Unforgettable Childhood

Welcome to Unforgettable Childhood’s Christmas for Kids Special Feature.

Each day throughout the holiday season we will feature one recipe, project, craft or tradition that you can do with your kids.

The holiday season is a great time to start new family traditions and make memories that will last a lifetime.

Today’s feature is: Christmas Countdown Book Basket

Each Christmas our family adds books to our Christmas Library. Last night when the girls were out of the house with their dad I wrapped 27 Christmas books that I had put away since the last Christmas season. Before bed one of the girls unwrapped one book that we read as a bedtime story.

Each night up until Christmas we will read a book from the basket. When we get to the last book it will be Christmas Day. There are wonderful Christmas books that we share together every holiday.

Last night the book we read was God Gave Us Christmas by Lisa Bergren.

This is a wonderful book that helps kids realize that God gave us Christmas with the gift of Jesus Christ. I was sent this book from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group. We actually own three other books by this author titled God Gave us You, God Gave Us Two and God Gave Us Heaven. Tomorrow I will post more information about this title and Bergren’s newest book, God Gave Us Love.

Don’t miss any of the Christmas for Kids entries, Subscribe to my feed today!

Tonight my middle child participated in a Little Princess Pageant. They choose the winner randomly by each child opening an envelope. The little girl with the $5.00 bill wins. Every other little girl wins a $1.00 bill.

We did not have the winning princess in our house, but our princess was beautiful. And she is excited to spend her dollar that she brought home.

Here are a few pictures of our Princess Madelyn.

We are lucky to live close enough to both sets of Grandparents, but we are far enough away that when we go it seems like we pack up the house for the weekend.

When our girls were younger we always travelled around nap time. It was better for everyone involved. Now we only have one that sleeps in the car and she tries really hard to stay awake.

I have been busy trying to get everyone packed and ready to go. All three girls packed their own suitcases. (They all have their own because, of course they can’t let their clothes be mixed together??)

I have learned on these little weekend trips that I have to double check the suitcases. One Christmas we got to Grandma’s house and my oldest had repacked her bags. She only had one pair of pants for 5 days! Not good.

Little one and I found a couple of new movies for the drive. I love DVD players in the vehicle. Especially when they have headphones.

We also packed a few snacks. We are picking the older girls up from school so they will need a little treat. I am headed to the craft drawers to find a few markers, coloring books, etc. Each of the girls has a clipboard to use in the car to write and draw. That is a great purchase if you spend much time in the car.

The last thing I need to do is go to a few sites to print off some Thanksgiving printables. There are some great Thanksgiving printables at FamilyFun.com.

Hopefully our trip is full of family, food and fun! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

For the past four weeks I have been a part of an exciting campaign on Bookieboo. Bookieboo is a fitness hangout for Moms online created by Leah Segedie. I discovered it a few months ago and I have met some wonderful women who have inspired me to focus on exercise and eating healthy.

Right now they are in week four of a new Mamavation campaign. Two wonderful women, Alyssa Bechtold and Stacie Connerty are the current Mamavation moms. For six weeks they are working directly with fitness and health experts to transform their lives. It has been so exciting to cheer them on in their journey. So far they have lost a combined total of 33 pounds.

They have been such an inspiration to me! I have been working with a trainer for the past few months and that has helped kick me into gear, but we are still suffering in the eating healthy department in our home. I love to cook and bake and I have never worried about the calories.

We are a pretty active family so to be honest I have never worried about how healthy we were eating. I realize now that I have a lot of habits to break to turn the nutrition in our family around.

I will still bake and my kids will still get some treats, but we need to do a better job of eating it in moderation. I am also on a mission to try to bake a little healthier.

I am going to start a category on this blog, “Get Fit Family”. I will have some guest posts and take you along on our journey to focus more on Healthy Choices.

Speaking of Healthy Choices. . .I know that I am already on the right track. My Christmas Wish List has a few of these items on it: A pair of Earth Footwear Shoes, EA Sports Active for my Wii, New Workout clothes, and a few awesome Workout videos I have discovered through Bookieboo.

I can’t wait to share more with you as we take the first step on our Get Fit Family Journey!

I am excited to tell you all about an event that I will be a part of in a couple of weeks over at The Girl Creative.

Creating Christmas Blog Fest will take place December 7-11. It is an opportunity for all of you fabulously creative women to share your Christmas Creations with everyone!

Diana over at The Girl Creative says, “Each day there will be a new category for you to link up to. Your posts don’t have to be from this year. They can be last year’s posts. You will get the chance to share your favorite posts from Christmas Recipes to Holiday Traditions to Creative Gift Wrapping Ideas to Handmade Gifts to Showing Off your Christmas Tree!”

I am already starting to think about my ideas for the event. If you haven’t checked out the Girl Creative you should stop by. There are great creative ideas for you to explore. If you stop by you can grab the creating Christmas button for your blog to help promote the event. I can’t wait!

We had a Daisy Girl Scout meeting last night. After we learned about Honesty and Fairness we switched gears to Thanksgiving.

I found this super cute Turkey Snack Idea from Amy over at The Idea Room.

You will have to check out her Turkeys and Instructions. Her Turkeys turned out much cuter than ours. I had a three year-old helper. I often have to remind myself that it is all about making memories with her. If I always do it myself, she is not having fun.

I was going to let my Daisy Scouts make their own snack. . .but I decided it was a better plan to just let them eat it.

The craft that the girls did was a Paper Plate Turkey from Parents.com. We adapted the craft a little bit. The instructions called for hats. We decided to just make the Turkeys as a Thanksgiving decoration.

It worked really well to have them paint with Q-tips. I had never had them try that technique before.

The Turkeys turned out super cute. I did have all of the pieces cut out for the girls before hand. They just had to glue everything into place. We were on a time schedule and I have learned that sometimes the cutting can be frustrating when it is little circles.

My little one really wanted to make a Turkey and turn it into the hat like the picture on the instructions. I think that will be our craft project for today.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Ephesians 6:1

We moved on to the letter “C” on our ABC Journey through Scripture. When I was studying the scripture for this letter I knew that this was perfect scripture for the upcoming week.

We took the girls back to the beginning to the 10 Commandments.

Honor your father and your mother. Exodus 20:12

We asked the girls if they knew what it means “To Honor” your parents. They thought that it probably meant the same thing as to obey them. I explained that my Bible commentary says, “it means speaking well of them and politely to them. It also means acting in a way that shows them courtesy and respect. It means following their teaching and example of putting God first.

What are some ways that you see mommy and daddy putting God first in our lives?

The girls came up with some good examples for the above question. However, I think that we have some work to do to really show them that God comes first above all other things.

How do you think we can all do a better job of putting God first?

We all agreed that spending more time in our Bible and doing devotions as a family is important for our family.

So our verse says to obey your parents. Do you think that honoring and obeying is the same?

I explained that to honor means to love and respect. To obey means to do what you are told. Both are very important in our relationships with each other.

Is it hard to be obedient to mom and dad sometimes?

Do you know that when you are disobedient to us you are being disobedient to God?

We did talk about how the only time it is okay to be disobedient to someone in authority is when they are acting in disobedience to God. Hopefully with this time together they started to realize that their obedience is really between them and God. It also helped us to realize that we need to put God first in our home so that we are an example to our kids.