Thank you all for the great tradition ideas. I loved hearing about them. I thought I'd post what we are hoping to do this year. Here we go:
1. We made Christmas cards that we are going to deliver to the Hospice nursing home next Monday. We don't sing, so caroling is out. Cards will be our form of caroling. I bet the Hospice people don't even know to appreciate that! Summer pumped out some serious cards, I bet we have over 50!
2. T Jay named our tree "Timber" and Jess made up a story of how "Timber" got from the forest to our house. This is our first real tree as a family and it was kind of fun. Not quite as fun as going out into the forest and cutting your own down like they do in MT, but still fun. We are in FL after all.
3. We will dress the kids up and read Luke 2 on Christmas Eve. My goal for next year is to make actual costumes so they won't be wearing their bathrobes and towels on their heads.
4. We are going to bake a monster load of cookies and take them to all of our neighbors. If they are lucky, maybe they'll even get one of Summer's cards!
5. The kids are all going to get new PJ's for Christmas, which will be their one gift that they get to open on Christmas Eve. In order to make it more interesting, we are going to have a scavenger hunt for them. We love a good scavenger hunt around here. Thanks for the idea, Karen!
6. I want to try Rachel's suggestion while opening our gifts this year. I think it sounds really fun to use each present as they are opened.
7. Christmas lights, in fact, we may even try and see the lights at Disney Village. I did that in high school and it was really neat.
8. Cookies and milk, of course, as well as sprinkling "reindeer food" in the yard. T Jay usually insists on putting out some veggies too, "so Santa can be a little healthy."
9. We chose a family that needed a little help with Christmas.
10. I also want to try writing down a "gift" for Jesus. (something that we will work on) I think I will buy a white stocking and put them in there. The next year at Christmas, we can get them out and see how we did.
11. I think we will have Cornish hens for Christmas dinner. We did that one year and it was really fun. Fun that ya'll do it too, Nicole! We can pretend we are together!
12. I want to do some sort of family secret Santa service week. Something along the lines of drawing a family members name and doing secret acts of kindness and service for them the week of Christmas. Maybe when they are older, we will do it for the 12 days of Christmas.
13. The Christmas Elf always comes to visit on Christmas Eve. He brings them candy canes and reminds the kids to go to bed nicely.
I think that we had a few other things on the list that I now can't find, but that should keep us busy! I hope that you all have fun with your traditions this year.
Today we went and shoveled and raked mulch on a local trail for an Eagle Scout project for one of our friends. What's crazy about that you ask? Well, the main source is that it is December, the week of Christmas and I thought we might sweat to death. Literally. I think I may have even been on the verge of dehydration! The sun was blazing hot and the shade was not frequent enough. I even had to break out the sunscreen! Now, I have lived in FL before and I just don't remember it being quite so hot around Christmas. Hmmm, now I really need some hot cocoa! Oh, but wait, I need to crank my A/C for that first!
