Christmas Traditions

I don't know if i've posted this before, but i want to make sure some of our traditions are recorded. (something screwy happened with the formatting and i just can't bother to fix it now).

The Elf Advent: I stuff this guy's pockets with treats and this year came up with a better idea. Treats are still in a lot of the pockets, but i also stuffed little papers in it with "activities." This year some activities were making cookies, celebrating the start of Christmas Break with a Happy Meal from McDonalds, driving around the neighborhood looking at lights followed by hot chocolate, going to the dollar store to get a gift for your brother, and i'm drawing a blank on the rest. But I really liked the addition of these activities--most things we do anyway--but it was fun to have the boys excited to pull out an activitiy each day. And some pockets weren't filled because Soren could get into them and Bode would ask, "Mo-o-o-m! Where's the activity for today?!"

• The Hershey Kisses Advent: Doug's mom made this for us last year. It's a cute little way to countdown with a treat each night. We'd do it before bedtime. Soren caught onto this tradition quickly and would practically sprint to her bag and then sit on the step to wait for Bode to get a kiss out for her.

• The Christmas Book Countdown: We had 24 books this year all "wrapped" in their own snug little book bags that i made. I was really happy with the bags. I'll need to make a few bigger ones for the future but these worked well this year. The boys switched each night who got to get the book out and we'd read one each night. It's like having a new book to read every night and definitely a favorite tradition.

• The Tree: This was going to be a separate post, but i'll just explain here. We did our usual go-pick-a-tree activity. Bode had to have a specific one he saw on the lot because "it looks like a crayfish on top!" (they've been studying fish and oceans at school this semester). It was a good-looking tree so we snagged it. A couple of weeks later i noticed Bode's allergies were through the roof and mine had kicked in and i looked at that tree and imagined all the mold spores spewing out of it. So. What did we do? We hucked it outside onto our patio and went to Walmart and got a very.fake.tree. We love having a real tree but artificial is now the way we go. And i'm surprisingly happy with the one we got. So this was the "Year of Two Christmas Trees." The kids decorated the tree and one of the boys placed the star on top. We rotate every year. Soren will be in on that rotation next year, no doubt.

• Gingerbread Houses: Can't go wrong with a pre-fab house and lots of candy!

Tree Number One

Enjoying the Christmas cookies we did make

These were the main things this year. There were a number of traditions we didn't get to this year. But here's hoping for next year!