Another great children’s book to get this holiday season is Tim and Sallys Beach Adventure. The first thing you will notice that the lines in the his book rhyme. I think that helps keep my kids attention, because they really like this book. Madison is always talking about going to the beach, so reading about the beach was right up her alley.  This is not a long book.  However, it is broken up into sections such as “They Get Started” and “They Are In Sight of The Beach”, so you can easily break down this story into several sections (and several nights of reading).  You get to read about swimming in the ocean, the animals that inhabit the beach, the tide, and sandcastle just to name a few things.  I really like the word list at the end of the book.  It has a pictures of key things in the story like bathing suits and crabs.  Then underneath the picture they have the word.  Since we are working with Madison with reading and sounding out, this is perfect for us.  It makes it a lot easier for her to sound out the word if she has a clue what the word is.

If you want a great story, Tim And Sallys Beach Adventure is a book you need to get at your house.  Mom and dad will enjoy it just as much at the kids.

Do you have problems taking pictures of yourself with others? Do you find your arm ending up in the shot? Do you find that you aren’t in any shot, because you are always taking the picture? Do you find that you and your subject have to pose awkwardly just to get you both in the picture?  (Thanks to Christine for use of her arm picture).

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you need to get an xShot.  What is an Xshot?

XShot is a telescopic stainless-steel rod that adds three feet of reach to any point-and-shoot or hand-held video camera. It is super easy to use. All you need to do is screw your camera into the Xshot to get to work. No screwdriver is required! You can make the xShot 9 inches all the way up to 37 inches. Want to see how easy it works? (Thank you Julie for the pictures!)

The first picture shows you how the xShot works. The second picture shows the actual picture that was taken. Its pretty awesome, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t it be nice to be on vacation and not have to ask a stranger to take your picture?  I personally found it super easy to easy.  I had no problem putting my Cybershot camera on there and taking lots of awesome pictures (unfortuntaly, my camera is broke, and I can’t get any of my pictures off.  I am waiting for a cable to fix this problem from Sony).  My fear was that I wasn’t going to be able to take steady pictures.  It was actually super easy.  I had absolutely no problems with it.  I found the xShot super lightweight (it’s only 5 oz).

When can you use this?  Some perfect times would be when you are traveling, hiking, camping, vacation, the beach, parties, concerts, sports events, etc.  I know that the xShot will be an item that will come with us no matter where we go!

Teddy Bear’s Fun to Learn First 1000 Words is book that is great for all little ones. My 4 year old enjoys it just as much as my 1 year old. Granted, you won’t find las vegas hotels in here. However, there is pretty much everything else. Each page in the book has a theme (like the beach). It lists the theme and a ton of items to go with it (for example, the beach pages show things like sunscreen, water wings, sailboat, beachball, etc). There is also a picture in the center of the page with all the miscellaneous items.  There is also a short poem asking you questions about the theme.  Will (my one year old) just likes to look at everything and go “ohhhh”.  Madison (my 4 year old) enjoys looking at the pictures and telling us what each thing is.  She likes to answer the questions for us too.  My only complaint is that the pages are paper which are a little to easy for Will to rip.

This book is great because your little ones can use it as they grow older.  I would definitely purchase it a birthday, baby shower, and/or Christmas gift.  The little ones who you are getting for will get a lot of use out of it!