Back in October, I decided to do an Advent Christmas book activity this year. I asked you all for advice and got a great list of ideas from all of you. I put many of the books on my Amazon Wish List for future years and bought a few to add to what I already own. Here is the final list for this year:
The Christmas Story~Carol Heyer
Gingerbread Baby
The Wind and the Willow Christmas
Animals' Christmas Carol
The Legend of the Candy Cane
Ellis Island Christmas
Silver Packages
The Dog Who Found Christmas~Linda Jennings
The Steadfast Tin Soldier~Hans Christian Andersen
The Christmas Day Kitten~James Herriot
The First Christmas According To Luke
A Winter's Night Tale
Woodland Christmas~Frances Tyrrell
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey~Susan Wojciehowski
The Chanukkah Guest~Eric A. Kimmel
The Gift of the Magi~O. Henry
The Legend of the Poinsettia~Tomie dePaola
The Crippled Lamb~Max Lucado
Grandfather's Christmas Camp~Marc McCutcheon
Christmas in the Trenches
The Christmas Candle~Richard Paul Evans
The Biggest Snowman Ever~Steven Kroll
Merry Christmas, Strega Nona~Tomie dePaola
Jingle the Christmas Clown~Tomie dePaola
The books are all wrapped and numbered in accordance with our calendar. I picked short books for our busy days and longer books for the weekends. I hope to do some activities around some of the books, too. It should be fun and a great way to count down the days to Christmas.
We also went to the Grove Park Inn after Thanksgiving dinner to try to take our Christmas photo for our Christmas card. My poor Mother had to take a lot of pictures of her wiggling subjects to get this shot. However, we are glad that we got it on our first attempt. I had to dress the kids up 4 times last year before I got an acceptable one! Here is our 2008 picture.
Here is a cute shot of just the kiddos...
Blessings, Dawn
Wow what a lovely advent! I just love the whole idea! And to get the photo on the first shot is a blessing! It is a beautiful photo!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great advent idea!! To have the books all wrapped up makes it more exciting! We have some of those books too. Jonathan Toomey always makes me cry!
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about taking a family picture. In ours somebody is always looking funny!
Blessings!
Beautiful children! Great pictures.
ReplyDeleteAntoinette
OMG, my grandchildren are just knock-outs! And the big teen looks like a teen idol in the second photo. Who knew he was so photogenic? Lots of love, Mom & Grandma
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely family you have :) And that is a fantastic list of books! I'm going to have to come back again and check them all out :) Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteBChsMamaof3
Ohhh what a wonderful book list and the pics are soooooo nice. We have to get a family pic soon. I know what you mean by having to take several pics to get the right one. [0;
ReplyDeleteI pray blessings and ((hugs)) my SSiC
In Him<><
-Mary
I love your pictures. I took our Chrismas card picture yesterday but I just used my two youngest. I will put them on the cover and then take a group shot for the inside. God Bless you and your family
ReplyDeleteit is so hard to get good group shots, isn't it? Someone seems to always be looking the other way or goofy. :)
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of a Christmas book countdown. How clever to wrap the books as the gifts they are. You always have the best ideas. Thanks so much for sharing them,