So today’s post is totally unrelated to my photography studio and 100% about me as a Mama – and I love it.  My oldest is four and a half and in junior kindergarten.  Last week he was “Star of the Week”.  Now, this is pretty huge when you are four.  He got to make a poster all about himself, take it to school to show his class, bring in a favorite book for Daddy to read to the class and even bring his little brother in for the half hour of family time on that Monday morning.  All week he had special duties like announcing the calendar and being line leader.  But none of this came close to what Friday brought.  Because on Friday he got to bring home the class pet, Waddles the Penguin.  Now, fortunately for me, Waddles is a stuffed penguin.  But to watch my son with him all weekend you would have thought he had brought home an exchange student or new baby brother or something.  He absolutely treated him like a new member of the family.  He introduced him to everyone we met, he gave him an extensive guided tour of our home, explained where everything was that he might possibly need, and even tried to teach him how to play ball (yes, the stuffed penguin).

Then there were the adventures.  Waddles just about wore me out with the adventures.  Benjamin wanted to take him everywhere we typically might go in a month – in two days! We had pancakes at the Family Diner, played with friends and the trains at the bookstore, drove race cars at a birthday party, went to Sunday School, had a muffin at Starbucks, visited half the neighborhood, baked cookies, skyped with the grandparents, and went to the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum.  All with Daddy out of town for the weekend…And we loved it.

The assignment was to take Waddles wherever we went all weekend and take photos.  Then we were to put them in a little book the teacher had sent home and send it back to school for Benjamin to show the class and tell all about their adventures together.  Of course, me being me, and he being my son, we *may* have taken just a *few* more photos than the average family, *may*.  So since putting the photos in the book one by one would have been a little over the top, even for the Stengel family, I decided to put them together in blog collages to condense it all a little.

Well, since I have them all together anyway, I just couldn’t resist showing off some of this cuteness with all of you.  So no itty bitty newborns here, but still, some serious cuteness overload none the less….