Two kinds of Heaven

This morning Ben and I and Paul all went to the Atlas Marble & Tile store in Arnold, Maryland, to pick out the tile for the back splash behind the kitchen sink. My friend, LeeAnna, had told us about this store, and we are so glad she did. It was heaven; full of wonderful tile and helpful salespeople. We were greeted by the knowledgeable and capable Anne, who listened to what we wanted and led us to several suitable selections. We quickly choose the beige and white 4x4" squares in the second photo, which we'll have set on the diagonal as shown. Then we looked around at all the other gorgeous offerings and I fell in love with the 2x2" squares of glass tiles shown in the third photo. We decided to use a couple of rows of glass tiles as accents, though I decided to go with more neutral shades of beige and white. I loved so many other beautiful tiles there -- the metallic tiles and the rocks -- and it was such fun to look at them all.

After the tile store, we went to Toys R Us. It was Paul's "half birthday," and he is now officially 8 1/2 years old. To celebrate, he used his birthday gift card to buy Bakugan. These toys are little round balls that cleverly open up when tossed down onto metal cards during "brawls." They are the rage with eight and nine year-olds, as evidenced by the crowd that gathered around the Bakugan aisle while Paul was there. Paul was in his own heaven.