One for the Money ...

About a month ago, Samantha went with me into the bank and deposited some coins and dollar bills from her piggy bank into her bank account.  (We started bank accounts for the girls shortly after each one of them was born).  That trip to the bank was the first time that we ever deposited money from her own piggy bank there -- every other time, it had been money given to her as a gift, or money that Steve and I put in there for her.

At the bank, she was so thrilled to watch as her coins rode up the conveyer belt of the coin converter machine, and then she had the honor of personally giving the receipt and any dollar bills to the bank teller.

Today, I needed to go to the bank anyway, so I asked if Sam would like to go in with me and we could take some money from her piggy bank.  She was elated!

Sam dumped the coins on the floor, and Sophia was very quick to come over and join in the fun:

Sam asked Sophia to help put some of the coins into her bag:

After a while, Sophia tried to stick one of her rather large, blue, plastic pretend coins (from her plastic pretend piggy bank) into Sam's bank.  Obviously, it wasn't working ...

Upon realizing that the plastic coin was too large for the slot on the top of the bank, she even tried to stick the coin in the BOTTOM of the bank:

Finally, Sophia just decided to put the real coins into the bottom of the bank:

It's amazing to see how fast coins add up.  We took five $1 bills to the bank for Sam's account and ended up with more than $15 in random loose change to add to it.  Sam was pretty pleased with herself ... but the bigger highlight for her was the sticker and bracelet that she got from the bank teller!