Christmas Traditions 2015

1. Pick out a Christmas Tree

We went to Lowe's Home Improvement...and that's perfectly fine for us!  Jimmy and I actually chose our first Christmas tree together from there.

Decorate the tree :)

Cute Santa's Workshop by the tree area

2. Decorate the house

Jimmy was totally suckered into decorating the house with lights this year by one cute little four year old's question, "Daddy, how come we don't have Christmas lights on the outside of our house??"  Nicely played Grace...nicely played.

3. Make Christmas cards to send to military overseas

Our neighbor, Uncle David, is in the Navy reserve.  He has some contacts overseas, so we gladly gathered the kids to make Christmas cards to send to those that are serving our country and are not able to be with family over the holidays.  An incredibly important lesson for the children to learn about taking the time to put others first.

4. Polar Express

Visiting the Polar Express in Spencer, NC was an awesome experience!  We had SO much fun and maybe we'll get to do this again next year.  This was one of our gifts to the children for Christmas.  Paying for experiences rocks!

5. Jesse Tree

This is not my Jesse Tree, but one from the Jesse Tree party (see blog post from November).  I wanted to show all the ornaments that we will be putting up this advent season.  It has been a fantastic way to talk through the advent season with the kids.  It's very easy for children to understand and also very tangible instead of just reading out loud (which isn't bad!).

6. Tanglewood Christmas lights

I am not exactly sure how many years we have driven through these lights...possible our fourth year.  We went on a discount night when it was rainy.  However, the kids had more fun sitting in the trunk area of the Suburu bouncing all over the place when Jimmy hit the brakes or went over a speed bump.  Best $5 spent in awhile :)

7. Donate treats to ARF (local animal rescue foundation).  The kids and I dropped some dog treats off at ARF since that's the place where both of our dogs, Maverick and Ellie, were adopted from.

8. Caroling at Homestead Hills

Homestead Hills is the assisted living community where some friends from church and I used to visit and do different activities with the residents.  The residents LOVE having children so we were happy to be able to come back and sing some Christmas carols with them.  Thank you Austin for playing the guitar!!

9. Breakfast with Santa

This is the third year (I think) that I've taken Grace to have breakfast with Santa at Chick-Fil-A.  They put on a great little event with free pictures with Santa, a balloon artist, free gift bags and of course a yummy Chick-Fil-A breakfast.

Wesley was more excited about eating Chick-Fil-A and seeing the cow than sitting with Santa.

10. Cookie Baking: Cookie baking is a tradition from both mine and Jimmy's families so it's only fitting to carry on the tradition in our own household.

My little helper

Both littles got a few of their own butter cookies and some icing.

From Jimmy's family: cherry cookies; a sure favorite!

From my family but actually a family friend's recipe (thanks Mrs. Green!): Crinkle cookies or Devil's food cookies...whatever you'd like to call them...they are good!

From my Nana: butter cookies

These take awhile to make.  You make the dough, roll it out, cut out the shapes, bake it, and then decorate.  It's quite the process but brings back such fond memories to me and boy do they taste yummy!

11. Christmas Day Movie

This is a new one for us but a tradition that Jimmy's family had as he grew up.  Jimmy was on home call the day before and the day after Christmas so we had to stay in town.  It worked out nicely as he was home most of the time.  Christmas Day we ventured out to see The Good Dinosaur with the kids and it was super fun!

12. Fellowship Group Christmas Party: This was our 5th year of having our fellowship group Christmas party.  We do a meal together and a white elephant exchange that is hilarious every single year.  We love our small group so much!

13. Giving: This is the second year I've been intentional about Grace helping choose gifts for a child her age to donate.  This year we donated to Operation Christmas Child.  The kids were able to come help drop the box off and see all the donations from other families.  It was a great experience!  

We watched some other Christmas movies as well at home.  Jimmy comes from a big movie family and we watched more than enough movies this month!  I'm sure I'm leaving out other traditions and things we did and there are some others we would like to start this next year.  We are grateful we were able to bless others during the holiday season and hope our children learn to love giving to others as well.