My kids are huge pirate fans, so I knew we had to check out the new Playmobil: The Secret of Pirate Island.  This movie is based of off the best selling Playmobil Pirates playsets.  The DVD is actually pretty cool, because you can watch it more than one way.  First, you can watch this like a normal DVD.  However, there is a second way to watch this that is pretty cool.  You can also watch this using the interactive feature (which my five year old loves).  At certain points in the story, Jack and Amelia (two characters in this) will stop and ask you what they should do.  At this point, your kids get to chose what path to take.  There is 28 different possible story combination, so this movie will never get old.  The plot of the story is that Jack and Amelia are trying to find the treasure before the skeletons get there.  Think they can do it?

Baby Einstein World Animal Adventure is Baby Einstein’s newest DVD out.  It’s for kids 12 months and up and has been voted by moms as “a product they can’t live without”.  I would have to agree.  We are a Baby Einstein family, and this DVD is another favorite in our house.  If you don’t read my other blog, Will, my 2 year old, is in speech therapy, and we’ve used this to help him talk more.  We are able to talk about all the animals on the screen and get him to repeat back words like monkey, bear, etc.  A great new cool feature that they have included in this DVD is called “grow with me”.  This viewing mode adds the words on the screen which is great for Madison who is learning to read.  If you are bilingual, you can even run this on either a Spanish or French language track.  I have to admit I enjoyed the scenery in the scenes.  The animal were filmed in their natural habitats, so you really get a great glimpse into their lives.  There is even a n extra on here so you can just watch the puppet shows!  My kids have always enjoyed the Baby Einstein puppets, so this was a great feature.

Baby Einstein World Animal Adventure is a movie I can definitely recommend to anyone with little ones!  My kids love it!

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Baby Einstein and received a World Animal Adventure DVD to facilitate my candid review.

I personally believe books always make great gifts. We have installed into our children how important reading is, and you can tell. Both my one year old and my four year old can often be seen flipping through books without Bill or me even around.  This is why I l love companies like GiftLit who make it easier to give books as gifts to both children and adults alike.

GiftLit has an advisory board of librarians, educators, authors, and industry experts that select the books that are sent out, so you know these are great books. They have books for every age too!  They have books for toddlers on up.  They way this works is you pick with selection of books you want.  If you are looking at the kids books, you can choose which age group you want.  For adults, you can pick anything from fiction to mysteries to history.  You can also choose how long you want your gift subscription to last.  You can buy them in 3, 6, or 12 month increment.  The best part of this is that this is the gift that keeps on giving.  Instead of the one present you get Christmas morning, you can potentially have a gift every month of the year.

We have this come to our house, and we love it.  The books are great quality books that I would have never thought to check out.  Also, what kid doesn’t like to get mail for them?  Actually, what adult doesn’t like getting a present in the mail each month?  This is truly the gift that keeps on giving, and I am deciding which book lover in my family is getting this.  If you’d like to get this for yourself or as a present, just make sure you use the code LISA1130, so you can get 10% off your order!

Until recently, I had never heard of the Cole Family Christmas.  However, this is a story that has been passed down from generation to generation.  Hazel Kendle, 88, told the story to her granddaughter who got it down on paper for all of us to enjoy.  More than 20 family members have had their hand in making this book come alive to us new to the story.

Hazel was one of the nine Cole children in the story.  The tale is based on what really happened that Christmas when they were allowed to pick what they wanted from Santa from the Sears catalog.  Since the Cole family were poor, this was an event that did not happen often.  Unfortunately, a blizzard hit, and they ended up with a snowy Christmas surprise instead.

The back story of this book alone made me want to read this book myself.  It truly shows the importance of getting your family history down on paper, so others can enjoy the stories you know and love.  This book is for 10 – 12 years old.  However, we have been reading it to our kids (who are 4 and 1).  The chapters are short enough that we can read one a night and still keep their interest.  Now, I read it in one sitting and loved it.  My kids like the illustrations too.

This book is about the true spirit of Christmas and is a must read for everyone.

This book by Cecil Alexander takes the popular saying we all know:  “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful . . .” and illustrates it.  Besides the first couple of lines, I did not realize there was more to the poem (or whatever you want to call it).  However, the illustrations in All Things Bright and Beautiful are really nice.  When I read this book to my kids, it reminds me to enjoy life and quit worrying if my business should change hosting companies. The pictures in here allow your children to really make up their own stories beyond the words on the page, and what more could you want from a book?