25 Cents

We've been working on a new project around here for the last couple of days.

Grandma has been saving all of her State Quarters in a big piggy bank. She asked the boys to sort them all and put them in a book that they could keep and then give her back the extras to use as spending money on her vacation.

No problem.

Of course I had to turn it in to an educational event so we are sorting them all by state and then cataloging the total number and the number of Denver mint and Philadelphia mint. After that we put them in the book and set the extras aside.

This has proven to take a very long time.

She had over 40 of some of the states....like Conneticut, Virginia and Nevada.

Still it has been a fun activity for the boys and I.......and Kinley. (After the first evening we decided to wait until she was in bed to continue our project. She shook the table way too much for maintaining 50 piles of quarters.)

As we were sorting them all by state we each took a few states and started piling them in front of us. Since Cainan can't read we had to describe the pictures on the quarters. I would say, "Who has the one with the big eagle (Idaho), or the man riding a horse (Delaware) or the Arch (Missouri)?" The kids would then answer and I would hand them the appropriate quarter to put on their pile. I was collecting piles too so they had to ask me the same questions.

At one point Cainan said, "Who has the Great Wall of China?"

Silence from me.

"Great Wall of China!!!????!!!" from Ryker.

I thought he was probably referring to one of the quarters with mountains on it like Colorado or California or maybe even North Carolina because it has the Wright Brothers bi-plane on it and it really does look kind of like a wall. But, no.

When I looked at the quarter in his hand I saw New York. The Statue of Liberty.

My son confused the Great Wall of China with the Statue of Liberty!!

My son thinks the Great Wall of CHINA is in the United States!

Of course Ryker got a big laugh out of this. The next time he found Iowa (old school house) he said, "Hey, who's got the pile for the Cistine Chapel?"

Very funny, wise guy.

And while we are on the topic of state quarters let me just vent for a minute.

I started two books in 1999 when the program first started...one for Brian and I and one for Ryker, our only child at the time. This showed very little foresight on my part because I kinda knew I would someday have two other kids and no quarter books to give them, but whatever.

The problem I have is with the lack of foresight on the part of the Treasury or Mint or whoever makes the decisions about what goes on a quarter. My books have holes for 100 quarters, 1 from each mint for each state. When 2008 ended I thought I was done.

Now I find in my wallet a District of Columbia quarter and Puerto Rico quarter! What am I supposed to do with those? How many more quarters are there going to be? U.S. Virgin Islands? I wish back in 1999 they would have decided exactly who was going to get a quarter and given them their own little hole. I guess I'll just be really classy and staple a Ziploc bag with the extra quarters in it on to the back of the books I have.