February is "I Love to Read" month.

In elementary school, my favorite time of the school year was February. In February we celebrated "I Love to Read" month which provided us with more free reading time. I remember different nooks being set up throughout the K-5 area. For some reason, I remember a couple nooks in the hallway connecting the K-5 area to the 6-12. They were made out of cardboard, I think, with bean bags in them.

Here we are, half way into February already. How did that happen? I suppose it helped that we had a busy start. On the 3rd, I ran a 10k up in Nago. The very next day, we left for Tokyo and stayed until Thursday. Now it is Tuesday of the next week; we didn't do much this past weekend, I felt like I was catching up on rest from the crazy whirlwind that was traveling with two toddlers. I'll tell everyone all about the Tokyo trip at a later date; I forgot my camera, so I'm at Jess' mercy for photos. I don't want to share our trip without the photos.

Anyhoo, back to I Love to Read month. I thought I'd share two different posts -- three, maybe, if Dan feels like sharing what he's been reading lately. I thought I'd share some of Evelyn's favorite books lately.

Evelyn has shown a lot of interest in dinosaurs in the past couple months, and she really loves this book. My Mom sent it a few months ago, and I thought dinosaurs would maybe be too scary for her so I never read it until she began continuously asking about dinosaurs. The book used to be my brother's and it was one of his favorites too, if I recall. "Ten Little Dinosaurs" is written by Pattie Schnetzler.

Another book she really enjoys is Richard Scarry's "Busy, Busy World". On the front cover, there is a map of the world and shows an illustration of each character in the book and where they are from. I let Evelyn pick which stories we read, and she almost always chooses the same ones. The cat from Hawaii, and the story about Manuel from Mexico. Last night we read Manuel's story, and the story of the animals trying to cram onto the train in Tokyo.

From the library, we found (and loved) "How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?" by Jane Yolen. I'd like to get my hands on more of the "How Do Dinosaurs..." books but I haven't seen any others at the library recently. Around Christmas time we did borrow the Christmas-themed "How do Dinosaurs" book.

"I'll See You in the Morning" by Mike Jolley is the very last book we read before bed. I can read it without looking at it, that is how many times we've read it. Evelyn has started parroting certain words in the book as well, after I say them though sometimes before I say them. It is a really cute book -- I got it for Jess' son and Amber's son for Christmas because we love it so much. When we travel, I bring this book along because it is so integral to our bedtime routine.

(All images courtesy of Amazon.com)