NOTE: If you haven’t started an Advent activity yet, I’d still recommend grabbing a copy of Truth in the Tinsel: An Advent Experience for Little Hands (it’s only $4.99!) — there are a couple of great options for condensed schedules that let you get in all the most important elements.

We are on the full 24 day schedule, although we have fallen a couple of days behind. I am hoping/planning to at least get/stay caught up to within one day, so that we can finish on Christmas.

The kids have had a lot of fun cutting, coloring, gluing, and painting.

Most of the projects have been fairly flat, so it was simple to just glue them onto pages for their Advent Books. Some required a bit of creativity… And tools.

Luckily, I have a handy helper. Wolf took two of the contour clothespins and sliced them down into four flat “person forms” (plus some scrap). These were then gleefully decorated as Mary (Day #5) and Joseph (Day #9).

These turned out to be the kids’ favorite projects so far.

We’re having a great time reading through the story of Christ in child-size bites, and the crafts have been enjoyed by all – even the craft-phobic mama.

The Fight of Our Lives, written by Dr. William J. Bennet and Seth Leibsohn, is a book that everyone in America needs to read. It calls Americans to remember that what we are fighting is radical Islam, something we’ve allowed ourselves to forget.

Bennet and Leibsohn cite numerous examples of how we have blinded ourselves to what we’re fighting, despite the fact that every terrorist blows himself up screaming ‘Allahu Akbar!’ They mention the difficulty of finishing the book, since new attacks and evidences of our willful blindness kept occurring while they were writing.

However, none of this is what makes this book vital. The best thing about this book is the lack of bigotry. You could easily expect that a book describing how we need to realize that what we’re fighting is radical Islam would be full of anti-Muslim sentiments and bigotry. It isn’t. William Bennet and Seth Leibsohn present clear pictures of the problem and solution, without a trace of misplaced anger.

To sum up, you need this book. Yes, you. And you. Everyone in America, or anywhere else, really, will benefit from reading it.

I received this product free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze book review bloggers program; I was not compensated in any other way for this review. This review has not been approved or edited by anyone.
I was “disclosing” before it was cool. See my Review Policy for the full scoop.

We were gardening yesterday, and I got a little trigger-happy with the camera.

This is our garden.

These are the first strawberries our plant has produced.

This is the first corn sprout we’ve seen.

This is the first lettuce sprout.

This is our mixed onion and garlic patch, with the bush beans visible through them.

These are our black-eyed peas, with the onions visible behind them, and my sister visible behind them. I like the forest effect the onions make.

These are our potatoes.

This is another onion forest picture, with the strawberries visible behind them.

So, here’s some of my photography. I’ve done most of the pictures of the garden, and just wanted to show some of my more superfluous pictures.

Jewel with her drawing of “Jesus, the Cross, and His Tomb”

Hello, I’m Jewel Holley. (Actually I’m Wolf, typing for Jewel who is not quite ready to type.)

This is my first time to blog.

J.H. (Jewel is fond of her initials, and can even write them…)

Jesus died on the cross. I just wanted you to know that. I think this is very important.

Jesus died for our sins. I just wanted you to know that too.

He wanted to see me and He knew I wanted to see Him.

We’ve been to a lot of churches before and now we go to a new church called Wayside Church. We go on Wednesday and Sunday. You can come to see us at church anytime.

Jewel is four years old and wanted to blog about something. I just transcribed her words, and read them back to her for final approval.

I will be ready to type for her in the future. Please, let her know that you want to hear more from her!