Advent Blog Tour, '08 edition

I've participated in one other advent blog tour, waaay back in 2006, click here to read that post. This year's your is jointly hosted by Marg, link to her blog in the title above, and also by Kailana of The Written World and Historical Tapestry. If this is your first time here, welcome. Stay a while. Look around some. It's harder to figure out what to say this year, I think. The economy is way down and people's troubles are up, yet for me Christmastide has never had anything to do with getting more "stuff". Yes, I love to buy gifts for my loved ones and I have some Christmas collectibles I look for. Primarily though, I associate November and December with family related activities.

When I was little advent family activities often meant sleigh rides, tobagganing, snow forts and walks along snow covered lanes gilt with moonlight. Untangling endless strings of Christmas lights. Fittings of Christmas dresses my mother would sew for us. Now I'm the one doing the organizing, and living in the south makes the activities different, but November and December are always similar: getting out the advent wreath & checking the candles, until recently I bought the kids advent calendars, cooking together, helping the needy somehow, family gatherings, climbing into the attic to pull down boxes of Christmas decorations. Well, that last one is now someone else's job. Decorating indoors and out, watching endless holiday related specials, planning the schedule of who visits whom & when. Buying and writing Christmas cards.


Under the Kissing Bough; Shannon Donnelly Traditional Regency

Dark Celebration; Christine Feehan Paranormal- vampire

Under the Mistletoe; Mary Balogh Traditional Regency anthology

A Christmas Kiss; Elizabeth Mansfield Traditional Regency

Winter Wonderland; Elizabeth Mansfield Traditional Regency

This winter season I wish you joy and contentment and good books and good friends and enough of the necessities to get by.