M and I have been enjoying many of the same books. Tomorrow we’re going to go see Catching Fire with a bunch of her friends and their moms. Right now N’s reading Insurgent (the sequel to Divergent), and I’ve been waiting my turn as patiently as I can. But usually I read to the girls at night, too, and it’s pretty aggravating to read snippets of the book. I do my best to turn my brain off and read less so that the scenes I catch are too brief and disconnected to spoil the whole plot. But last night I stumbled on a big spoiler. In fact, as I was reading, M said, “NO! Stop here! You can’t keep reading–you can’t know this!” But I’d already accidentally seen the name at the bottom of the page that gave it away. So last night I did what I had to do. I stole the book out of her room after she fell asleep. I read faster than her, so I’m hoping to catch up and surpass her, then nab the third book, Allegiant, and get through most of it before she finishes the second book. So tonight at bedtime, M and I decided to revisit some old picture book favorites, and we went with Wemberly Worried and Strega Nona. J was supposed to be done and reading to herself, but she snuck into M’s room when she overheard us. Holy crap that Kevin Henkes can make rodents whom I desperately want to befriend. And I could feel M smiling along as I started speaking as Strega Nona, because I always do this ridiculously fake Italian accent.
Anyway, I’m tired out from reading and writing. I wanted to share a few links from this blog and KidsOutAndAbout.
Christmas Fun is my page that’s available on the right through the end of the year–recipes, crafts, and things to do. It’s the same as last year’s, it’s just come back out of hiding.
Embrace Winter is for cold and snowy days, and it’s available on the right side of the home page again, too. Hopefully we won’t need it yet, but just in case.
Here’s an article with suggestions on What to Do on Black Friday Instead of Shopping. Because you know I hate shopping.
Here’s a list of organizations that run Adopt-a-Family programs or other holiday giving opportunities. If you represent an organization that would like to be listed, you can email me at capitaldistrictfun [at] yahoo [etc.] or at katie [at] kidsoutandabout.com.
This article on Volunteering With Children has some simple and general ideas as well as specific local places that have kid-friendly community service activities. If you have additional suggestions, I’d love to hear them. This is part of a larger effort to help families connect with volunteer opportunities via KidsOutAndAbout.com. Now organizations can list Volunteer Opportunities for Kids as one of their offerings, or activities can be tagged Community Service/Community Activism to make it easier for folks to find things to do with their kids. Please share this with any folks who welcome kid volunteers.
