Bedtime 4 Gio

The ultimate bedtime stories are the ones that come to life with your favorite loved ones in my opinion. Mine would be: Baby Gio. My only grandson. Of course, we have our favorite childhood bedtime story. But mine--- the one I came to fall mad deeply in love with. It is a creation of your own twisted mind. My grandson is 6 now. Before Covid-19 came into our lives, I lived in a small click-ti'-fied town named Florence. It's located between Phoenix Arizona and Tuscan. Some say when you move there you get trapped forever. That is a whole long story for another bedtime story. Maybe you will read about that someday too. Ok! Now then. We created our own bedtime story called In nowhere land. I came up with an idea to create a children's book because I loved reading to Gio every night. We would make up scary stories, funny stories, sad stories, and even roll off of each others stories. It was just our thing. But one day, I decided to take it a step further. I went online and searched Google how to create children's books for free. I gathered many ideas and used an app on my phone to put together a very interesting bedtime story. I can't even remember the site I used or i would share it with you as well. Anyhoo, Gio and I went outside took pictures of rocks, dirt, him playing with his toys using his imagination, and landscape photos of this small dessert town. When you picture the Western black and white movies with the tumble hay rolling through a quiet ghost-town........... This is exactly Florence, AZ. The wild wild west at it's finest but with little or nothing to do. However, they have an awesome library which also helped us through so many nights with bedtime stories. This library also inspired me to write and create this bedtime story. So, remember whenever there are downs in your town there are ups. This would be our Library. We had so much fun taking the photos and using the phone cartoon app to turn these photos into our picture book bedtime story. It was about grandma (me) leaving for the weekend to go out of town to work. I told Gio and my son Jaydin to make the best of it in this boring small town with nothing to do except use your imagination. They came up with many adventures while I was on my trip. The first day they used card board boxes, rocks, dirt, toy Dino's, and paper people to destroy the bugs that invaded the town. The next day they put on a magic show using things they could find around the house. On the last day they drew pictures of what they did and drew me coming home with my suitcase and made their own book to show me. We included all of these things in the book. So, the bedtime story called: Adventures in Nowhere land was a story drawn in a story. As you turned the pages of this bedtime story and read it it came to life. You could see our town, us telling a story about our story and it showed the whole story in the story. If you know what I mean. It was the coolest thing ever. We went to our rental office to use their computer and printed off the pictures and words and created our own bedtime story book. We had to do this because we had no computer and that also assisted with using our creative flow. We literally brought pictures to life! Every night after that I would read my little baby boy Gio our own adventure at bedtime. He would lay on my chest and say such the sweetest things to me. This was the best bedtime story because it was made with our own imaginations but most importantly with love. This bedtime story can be your bedtime story for you and your loved ones. I believe that the best bedtime stories are the ones we can simply just share with whoever we feel needs to hear our voice to roll over into your growing age. We also made the best of living in a deserted down apartment complex that had mold in it, dusty dirt and cheap rocks with no grass or clean nice landscaping, pool always closed, 1 small playground, summers so hot you have to stay inside, and nothing for the kids to do except use their imaginations in this No-Where land town you never heard of. See, you make the best of what you have and create. The best bedtime stories! It is at bedtime when you need your most peace and need to fill your lifeline back up. So, the best thing to do in my opinion, is to use what you already have which is already there : Your imagination! In this instance, our imaginations told us use modern day technology, take photos of what is already around you, use apps to convert to children book photos, your own fingers to draw pictures, words from your heart, and the people already by your side. Then you include them your memory bank. WAHLA! You will never tell a bad bedtime story because no story is ever a bad story when it comes from you! Universal Love.

Shannon Hindman

The End.