You know the old 80′s love song by Cinderella that croons “don’t know what you got till it’s gone”? Well, I never dreamed that in all my uncoolness, it would apply to a library system. Seriously. I just reached a whole new level of lame with that confession, but I digress…
Anyhoo, back in the ’Ham, the kids and I always enjoyed our local library. I started taking them there from the time that they could sit up in a stroller and made almost weekly appearances until we left. They all participated in many of the great programs that they offered from Storytime as toddlers, to Summer Reading Program all the way through elementary school. They were known and loved there.
Well, I guess I just expected that most libraries were sort of similar, so shortly after I arrived in our new town, I quickly found the library. One of the first things that made me aware that ‘Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore’ was that there was only one little old library. ~cue the haybales~ There were no others from which to pull like there are in the bigger places. If if wasn’t in this location, well, you were outta luck, Jack. {I’ve been missing Duck Dynasty, can you tell? 
} And, guess what? What they did (do) have was altogether unimpressive. We stayed the course, however, for 2 solid years and then last Wednesday happened.
First of all, let it be said that it is NO SMALL FEAT to get this Crew with it’s 2 babies and all of their paraphrenalia out the door. It just isn’t. I tried it the week before, and just as I was about to walk out the door, the baby had a phenominally huge blow-out which required a bath for her, and a change of clothes for me. Then Julianna threw up because of all the poop and Isa scratched Andrew which upset him to the moon and back, so I scrapped the whole Leaving the House thing and put everyone to bed for a nap.
Fast forward to last Wednesday when I pulled up my bootstraps and tried again. The middle two had been to pick cotton, you see, and come Hades or High Water, all I wanted was for them to make a blasted LAPBOOK about COTTON. So, I loaded up the Crew and went downtown. It all started out just swimmingly; we were greeted and the babies were behaving like a charm. We went directly to the computer to do a search for Eli Whitney because, you know, OF COURSE they would have a book about Eli Whitney since he created one of the most important inventions in the whole wide world, right? No. Nary a book on Eli Whitney. Not a single book about the cotton gin or cotton or anything. After exhausting every single key-word that we could think of, we decided to check out the shelves on our own, just in case, to no avail.
Finally, after being there for awhile, Isa was getting antsy, so I took her out of her stroller and she squealed in delight. I bent down and put my finger on her lips and said “shhhhhhhh”. She totally obeyed me, but I heard someone loudly clear their throat behind me, so I slowly turned around and there was the little children’s librarian like a prison warden all hunched over me and way up in my personal space {and anyone who knows me, knows how much I LOVE *that*}. She proceeds to inform me in the most condescending, sing-song tone ”Ma’am, she’s going to have to stop that because I’d hate to ask you to leave…”
Awesome.
As evidenced by the fact that I am typing this, my head did not explode. It’s probably a miracle of epic proportions, but God’s in the business of those. 
My whole crew left there missing the great library experience that they had been used to all their lives. I was bummed out because we were missing an important and very valuable tool for our homeschooling, too. However, over the weekend, it dawned on me that one could purchase a library card if they lived outside of the counties that they served, so I decided to search libraries that are closer to the big cities here in Mississippi. Jackpot!!
I found an INCREDIBLE library system that covers a huge chunk of Central Mississippi. There are 21 libraries in all so their selection is massive. The loan time is a solid month because we’re homeschoolers and they are chock-full of children’s programs and activities. AND, it’s just $25 for each person in our entire family to get cards (that’s a boatload of books that we could potentially check out!) We went today and LOVED it! We are about an hour away, so I plan to make a trip once a month, when the books are due. I hope to participate in a story time with the girls that’s for ages birth-3 years, while the older ones have their time getting what they need, and then we’ll go to the great park/playground that’s directly behind it if the weather is nice. Plus, we’ll be close to the city, so we can jet over there if we need something that’s unavailable here. I’m sooooo excited to have found this!!
Isa LOVED the playground there. It was her first time on a swing and she had a blast:
Juju took her down the slide, too, and she laughed all the way down:
My Carah-bear just took it all in. She recently found her little voice, so she practiced using it all the way through the library and while we were outside. This picture CRACKS. ME. UP. This bow is bigger than her whole head, but hey, she’s a southern girl, and down here the saying is “the smaller the girl, the bigger the bow”. Can it possibly get any bigger than this??
HAHAHA!!! She’s looking at me like “Really, Mama?” Love my sweet little muffin <3
Oh, before I forget, we did find about 4 different books to write our reports for their lapbooks about cotton, thank goodness. 
All’s well that ends well, right?
Love this. You’re a wonderful momma with a super crew of kids. You’re blog is a blessing