Aidan's big weekend!

Saturday Aidan had the opportunity to meet his favorite author: Brandon Mull. He was doing a book signing at the Barnes and Noble closest to us (we've got 3 w/in 15 miles). I sent Eric to BN at 9 am to pick up a "ticket". The signing started at 5 pm, but they gave out place tickets (A-Z) in an attempt to organize things, you only needed one per person with books, and you could bring as many as you wanted. We got J.

Since we weren't sure how many were in each group, Aidan and I headed out soon after 5. It took 20 minutes to get through the A's. So we went out and got dinner, brought it back home, ate, and then headed back out. We were back up around 6:45, having just called F, I bought some books for the other kids' Easter baskets, and one for myself (Secret Princess, by Indu Sundreason). Aidan and I found a bench and read until it was our groups turn, at this point they started to really move through the groups, about 1 every 10 minutes. And so, about 7:25 they called the J group.

All I can say is "WOW!" The reason the lines took so long is because Brandon Mull is a really, really nice guy. He like to talk to the kids, he asks them if they have any questions for him, and if they don't (or like Aidan get tongue tied) HE asks them questions. He had no problem with us taking a picture. And it turned out that he was personalizing the books too (1 per ticket). We could have brought the whole series with us, but we opted for just book 5, which now bears Brandon Mull's signiture and "Hi Aidan" on its title page. They also gave us each a signed poster of book 5's coverart. Aidan was on cloud nine on the way home, it couldn't have gone any better.