Prepared

This week Bryan and I started talking about Christmas presents. We're not usually so ahead of the game. Well, I'm not. Bryan is. Our second Christmas after we were married he bought an almost full-size digital piano for me and hid it in our two-bedroom Wymount apartment. In August. I didn't find out about it until I walked in on the last day of work before the Christmas break and found it set-up in our living room, playing carols.*

So far I have one thing on my list for the boys. This book:


We've checked this out from the library at least three times and each time I read it I discover something new. The text is cute, all about a large family gathering at grandma and grandpa's house for Thanksgiving. It's the pictures though that really get me. Diane Goode, the author and illustrator, has visually captured so many familial truisms that she must come from a large family herself. As each family arrives you learn something new. And the families are dressed in color-coordinated outfits, so you always know who belongs with whom, which adds even more to the story.

Click on the picture and check out her website. You can view some of the illustrations to get an idea for how detail-rich they are.

Now, I wonder if I can hide this from my bookworm boys for the next four months...

*Bryan and I are both sure that I've already written about this, but I've just looked through all of my past posts and can't find where. So if I'm repeating myself, oh well.