2015, Camilla came to stay with us.

Tall and blond, like most Danish girls I've met, she was very outgoing, not wasting her opportunity to see America.  Her mother worked at a Christmas store in Denmark, so Camilla brought us tradition Danish Christmas Candle.  It says, God Jul (Happy Christmas) in Danish and has numbers along the side.  As she explained, you were supposed to burn the candle each night until you get to the day, counting down until Christmas.  (As you can see, we weren't very consistent burning our candle.)

Camilla was only with us from October 2nd through December 2nd so she was not around for Christmas that year.  Since it was her favorite time of the year, we broke out the Christmas decorations and put up the tree right after Thanksgiving.  Camilla, Ai, and Beryl, our three students for the year, enjoyed opening up the Christmas decorations and putting them up on the tree.

When Gail and I actually travel to Europe together, we will have to stop by Herning and look up Camilla and Nadja.  Too bad the school decided to go to San Francisco in 2016.