{"id":2715,"date":"2014-01-06T09:16:01","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T14:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=2715"},"modified":"2014-01-06T09:17:35","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T14:17:35","slug":"holiday-reading-rotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/06\/holiday-reading-rotation\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Reading Rotation"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Christmas and New Year\u2019s behind us, I looked around my house and felt a sense of disappointment.\u00a0 So many decorations that never found a place.\u00a0 So many things I wanted to do that didn\u2019t get done.\u00a0 So many memories that never got made.\u00a0 As I looked around, I realized I had 2 choices: be sad about where I had failed and mourn the loss of my ideal Christmas or move on.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\u00a0I chose the latter.\u00a0 I chose to say \u201cthere will always be next year and I can\u2019t change this year.\u201d\u00a0 I chose instead to focus on getting excited about Valentine\u2019s day. \u00a0I happily put away Christmas, knowing I will see it again next year (and a little bit thankful to be able to put this year away).<\/p>\n

\"SONYI\u2019m slowly starting to collect (cheap) Valentine\u2019s decorations to put up in place of our Christmas ones instead of going back to our \u201cyear-round\u201d stuff.\u00a0 I feel the need to still have something to look forward to and to have something to celebrate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Valentine\u2019s Day is not a huge holiday for my family.\u00a0 Hubby and I don\u2019t go out on a \u201cdate night\u201d (maybe we did the first year or two\u2026).\u00a0 We don\u2019t get each other, or the kids, big gifts or even cards.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have any kind of family traditions, but it\u2019s the next thing to come so it\u2019s the best I can do.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>The one tradition I have maintained, though, is that of holiday books.\u00a0 When Honeybun was a baby I started collecting books for each holiday and now whenever I see a holiday themed book for a great price, I snatch it up (I get a lot at Target in the Dollar Spot and also have had good luck finding cheap kids books of all kinds at bookcloseouts.com and Books-A-Million.)<\/p>\n

I decided to put out the books for each holiday every year instead of having them all out year round.\u00a0 I keep each set in its own plastic bin and when one holiday is over, those books go away and we get out bin with the next holiday\u2019s set.\u00a0 Honeybun has finally caught onto the trend and now asks if we can get out the next set after each holiday is finished.<\/p>\n

We use the books as an opportunity to learn about each holiday and different ways people celebrate.\u00a0 It also gives us a change of books several times a year without me forgetting to change them or getting bored with what we have (rotating books and toys was something I always did as a teacher but I’ve struggled with it as a mommy!)<\/p>\n

We have 7 different sets of holiday books we read.\u00a0 In the past the books were just something fun and use as part of our family celebrating but Honeybun is now asking a lot of questions about everything, so I see the becoming more educational into the future.\u00a0 I would like each holiday to have special meaning for our family but I\u2019m still working out what each holiday really means to us.<\/p>\n

The holidays we celebrate and their current family meaning are:<\/p>\n

Valentine\u2019s Day<\/span>, celebrating our family and love for each other.<\/p>\n

St. Patrick\u2019s Day<\/span>, remembering our former home and time spent in Ireland.<\/p>\n

Easter<\/span>, celebrating spring time and new beginnings<\/p>\n

Memorial Day\/4th<\/sup> of July\/Labor Day<\/span>, learning about America and its history and important people and current heroes.<\/p>\n

Halloween<\/span>, enjoying make-believe and dressing up and (starting) to add in elements of friendship and community.<\/p>\n

Thanksgiving<\/span>, being thankful for what we have and spending time with family and friends.<\/p>\n

Christmas<\/span>, celebrating winter and our joys in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Christmas and New Year\u2019s behind us, I looked around my house and felt a sense of disappointment.\u00a0 So many decorations that never found a place.\u00a0 So many things I wanted to do that didn\u2019t get done.\u00a0 So many memories that never got made.\u00a0 As I looked around, I realized I had 2 choices: be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time-to-celebrate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2715"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2722,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions\/2722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}