Last week, as you all know, we had a BIG Day on May 14. THIS week, our BIG Day happened yesterday, May 20. We’re starting to wonder if this is a trend. Man-oh-man, we hope it is. We want to continue to test the bounds of how much fun and how many cupcakes we can pack into every week. Join us!

Yesterday’s first BIG Event happened at Hikone Community Center. Take a look at this:

Stacia hugs Colby before she reads yet another thrilling Goosebumps tale to her.

That’s right, that dog is wearing a party hat. And YES, it’s because our Volunteer of the Month, Colby, celebrated her sixth birthday yesterday. We came equipped with paw-print party hats, paw-print plates, and a whole bunch of cupcakes. Which, oddly enough, disappeared while the students were upstairs reading to the birthday girl. We found them here:

Shah’liah picked a good hiding spot … but not good enough!

Do you know what it looks like when twenty or so kids sing happy birthday to a dog? Well, I’ll tell you this much, it’s hard to get a good picture. But it looks something like this:

When the students sang, “Are you one? Are you two? Are you …” it went on for a little too long.
Because Colby doesn’t actually bark (except occasionally in her sleep).

Thirty-six cupcakes and three dozen hugs later, we rushed off to the cheer on 826michigan’s kickball team, Better Bot’s ONWARD ROBOTS! Friends, we are the losingest team in the league! (Although I’m pretty sure we have the most fun. And, between us, two of the games we’ve lost, technically we sort of won. But we don’t like to quibble. And we don’t need to get into that here.) The bottom line is, we have fun! And everyone loves an underdog, right?

Sarah “Jean Genie” Walker, a kickball pro, in action.

The weather was gorgeous, and our kicks, if not entirely successful, were well intentioned.

(Click for larger photo.)
Better Bot’s ONWARD ROBOTS! takes the field. See all those 1s and 0s for the team numbers?
It’s a binary code joke, get it? When we stand side to side, we can spell two to three letters!

Meanwhile, back at the lab, it was famed workshop leader Rachel Feder’s birthday too. Some of you may know Rachel as one-half of the leadership team of 826’s own Poetry Clique (now enrolled in our If There’s a Sonnet, I’m ON It workshop). The Clique brought in birthday poems, clay snails, and chocolate cake. What a way to celebrate! They also worked together to write this:

A Box of Crayons

The colors splash before me
As my hands whip across the page
A splash of blue, a splash of beige
A rainbow for all to see

A tall evergreen tree
The colors dancing brave
What’s over there? A polar bear!
White and — I don’t know — with snow!

Bears and cake and colors thrive
A castle by the tree
The castle is by thee!
The yellow polar tree — I think I see a bee!
The meteor splashes like colors.
Hope you enjoyed the poem — goodbye!

Friends, do you have any idea how charming and delightful it is to show up to work in the morning and see something like THAT on the white board? I can tell you, it is wildly charming and overwhelmingly delightful, as are just about all things 826.

Happy birthday Colby and Rachel, and go go go Better Bot’s ONWARD ROBOTS!