Must Have Christmas Books!

It's that time of year when everyone starts sharing their favorite Advent/Christmas books {and Amazon affiliate links}! We have long had the tradition of wrapping up a picture book to share each night of Advent and the 12 days of Christmas. Usually, I select which books are read which night.  I decided to do something a little different this year. I spread all of our books out on the bed and brought the big kids in to tell me which ones were their "must have" books. Which books do we HAVE to read because it's just not Advent without them?

I was a little surprised by some of the picks, not surprised at all by a few and laughing hilariously at the ones that were chosen by them all (including my husband) for the "please let's NEVER read this again" pile… I'm looking at you, An Orange for Frankie! A few of these were sentimental favorites from their early childhood. Bigboy, as big as he is, is still partial to anything that has the word Christmas and kitten in it. Oliver All Alone was such a beloved story to Rain that it used to stay on her shelf all year long.

I'm sharing the list here hoping to introduce you to our favorites but also as a permanent record for this forgetful brain of mine.

While creating this list, I was horrified to see how many of our must have favorites are out of print. I better start looking now for gently used copies to hand down to future grandchildren.

MUST HAVES!

• The Shepherd's Christmas Story
• Corgiville Christmas
• The Homeless Christmas Tree
• Legend of the Candy Cane
• Christmas Cookies: Bite-Sized Holiday Lessons
• A Baker's Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale
• Marta and the Manger Straw
• The Christmas Cat
• The Christmas Kitten
• Stephen's Feast
• Hanna's Christmas 
• A Gift from St. Nicholas
• All for the Newborn Baby
• Father & Son: A Nativity Story
• The Three Gifts of Christmas
• The Lady of Guadalupe
• Christmas in the Trenches
• The Christmas Knight
• The Miracle of St. Nicholas
• Through the Animal's Eyes: A Story of the First Christmas
• Snowflake Bentley
• Saint Francis Celebrates Christmas
• Gift of the Magi
• The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
• One Snowy Night
• The Night of Las Posadas
• Christ Child
• Oliver All Alone
• Mortimer's Christmas Manger
• Angela and the Baby Jesus
• Papa's Christmas Gift: Around the World on the Night Before Christmas
• The Miraculous Child

On the "please let's never read this again" pile…
An Orange for Frankie (not a fan of the illustrations and... he dies!)
The Little Match Girl (hauntingly beautiful illustrations but... she dies alone… in the snow!!)
The Little Fir Tree (weird little tree that can survive being transplanted year after year but hey... at least the kid doesn't die!!!)

Now, we have a ton of Christmas books. Seriously… they would not all fit on my bed, but then again, my bed is a Queen size so, maybe that's not so bad. We decided to pull those books that we all liked but were more like chapter books instead of picture books and set them out in their own little basket this year so that everyone can enjoy them on their own time. I might list those later if anyone is interested.

And for anyone looking for Advent activity ideas, here is a an almost complete archive of our Advent adventures past:

Advent Archive

And here is an old post for those of you tempted to stress out and try to do ALL THE ADVENT ACTIVITIES:

Advent Musings

A Foggy Birthday in London Town

I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining.                                                                            ~ Groucho Marx

My sweet Rain, the child formerly known as Shortcake on this here blog, turned 14 yesterday. So, as of today, my three oldest are 16, 15 and 14. I'm not scared at all! Really. Teenagers are awesome… hormones and everything! Just wanted to get that PSA out of the way for the moms of all littles out there. Hang in there, Mama. This day will come.

So, back to Rain- inspired by Sunshine's Pink Paris themed birthday, she picked a London theme for this year so that she could enjoy her little Anglophile self and celebrate her birthday with so many of her favorite things… London, Sherlock, Harry Potter, Tolkien, etc… {with Amazon affiliate links, but you probably already knew that…}

The day began with London Fog Tea Lattes (sooooooo delicious) and homemade scones...

 We decorated our breakfast nook with pictures from a London themed calendar and this amazing dry erase wall pop decal shaped like a British phone box!

 This Union Jack birthday banner was a downloadable find on Etsy.

We decorated the table with things to represent London… this sweet 3D Keepsake Cityscape, a beautiful coffee table picture book and a delightful story  called Katie in London by James Mayhew about a little girl and her brother exploring London with one of the Trafalgar Square Lions.

 Here is a close up of that dry erase decal. Ten points to Gryffindor if you know the phone number written up there! ;)

A little Hobbit joined us (in her jammies). She was most delighted with the pictures of the castles! Real castles, Mama!!!

My poor husband had to try to interpret an idea I had in my head. Somebody should have bought him a crystal ball when we got married since he so often has to read my mind. The droops of tulle hanging from the ceiling was my idea of London fog rolling in. Can you see it? Doesn't matter. I can. Thanks, Sweetie!

 Sherlock and Watson showed up along with The Doctor. (She has seen only a few of these shows and a few Doctor Who episodes since some are not appropriate for her yet. And even of the ones that she's seen, we've skipped scenes and muted some conversations. Just FYI.)

 More table decorations… Tolkien's pipe, The Daily Prophet, a black lotus flower napkin and Sherlock's magnifying glass.

Since my boys were down this week with a minor cold and the littlest one is three (toddlers and tea pots do not mix), we decided to take just the big girls on a shopping trip to the British Emporium. What a fun place. I'm so glad we discovered it. After seeing the pictures and hearing the girls talk about it, the boys can't wait for us to go back…

British people like weird flavored chips… Tingly Prawn Cocktail, Worcester Sauce, Roasted Chicken whaaaaaaaa??? Crazy Brits!

Afterwards, we went out to lunch, just me and my big girls. Husband insisted, so did the recuperating  boys. Such a wonderful gift from our men. We've decided to make it a tradition! 

We came home and played a round of Sherlock themed Cluedo (that's just Clue to you non-anglophiles) It was a free printable I found online, not the official board game version that you can buy.  I had the board game printed up at Kinko's since it needs to be a larger size (11x17, I think). The cards and stuff can be printed on card stock at home. I mentioned to my kids that we could get the board game version if they liked it but they prefer the printable one… they like that you have to figure out who killed Anderson instead of who killed Moriarty. The actor who plays Moriarty looks a little like their Uncle Gavin so they don't want to see him bite the dust (no, they haven't seen that episode yet).
However, nobody likes Anderson! Hahahah!

The Cake…er… Trifle… um... The Trifake?

Rain asked for a proper British trifle as her birthday treat. A chocolate butterscotch trifle with Reese's peanut butter cups inside…okay, so maybe not very proper, but this girl knows what she likes! She was torn because she wanted some decoration on it too. My trifles are usually too lumpy on top to really decorate. So what I did was save the top half of the chocolate cake that went into the trifle and placed it on top, covering the trifle. I poured on a thin layer of ganache and then added decorations made out of marshmallow fondant to make it look like the door the 221B Baker Street. 

I think she kind of liked it.

She tells me she had a wonderful day. That smile says it's true.

We love to celebrate birthdays with a fun theme and as many festivities as we can pack in, but it's usually just our family so that makes it easier on this busy homeschooling mom. You can see all of our birthday party themes on this page.

All Hallows Party 2014

As my children have gotten older, I've noticed them coming back to my blog to look at scenes from the past, so I'm trying to push myself to keep recording our days here for them. I know this is late and All Hallows Eve is probably just a distant memory for most of you, unless you still have candy left over, but I didn't get a chance to blog about our party this year since we left to go out of town just a few days after.

I wasn't going to do much this year but then I think Melody mentioned online (I can't remember where though, sorry) that her big kids still dress up as an example and witness to the littles in the family. Since this is the first year that Miss Cupcake could really get into the party, I asked my bigs if they would consider donning saintly attire to help create the party mood and of course, they were happy to oblige. With us planning to head out of town so soon. we still kept things low key. I pulled out some old games from the attic box and added a few new ones which I will show you down below, but first, a look at our saint costumes again with full props (pipe and bread).

 Bl. Pier Giogio Frassati… pray for us!

St. Elizabeth of Hungary… pray for us!

The Professor donned some Roman garb and called himself St. Longinus (or St. Martin, whichever), Sunshine dressed up as St. Zita and Rain dressed up as a writer calling upon the assistance of St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers and journalists.

For dinner, we open up "St. Lawrence's Grill" and cooked outside. Later, for dessert, we made s'mores.

We set out our offering to the neighborhood kids who were trick or treating and then started playing some games. Our neighborhood doesn't get a ton of trick or treat traffic (dark streets, houses spaced further apart and no sidewalks) and the kids are mostly respectful. We've never had the unattended bowl cleaned out in the first 10 minutes or even in the first hour and in fact, this year, there was some left at the bottom.

St. Therese's Rose Toss

Cupcake was seriously impressed that her biggest brother could do it backwards!

Pin The Candle on St. Lucy's Wreath

I drew this wreath on a piece of cardboard and the candles on card stock. I used some self-laminating sheets to help stiffen up the candles and put tape on the back side so they would stick. 

Look at how delighted that little one is in the background… playing games with her big kids was the highlight of the night!

St. Nicholas Coin Toss

We had some bags of coins for Cupcake to toss but the big kids had fun trying to flip individual coins in. Super simple but a lot of fun. I think we will pull this one back out for St. Nick's feast day.

We used to have All Hallows Eve parties with our cousins which meant lots of little ones running around. Even though we only have one little one right now and the cousins have grown and gone, I need to remember to do those things that my big kids loved so that she doesn't miss out on the family fun…even if it is just our family. I'm so glad we did this!