Revisiting Christmas traditions

I've written quite a few posts about Christmas Traditions that I'd like to instill in our family, as well as pondering different ways that other families do things around Christmastime.  Over the past few years, some traditions have stuck like glue, and others have been swept to the side.  We've replaced some traditions that didn't work so well with new traditions.

Here are some of the posts I've written, for reference:

2007 Holiday Traditions: Making it Magical
2007 Pondering Presents
2007 What does YOUR Santa bring? 
2008 Christmas Traditions
2011 New Christmas Traditions

Here are the Traditions that have stuck for 2012:

• Elf on the Shelf.   This little guy was introduced into our family in 2008 and about 2 years ago Bob joined our family as well.   The boys LOVE hunting for the elves in the morning and I think this will be a tradition we will continue.
  
• Mini Tree in the bedroom:  The kids each have their own mini tree with lights in their bedrooms (Amelia's does not have ornaments yet... but will next year!)
  
• Book Basket:  We have TONS of Christmas books (i'd say about 30?  40?)  And one year I did wrap 25 of them to unwrap as an "advent" type of activity
  
• Christmas Eve Candlelight service at Westwinds
  
• Getting a new ornament every year (we usually get numerous... a new ornament from any vacation we go on, one for each kid and usually one as a "family or couple")
  
• New PJ's on Christmas Eve
  
• Cutting down our Christmas Tree:  This tradition I wanted to begin when Porter was little, but somehow we just kept pushing it aside and the fake tree was so easy to use.  This year, however, we began the tradition and will continue!
  
• I hope we'll continue the decorating Christmas cookies with cousins on Christmas Eve

We are still pretty closely implementing 3 of the 4 Traditions that the Anderson's use:

•  Each little person gets their own wrapping paper.  None of the gifts are marked.  Christmas morning they find a piece of wrapping paper at the bottom of their stocking that matches the wrapping paper on their presents. 

• Each kiddo is getting 3 gifts from us Want/Need/Surprise... although technically this year they're getting 4 gifts, and not necessarily along the lines of want/need/surprise.  They also get a gift from each of their siblings.  Porter and Hudson each get to shop for their own siblings, so it makes the gift giving more personal.  

• Christmas Eve PJ's (though we don't open a "read" present because we have so many other gosh darn Christmas books!

I also spent a LOT of time pondering presents and how much was enough, how much was too much... how much should be from us, from Santa etc..... So far this has been working for us the past few years:

Santa bring one "big" gift for each kiddo (this year they are getting scooters), and fills the stockings.  He also brings 2-3 smaller ($10ish) gifts that are wrapped in special "santa" paper (red paper with white HO HO HO on it).   That is all Santa brings.  Us parents want credit too!!  

We get the kids 3-4 gifts as well as a gift from each sibling for a total of 6 presents to open Christmas morning.  I do wrap our presents ahead of time and put them out under the tree throughout the month, but the past 2 years have not put names on the presents but instead "coded" each child with their own wrapping paper.  They don't know which paper belongs to whom, and won't find out until Christmas morning when they find the little piece of wrapping paper in the bottom of their stocking.

So, what are YOUR Christmas traditions?  I'd love to know what special things you and your family do year after year, as well as how you determine the gift giving.   Leave me some comments... I'm feeling lonely here on the blog!

Take it all in

We pulled out the Christmas decorations tonight.  Put Pandora on Christmas music and began digging through boxes.

What a lucky life I have, I thought.   My husband and I working together to string the lights on the tree. The music dancing through the air.  The 4 of us randomly singing loudly and off key.

Take it all in.

The boys discovering their ornaments, again, as if with new eyes.  "I remember this!"  I can hear a twinge in Porter's voice as he sounds so sentimental, almost choked up.  Hudson, his eyes squinty, his hands clasped beneath his chin, grinning when I fill up the snow globe ornament with water.  Pure joy in such simple things.

Take it all in.

Amelia, crawling around in her diaper amidst the Christmas explosion, fitting in with our family like the perfect puzzle piece.  The boys chasing each other in and out of the boxes with airplane ornaments, making whizzing, zooming and shooting noises.  Me, scolding Ryan and reminding him to take a deep breath, let the kids be kids.  Let them be little.

Take it all in.

The irony of "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" playing as I hold a half naked baby on one hip, steady a fallen Christmas tree with the other hand, while Ryan attempts to secure it yet again while lying amidst broken ornaments and spilled water.  The boys upset over the loss of our recent Mackinaw ornament.  Ryan huffing and puffing, while I can do nothing but laugh as the baby giggles and flings herself around... the tree falling on two of our kids is so our luck.

Take it all in.

Despite the chaos.  The loudness.  The laughter. The drama.  The irritation   The bad luck.  The love.  The bickering.  This is our life.  Our family.  These are the moments its all about.

Take it all in.

The. Best. Christmas. Tree. Ever. (if you have a sense of humor)

Fun family traditions?  Uh.  Seems like anytime we try to plan something fun as a family it ends up being a ridiculous stressful event full of whining and irritated huffing and puffing.

Today for example.  We planned to get our Christmas tree   A real one this year.  I also planned to meet a lady at meijer at noon to buy a movie.   I told Ryan this at like 10 am.   Amelia laid down for a nap and at 1130 I decides to wake her up and asked Ry to get the boys coats, shoes and hats on and pack some cheese and crackers while I got Amelia dressed.

Well he had to get himself dressed.  And then mentioned he needed to dump garbage out of the truck (he takes our garbage to his work to dump).  Then the truck was in the back yard (which is gated), so we had to move the van to get the truck out.  The carseats weren't even in the truck.  The chainsaw wasn't in the truck.  Porter was whining and getting pissed because his shoes didn't "feel right".  Hudson was getting pissed because he couldn't get his mitten on right.  Amelia was pissed because she wanted a bottle.  I was pissed because we only had 10 minutes to get across town to meet this lady.  Ughhh.   I was ready to call it quits and just dig out the fake tree yet again.  

But... we made it work.  I called the lady, we got the carseats in the truck, the kids loaded up and we made it only 15 minutes late.  Sure, we were all silent and brooding on the trip out there but once we got to the tree farm (which is a friends' parents tree farm, and was closed so we had the run of the place) our spirits lifted.  The boys were really excited about our new adventure.   

The pickins' were kind of slim for a smaller tree.  These trees were HUGE!  We walked all the way down the path and back and contemplated and discussed and compared and pondered.   Ryan's theory was "We just need to find one that has a good 'body' and we can trim it into a good shape once we're home" Ok.  Remember this, right?   

So we find a few trees that are far too tall.  One would work if we hacked the top off (it was kind of narrower in the middle toward the top) and others seemed like they'd work if we hacked about 4 feet off the bottom and trimmed the sides up a ton.  We finally settled on one that seemed pretty close to what we needed.  It was a little fuller than we'd liked but we figured we can trim it up, right? 

We took a few pictures... my hubby is the best- he carried this huge wooden uh, thing, over so I could set my camera up and use the self timer.   We packed the tree up, and headed home.  

Here's where the fun begins... are you ready for some laughs??  When we finally got around to bringing the tree in it was dark.  Ryan went outside and when he brought the tree in the first thing I thought was "WOAH... way too big."  We obviously either overestimated the size of our house or underestimated the size of that tree.  The second thought? "What the hell happened to the top of the tree and why is there so much trunk showing?!"  (Ryan says "I only trimmed a little off the top!)  I am pretty sure this is why he said to me "I"m going to run up to Menards for garbage bags... and look at their trees." I shot the idea down.  NO!  We went and picked out our tree and we're going to make it work!  Little did I know he'd hacked a hunk of the top off of it! HAAH!

So out to the front yard we went with a hedge trimmer and chainsaw.   Ry cut off some of teh trunk (and I'm pretty sure more of the branches at the bottom because we needed to cut MORE trunk off later), and I went to town with the hedge trimmers trying to shape the tree into a recognizable triangle shape.   The neighbor came by to get his dog (who ran into our yard) and said "That's unique... cutting the top of the tree off instead of the bottom!  Shows you don't follow the crowd, huh?"  HAHAHA!

After oh, an hour?? Who knows... and many many laughs, we finally got our tree looking decent.  Oh my word.   Ryan kept saying we should just go buy another tree and I refused.  No.  This was OUR ugly tree and it is going to be a great memory.  Ugly or not, it's staying.  

Nothin' says summer better than an old fashioned clothes line

One of my (many!) favorite things about summer is drying our clothes on the clothesline.  Sounds funny, I know, but I grew up drying clothes on the clothes line and I continue the "tradition."  When we bought our house this was one of the things I was excited about!  I'm not sure why I love it so much... is it the fresh air smell the clothes have?  The swaying in the breeze?  The use of nature to get a chore done?  

So I wonder... who else uses a clothes line in the summer?