We started our Christmas season last night with my very favorite traditions of the whole year. The day after Thanksgiving we always break out the Christmas decorations and put them up as a family. We give the girls their Christmas jammies so they can wear them through the Christmas season (and all winter after that.) We put on the Christmas music and set up the tree.
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| This year's jammies |
The nativities come out. Some are allowed to be touched, some played with and some are off limits.
We collect Christmas books and get a new one every year to put the kid's hand-print in on Christmas day. We've inherited some, gotten some as gifts and we are always adding to the collection.
This year the kids got a little tree all their own to decorate. It is covered in handmade projects. I'm sure they will be adding to it throughout the month.
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| Big Sur ornaments |
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| Monterey Bay Aquarium ornaments |
People who know me well, know I'm pretty much obsessed with our Christmas ornaments. I fret over them all year and want to have ornaments to commemorate all of the big events, trips and moments in our lives. So this year we have ornaments from our trip to California to add to the collection and to the girls' collections.
I try to let the girls help with as much of the tree as possible. We talk about all of the places the ornmanets came from and look at the ones from my childhood and the beginning of our married years. It's fun. It's one of my favorite things we do as a family. I'll never have a designer tree because I love this tree full of memories so very much.
We always lay underneath the tree and admire the lights. I'm so happy our tree is back up. It's like having a good friend back in the house. The first round of decor is partway up around the house and the girls are already planning on what they want to make next.
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| My tree |
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| The girls' tree |
3 comments:
It's a beautiful tree and a great tradition. Almost identical at our house!
Those are fun traditions, a lot of which we do at our house too. We used to turn off all the lights in the house except the tree lights and read Christmas stories each night with a flashlight. Its really been fun passing that tradition on to my kids are they get so excited each night to see what story is next. I love the idea of putting their hand prints in the books. We may have to start that. I think that Christmas is about memories. The designer trees are nice in the stores, but the trees with a story are my favorite.
LOVE YOUR TREE!!! Love the girls tree and hello, I never thought of giving the jammies after thanksgiving to wear all season-- BRILLIANT!! I've joked w Doug about how they wear santa jammies in July then in December they wear canada jammies. I'm having them unwrap theirs early next year!!
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