Disney Christmas Storybook Collection only $4.89!

Pin It now!

I just wanted to pass along this great deal! We LOVE Disney Storybook Collections at our house. We have quite a few of them (Cars, Princesses, Classic, Bedtime, etc) including this Christmas one! The Disney Christmas Storybook Collection is only $4.89 on Amazon right now. Awesome deal! Snatch it up while you can! :) *Ships free with Amazon Prime, or with a $25 purchase.

Christopher Pop-In-Kins - A New Family Christmas Tradition

Pin It now!

I wanted to share a new Christmas tradition with you that we will be starting this year. I know that it's just barely November but I wanted to share with you now in case you have never heard of it before and wanted to start it with your family too! Before last year I had never heard of anything like it. It was too close to Christmas by the time I had heard about it and Dawson had just turned two so we decided to wait until this year start it.

We normally set up our Christmas tree on Thanksgiving after dinner. Or if we're feeling a little bit lazy we'll do it the day after Thanksgiving. This year we are going to be moving from California to Utah right after Thanksgiving so putting up the tree isn't going to happen until the beginning of December. And that's when we'll introduce the kids to Christopher Pop-In-Kins!

Christopher "pops in" every day in a new hiding spot to check on the kids and make sure they're being good. The kids are not allowed to touch him or else he will lose his magic and have to return to the North Pole to have it restored. I know Dawson is going to love trying to find where Christopher is hiding every day and if he starts to be naughty I will remind him that Christopher is watching and will tell Santa what he sees.

The Christopher Pop-In-Kins kit comes with the Christopher Pop-In-Kins doll, a book telling the story about Christopher Pop-In-Kins and why he visits children during the Christmas season, and a case that holds the book and doll. The doll is pose-able so you can move his arms and legs and pose him differently every day. And he is SO cute!!

I love the illustrations in the book, too. It's a cute story and I know Dawson and Ashlynn will love looking at the pictures while me or dada read the story to them.


The book is a hardcover which is great because it will last a long time. The elf is also very sturdy. This is a great buy because it will provide you with years of family fun and memories!

You can buy Christopher Pop-In-Kins from Amazon or head on over to the Christopher Pop-In-Kins site for a list of other places to buy him.

I'm going to have some more posts in December about what Christopher Pop-In-Kins has been up to at our house and how the kids are liking him so stay tuned for those! :) Will you be joining in on the fun this year?

Disclosure: I received the Christopher Pop-In-Kins kit for free in order to try the product and form an opinion for this review. I was not compensated in any other manner. All opinions expressed above are my own. Thank you to ElfFun.com for allowing me (and my kids) to review Christopher Pop-In-Kins. I'm looking forward to starting this new tradition with my family. All opinions in this post are my own.

Kohl's Cares for Kids - Clifford!

Pin It now!
The Kohl's Cares for Kids program is now featuring 4 Clifford The Big Red Dog books! It's been awhile since I have posted about this program... We absolutely love it and always buy the books they are featuring. They change it up every 3-4 months or so and I always get really excited to see what the new books are! To be honest, this time when I saw they were Clifford books, I was a little disappointed. I have never read any Clifford books or even watched Clifford before, but because we love to read and love that 100% of the net profit from the books (and stuffed animals) is donated to help kids charities nationwide, I still wanted to buy the books. And I am so glad we did because we LOVE these books!! We got them 2 weeks ago and Dawson has wanted to read one before bed every night since we got them (we always let him choose the story we read before bed). There are two stories in each book and they are all really cute. We have even started watching Clifford now. *lol* And I'm seriously thinking about going back and getting all the stuffed animals, too. We usually don't get the stuffed animals (we did get the ones with the Toy Story books and Winnie-the-Pooh books and that's it) but I really think Dawson and Ashlynn would have fun playing with them.

I would definitely recommend these books so if you haven't already, go out and buy them! The money goes towards a great cause and you get a great deal. Everybody wins! And no this is not a sponsored post or anything, I just LOVE this program and these books. :)

Kohl's Cares for Kids - Toy Story

Pin It now!
The Kohl's Cares for Kids program is featuring new books! Toy Story and Toy Story 2! And they've got Buzz Lightyear, Woody and Rex plush toys, too! The books and plush toys are only $5 each. And if you've never heard about the Kohl's Cares for Kids program before let me tell you how great it is! Not only do you get a great deal on books, but they donate 100% of the net profit to children's charities nationwide. To date they have raised more than $126 million nationwide! What a great cause! I'll definitely be heading over to Kohl's today to pick Dawson up some new books. Yay!

Book Fan Friday - Minnie's Valentine

Pin It now!

Happy Friday! This week Dawson and I have been reading Minnie's Valentine by Sheila Sweeny Higginson. I know that Valentine's Day has passed, but I still wanted to read this book.

To see what others have been reading and to join in on the fun, head on over to Three A's and a C.

Book Fan Friday - Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse!

Pin It now!

Happy Friday! This week we have been reading Happy Valentine's Day, Mouse! by Laura Numeroff.


I love this book because it has a lot of different animals in it and every time we would come across a new animal in the book I would tell Dawson what sound they make. (Well at least the ones I knew...what does a moose say?!)

Dawson liked this book, too, and enjoyed looking at the illustrations.

To see what others are reading this week and to join in on the fun, head on over to Three A's and a C.

Book Fan Friday - Love, Splat

Pin It now!

I missed Book Fan Friday last week! Eek! I'm going to get caught up today though. And I am going to be doing things a little different for the next few weeks so I don't miss another BFF post. I usually start reading a new book to Dawson on Saturday and then post about it on the following Friday. That way if Dawson really liked the book (like The Foot Book which I talk about way too much lately but Dawson absolutely loves it. Or Baby Cakes which has been a favorite of ours for months now) I can write about it. Or if he didn't like the book (like There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat) I can write about that, too. But things are very hectic around here lately (we are in the middle of moving from Utah to California and my hubby is still deployed which means I'm pretty much doing it by myself!) so I have decided to pick out the books we are going to read this month, write about them and then schedule them to post. So right now I have all of my BFF posts scheduled for the rest of the month! If I think about it or have time I might come back after we have read the books and add what Dawson (and me!) thought about them.

Let's move on, shall we?

I'm going to back track a little. Last week (the post that I skipped) we read Baby, I Love You by Karma Wilson (she also wrote Baby Cakes which I strongly recommend for reading to babies/toddlers).


To be honest I was disappointed with this book. It was nowhere near as good as I thought it was going to be. Dawson thought it was ok, but he didn't get excited when I read it like he usually does if he really likes a book.

This week we read Love, Splat by Rob Scotton.


I love this book! I thought it was really cute. (I also love Merry Christmas, Splat.) Dawson liked looking at the illustrations in this book, but it's a little too long for him and he gets bored, I guess. I'm not sure that I was able to finish reading him this book at all. He read it to me a few times though. (He is a much faster reader and he skips pages. *lol*)

To see what others have been reading head on over to Three A's and a C and don't be shy, link up. :-)

Is there a record for how many different links are in one blog post? Whatever it is, I think I just broke it!

Book Fan Friday - Where Is Baby's Belly Button? *Video!*

Pin It now!

Dawson is getting better at knowing where some body parts are and pointing to them when I ask him to, so I thought this would be a good week to read Where Is Baby's Belly Button? By Karen Katz.


It's a lift-the-flap book, so it will say "where is baby's belly button" and then you have to lift the flap to see her belly button. So far Dawson knows where his hair, belly, tongue and feet are. And about an hour ago he pointed to his ear when I asked him where it was, but he's only done that once so it might have been a fluke.

Here is a video that I took of him this morning. Usually he will grab his feet when I ask where they are, but this time he just moved them.

To see what others are reading this week visit Three A's and a C, and don't forget to link up and join in on the fun. :-)

My Baby Can Read *Video*

Pin It now! Ok, so he's not actually reading real words, but he is reading to me. I just posted about The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss being Dawson's favorite book right now in my Book Fan Friday post. We have been reading it all week, over and over again, he can not get enough of it. This morning he was sitting on my lap reading to me and I realized the video camera was on the end table right next to me! Awesome!

It's not the best video in the world, I cut off the top of his head, like I said he was on my lap and I was just kinda holding the video camera out there, I couldn't really see what I was getting.

Anyway, here is storytime with Dawson. I hope you enjoy it.

Book Fan Friday - The Foot Book

Pin It now!

I think it's safe to say that Dawson has a new favorite book. I have read him The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss so many times in the last week.


And every time that I finished reading it to him, he had to read it to me, which I love. And then after that he wanted to flip through all the pages over and over. I seriously think he could look at this book all day long if I let him. I wonder if this comes in a board book? Probably not. If it did I would totally buy it for him and put it with his toys so he could grab it whenever he wanted. I only let him look through the book now if he is sitting on my lap because I don't want him to start tearing out pages. Him flipping through the pages has already put a few small rips in the pages which I try to avoid, but he loves this book so much that I just couldn't take it away from him!

To see what others are reading this week (and to see the super cool books that Christina's baby girl got for Christmas) head on over to Three A's and a C.

Giveaway! Win 4 Dr. Seuss Books!

Pin It now! I am very excited to announce that I am going to have my very first giveaway! And it starts today! A couple of days ago I went to Kohl's to check out their sales on Christmas decorations and as I was walking up to the cash register I noticed that they are now featuring Dr. Seuss books for their Kohl's Cares for Kids program. I love reading to Dawson and I have a bit of a book buying obsession, so of course I had to buy them! (Actually I only bought 2 of the 4 because that was all that they had at the time, but my dad bought the other 2 for me, so now I feel complete. *lol*)

Kohl's is donating 100% of the net profit from these books to children's charities nationwide and because it goes to such a great cause (and because I love my readers!) I decided to buy 4 more to give away here. :-)

One winner will receive the 4 following books by Dr. Seuss:

The Lorax


If I Ran the Circus


The Foot Book


Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!


To enter simply leave a comment and don't forget to make sure that I have a way to contact you if you win.

For extra entries:
Become a public follower
Blog about this giveaway
Tweet about this giveaway

Please leave separate comments for each of your entries.

This giveaway will end on January 6th at 11:59pm (MST). I will contact the winner on January 7th and also post who won in my blog. (The winner will be picked at random using Random.org.)

And the winner is... Blissful Bee Boutique! Congrats!

Kohl's Cares for Kids - Dr. Seuss

Pin It now!
The Kohl's Cares for Kids program is now featuring the following 4 books by Dr. Seuss:

The Lorax
If I Ran the Circus
The Foot Book
Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

Each book is only $5 each AND they have coordinating plush animals for only $5 each, too! This is an awesome deal on these books and 100% of the net profit is donated to children's charities nationwide, so it's also for a good cause. You can get these books at Kohl's stores or on their website Kohls.com. OR you can enter my giveaway where 1 lucky reader will win all 4 books, click here for more details.

Happy reading!

Book Fan Friday - Happy HoliDogs!

Pin It now!

So, I'm not sure if Three A's and a C is hosting Book Fan Friday this week since it is Christmas and all. But I couldn't skip this week even if nobody else is going to do it. And to be honest I am not really looking forward to Christmas... I want to try to think of it as just another day. Luckily Dawson doesn't really know the difference yet. Santa will still visit our house and we will still open presents, but other than that I want it to be like any other day. It's so hard celebrating all these holidays without my husband. Dawson and I have been spending time with our family, but when it's time to go home it's just the two of us again. Everybody else has a family to go home to. :-( Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I'll stop now.

Anyway, this week was another very special storytime for us because Dave sent another book and DVD for us to watch.

Happy HoliDogs! by Ed Heck

I put the DVD in as soon as we got it and handed Dawson the book. We watched it together and as soon as it ended he kept saying "dada" and would point at the TV. So I started it again and I grabbed my camera to take a few pictures.


Dada even wore a Santa hat! I should have put Dawson's Santa hat on too!


We watched it 3 times in a row the first day that we got it before Dawson was ready to play with some of his toys. We have watched it twice a day since then. He loves being able to see and hear his daddy.

Oh, and a little bit about the book. First of all I am so glad that it was Dave reading it and not me! It's basically the 12 Days of Christmas with some words changed so it's all about dogs. You have to keep repeated everything again and again and the list of things that you are repeating just gets longer and longer. And it's impossible to read a book like this without singing it. I've read Elmo's 12 Days of Christmas to Dawson a couple times and I am always out of breath by the end. *lol* Maybe I should make a video of me reading that book and then I'll only have to read it one more time! Genius!

Visit Three A's and a C to see what others were reading this week. And Merry Christmas.

Book Fan Friday - Biscuit's Christmas Eve

Pin It now!

Welcome to another installment of Book Fan Friday! Can you believe that next Friday is Christmas?! I certainly can not. I should probably start thinking about wrapping Dawson's presents soon.

If you've been following my blog for awhile now you are not going to be surprised that this week we have been reading another book from the Biscuit series - Biscuit's Christmas Eve by Alyssa Satin Capucilli.



I know I have said this many times already, but Dawson can not get enough of Biscuit! This is probably my favorite Biscuit book so far. It might be because Dawson made it a lot of fun to read. Just recently he started saying "ruffruffruffruff" when I ask him what a dog says. In the book Biscuit says "woof woof" a lot and Dawson sure was getting a kick out of it and talking back in his own doggy language.

I need to hunt down more Biscuit books. There's Biscuit Loves Mother's Day, Biscuit Loves Father's Day, Biscuit's Valentine's Day, Happy Easter, Biscuit... and many, MANY more. I think I will probably just stick with buying the holiday themed ones for now. I have already started collecting the Berenstain Bears series (I think we have just over 15 so far, we still have a LOT to get!) I want to focus on completing that series before I start buying another series that has a lot of books in it.

To see what others have been reading and to link up to what you've been reading, head on over to Three A's and a C.

Muffin Tin Monday - The Polar Express

Pin It now!

It's Monday again and that means it's time for Muffin Tin Monday! Yay! I am totally loving all the Christmas themes! This week's theme is Christmas Stories and I had so much fun with it. I read Dawson The Polar Express a few times over the past few days... or I guess I should say that I *tried* to read Dawson The Polar Express. We barely made it past the first page most of the time, but that's ok. I'm sure he will love the book when he gets older. :-)

Starting at the top:
Bed (pb&j sandwich), Snow (marshmallows)
The Polar Express (cheese & crackers and a yogurt melt), The North Pole (lil crunchies)
Santa's Sleigh (strawberry fruit strip), Silver Bell (blueberry...pretend it's silver)

And I gave him a Santa cup, but he was having trouble drinking out of the straw. He has done it before, but I guess he hasn't mastered it yet so I had to give him a regular sippy instead.


The train collapsed as I was carrying it over to his highchair, but he didn't mind. He finished everything in his tin. :-)


Head on over to Muffin Tin Mom to see what others did for MTM this week.

Book Fan Friday - Bear Stays Up for Christmas

Pin It now!

I almost forgot about our Book Fan Friday post! I usually get it ready earlier in the week and then schedule it to post on Friday... I guess this week has been hectic? I don't feel like we've been that busy, but then again the week did just fly by.

This week we have been reading Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson.


It's a cute story and it has a lot of pictures of animals so of course Dawson loved it.

I have to cut this short because Dawson is trying to eat paper...again. That's what happens when I try to get on the computer while he's awake!

To see what others have been reading this week, check out Three A's and a C.

Book Fan Friday - Merry Christmas, Splat

Pin It now!

Welcome to another installment of Book Fan Friday! As I was going through our books last Saturday to pick out a new book to read for the week, I found a Thanksgiving book that we didn't read! I was totally bummed. Thanksgiving week we read Biscuit is Thankful. I totally forgot that we had another Biscuit book - Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit! Oops. I've read it to Dawson a couple times this week just because I know how much he loves Biscuit. (To be honest, I am kind of sick of the Biscuit series. *lol* There isn't much of a "story" to them. Of course, I will still buy any Biscuit books that I can find because Dawson's eyes light up every time we are about to read a book from that series. The things we do for our kids. I wouldn't change a thing.)

To make sure that I didn't forget what books I want to read to Dawson and which ones I want to feature on Book Fan Friday, I pulled out all of our Christmas books. We have 14 of them already! (I'm sure we'll get more before and probably even after Christmas...I'm a bit of a book junkie!) I haven't decided yet on which ones we'll be reading each week...I better decide soon though!

This week we read Merry Christmas, Splat by Rob Scotton.


This is such a cute story! It's about a cat that writes a letter to Santa telling him that he wants a really big present! After he writes the letter he starts to worry that maybe he hasn't been good enough this year for Santa to bring him a really big present. So he decides to be extra not so helpful around the house.

Dawson loves the illustrations in this book! There is a part in the book where Splat opens the front door to clear snow from the path, but when he opens the door a huge pile of snow falls over on him. Dawson seriously started cracking up the first time we read this book and he saw the picture of Splat buried in the snow. It was so funny! I'm not sure if it was just a coincidence that he started laughing when we got to that page, or if he is really started to understand when things happen in the book. The rest of the week he didn't laugh at that part, but he did get excited and point to the picture. (He pointed to a few other pictures as well.)

I am so looking forward to seeing what others are reading this month! I'm always excited to discover new books, especially holiday themed books!

To see what others are reading, head on over to Three A's and C, and don't forget to link up to what you've been reading! :-)

Book Fan Friday - Biscuit Is Thankful

Pin It now!

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving! This week we have been reading Biscuit Is Thankful by Alyssa Satin Capucilla. In case you haven't noticed, Dawson loves the Biscuit series!


I'm excited to start reading Christmas stories! I don't think we have a Biscuit Christmas book yet, I need to start looking for one! We do have a lot of other Christmas books that I am looking forward to reading to Dawson though!

Head on over to Three A's and a C to see what others have been reading. :-)

Book Fan Friday - Just Like My Mom

Pin It now!

It's Friday! Yay! That means it's time for another Book Fan Friday post, one of my favorite posts of the week!

This week Dawson and I read Just Like My Mom by David Melling. (We watched Dada read Just Like My Dad a few weeks ago on DVD, see that post here.)


Dawson sat quietly every time I read this book to him this week, but as soon as we were finished he would grab the book out of my hands and "read" it to me. It was really sweet.

My favorite part in this book is when the baby lion talks about how he likes to wake up early, just like his mom! Then you look at the pictures and baby is wide awake and happy and the mama lion looks like she needs another hour of sleep! Haha That's totally me and Dawson in the morning! I usually snap out of it and perk up when I walk into his room and see his smiling face looking up at me. :-)

Check out Three A's and a C to see what others are reading this week.

Book Fan Friday - Baby Cakes

Pin It now!

This week we read one of Dawson's favorite books. This has been one of his favorites since we bought it probably close to 6 months ago. I'm sure we have read it at least 100 times, he loves it that much! In fact, I have the whole book memorized, it's a good thing I like it too!

I think the reason Dawson likes it so much is because it's more of a song rather than a story and he's always loved it when I sing to him.

Baby Cakes by Karma Wilson

Just writing this post has got this song stuck in my head...

"Baby Cakes, Baby Cakes, I love you!
Baby Cakes, Baby Cakes, yes I do!
Kiss my little Baby Cakes on the nose.
Smooch my little Baby Cakes on the toes."

I could sing the whole book right now, but I'll stop there.

I remember I got so excited when I saw this book at the store because I started calling Dawson "baby cake" when he was just a few weeks old. I stopped calling him that awhile ago just because I wanted him to learn his name and not be confused when I called him something else. He'll always be my baby cake, though. :-)

Check out Three A's and a C to see what others are reading this week.