Vancouver, Washington, USA

We were so happy when Brian's Flat Stanley came to visit. Unfortunately, his envelope got buried on the kitchen table -- Ms. Ensing can tell you about how piled our kitchen table gets because she lived with us one summer. But eventually Flat Stanley called out to us, "I want to see where you live!"

And what a day to explore! Usually in March we have some sunshine and see some flowers starting to bloom. But this day we had snow! Flat Stanley had never seen snow before, so he was very excited. He watched it come down and then he played in it until he got cold.

 We have lots of big evergreen trees in our neighborhood and back yard. The green grass was sheltered from the snow by the big trees. You can see the snow on our neighbor's roof and on the grass in between the trees.  We like to go for walks in our neighborhood. We walk past our church, down to a field where we can see the Portland airport, and through some woods and a neighborhood of houses. But this day it was cold so we stayed inside after playing in the snow.

Next Flat Stanley went with us to work. Since we own a toy store, Flat Stanley was pretty excited to go to work.

Stanley told us he likes to read, so he perched on the big bear in the book area and looked at all the books. He had a hard time deciding what to read, but he finally chose one from our shelf of local authors -- people who live right here in Vancouver or across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. People often get this Vancouver confused with the one in Canada, but we had the name first.

Then Flat Stanley decided he wanted to try on hats. He could have tried a cowboy hat or a pirate hat, but instead he wanted to be an alien with three eyes. Five eyes, if you include the two on Stanley's face!

Then Stanley went to the front counter to help April ring up customers. Here he's helping her scan a little red car. The scanner he and April are using tells the computer what toy someone's buying, and the computer tells us how much it costs.

Flat Stanley decided he'd like to live in the Calico Critters house, or at least play there for awhile. He and the critters ran up and down the staircase and moved furniture around.

Back at home, Flat Stanley and Luka, our dog, got acquainted. But when Luka tried to chew on Stanley's head, it was time for Stanley to say, "Goodnight everyone!"