Christmas Traditions

I thought that I ™d share some of our family traditions.  It's always good for me to write things down- that way I can check back next year and make sure I covered everything. Growing up the only tradition we had was reading the Christmas story out of Luke.  Not a bad tradition at all, but that's pretty much the only one we really had.  Because of that I ™m a tad fanatical about our traditions.

The Christmas season starts the day after Thanksgiving.  That's when we put up our tree.  Growing up we never had a set date- it was when my parents were in the mood to do it- and it drove me crazy!  I could never understand why we couldn't have the tree up as long as possible.  I figure if we're going to get all the stuff out let it be out for a while.  Having said that we take it all down Christmas night or the day after. When Christmas is over I want it all back in the attic so I can get back to normal. Our biggest tradition is Christmas Eve night. It's jam packed.  First we go to church for our Christmas Eve service.  When church is over we come home and the kids have a present to open.  That present is pajamas and a new toothbrush (as opposed to an old used toothbrush that we normally give them).  I know that the toothbrush part sounds weird, but they LOVE it!  Baby #1 said that he couldn't wait to get his new toothbrush this year.  No mention of all of the other toys he got last year- it's the toothbrush that he remembers. After they get their new pajamas they put them on and we load back in the car and go out and look at Christmas lights.  We're lucky that there are several neighborhoods close to us that have great light displays.  We do a lot of light lookin ™ throughout the month, but we save these neighborhoods for Christmas Eve. We get home and the kids have to put their reindeer food out in the backyard (just in case you don't know what reindeer food is it's oatmeal with glitter).  After that they have strict instructions to go to bed so that Hubs and I Santa can get their presents ready. On Christmas morning we open our presents as a family and about mid-morning my family comes over for a breakfast extravaganza.  Hubs goes all out and makes the best breakfast you could imagine.  And it always has a theme.  We started out with the Bed and Breakfast theme we also had Iron Chef were every dish had to have strawberries and last year every dish started with the first letter of the kid's first name (Owen's Oatmeal Bake for instance). All of the kids get one special ornament to reflect what they were into this past year.  My intention is to label them all with their name and year and when they get married they ™ll get all of their ornaments and have a nice head start on their own  Christmas ornaments. I think that that wraps it up.  I swear that I ™m missing something, but if I do my kids will let me know. Candace is a married, stay-at-home mom of three. Between dolling out snacks, “supervising” craft time, and trying to beat her husbands hula hoop score on the Wii she blogs atMama Mia