Christmastime Traditions

(with special guest blogger, Cornflower-- Mommy, Daddy and Triss helped-- Mariel was away for the night)

We have several Christmas traditions at our house. Here they are in a list for you!

* We put up our Christmas tree on Black Friday.

* We receive new ornaments every year from our grandparents.

* We store the ornaments in big red boxes-- one for each person.

* Triss puts her Christmas ornaments mostly at the top, and Mariel puts her ornaments mostly in the middle. I'm so short I have to put mine on the lowest part of the tree. Mommy fills in the empty spots.

* Triss has these cool Christmas ornaments that tell the story of The Night Before Christmas.

* We put up nativity scenes about Jesus' birth.

* Mommy makes hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.

* We take our picture with Santa, and our Goggy goes with us. We have all the pictures from previous years' pictures displayed on our low bookshelf, and Mommy put tinsel around the pictures this year.

* We take out our Christmas books and keep them under the Christmas tree.

* We each learn a new Christmas song on the piano.

* We put stocking stuffers in our sisters' stockings all during December, and we also hang stockings for our American Girl dolls.

* Our grandparents got us some wreaths one Thanksgiving, and we hang them on our bedroom doors for Christmas. Mommy and Daddy have one to hang on the front door.

* We read the story of Jesus' birth sometime before Christmas.

* Star Night is when we go to bed one night and then Daddy comes and shakes us and wakes us up and Mommy has hot chocolate made, and gives us a bag with cookies in it. Now I will tell you the real part: we look at everyone's decorations on their lawns, and the library is so much fun. You can go there, and they have their lights on and their music playing, and you can put the music on the radio in the car, and you can watch the snowflakes blinking off and on, and it's so fun! We take Main Street and go see the house that has the train tracks and fake snow all in their front yard.

* We put out a note for Santa and some milk and cookies, and a carrot for his reindeer. Santa writes a letter back to us every year and leaves it by the plate. Last year I woke up and heard Santa open the drawer where we keep the little pads of paper-- it's the loudest drawer in the house!

* Our grandparents come after we've opened some of our Christmas presents and they bring our stockings that they have, and we have a nice Christmas dinner.

* Our church gives us some books every year. Each child gets a book, and the teenagers get gift cards to the book store.

* We make snowflakes and hang them on our window.

* We hang some Christmas ornaments on our hutch.

* We give Christmas cards to our friends.

* We also make little boxes of M&Ms for each child at church. We make them out of old Christmas cards from the year before.

* We hang Christmas lights in our bedrooms and on the front of the house.

* We have sleepovers in the living room with the Christmas tree lights on.

* We participate in an angel tree activity with our church, or fill boxes for kids or troops overseas.