Best. Weekend. Ever.

It's the weekend I look forward to all year - the book sale! Kellaura, Amber, and I made our 4th annual visit to the Friends of the Houston Public Library Book Sale and with over 80,000 books it was again everything we've dreamed about all year long. I'm not sure how to stress how exciting the weekend is for us, involving careful planning to make sure we're wearing shoes comfortable enough to walk around in all day, bringing a bag to carry our books while we look, ariving at the convention center early on Sunday to wait for the doors to open, and talking about the sale all year long. Of course, the biggest event is BAG DAY on Sunday, when you can fill a grocery bag (provided by the sale) with as many books as you can fit for $10.

I have two favorite parts of the weekend. One of them is packing and repacking my bag (multiple times throughout the 4 hours we spent at the sale today) to maximize the number of books I can fit. It's always amazing to start with a gigantic pile of books, then pack strategically enough to still have half the bag empty and go back out into the convention center to look for more books to fill it.

This year I had 43 books in my bag - a new personal best.

My other favorite part of the book sale is the big reveal, when we all sit around after the sale and each take a turn showing every book in our bag. I love seeing everyone's selections; Kellaura's usually contains some books on gardening and horses, as well as books by authors that I most likely have never heard of but will at some point become very attached to through Kellaura's influence. Amber's selection is always completely giving, picking up antique books for her parents, baby books for her sister, mechanical books for her husband, and even gourmet gardening books for Kellaura and black cat books for me.

My find of the day was a book that I have wanted since I heard about it, Go In and Out the Window, a book of folk songs with music and illustrations from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also came home with a nice selection of fiction (including some Dick Frances and Ngaio Marsh thanks to Kellaura and Kate's influence), Cooking the Norwegian Way, a stack of board books for Rush, a knitting book, and from my Saturday shopping, Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook, which maybe I will use someday instead of serving chips and hot sauce.

It was a tiring and awesome two day book sale marathon. Rush didn't actually attend the book sale, but was exhausted from spending all weekend with the guys. He's sleeping; I'm just pretending for the photo. How could I sleep with so many new books to look examine?