Sunday, December 27, 2009

traditions


I love following the traditions I grew up with at Christmas time. I love the memories I have, and I want to create the same feelings for my kids. We have also adopted several new traditions that we follow every year and they have become some of my favorites.

I have learned that if we don't schedule things they don't happen. One of our best ideas ever was to create a paper chain with 25 links that we make on December 1st. On each of the links is some fun activity we do to prepare for Christmas. We carefully plan which activity will fall in each day of the month since some days are super busy and all we have time for is a cup of hot chocolate. We drive around and look at Christmas lights, we make ornaments, we read Christmas stories by candlelight, we celebrate an Italian Christmas, we make cookies Dave and I remember our grandmas making, we sometimes make a gingerbread house (not this year), we do a secret service, we learn about another cultures Christmas traditions, we watch Christmas movies, we go to the store together and buy our gifts for each other, we sing Christmas songs, and we have peppermint ice cream.

This has really been the best thing we've ever started and the kids look forward to finding out what our activity of the day will be. I'm sure it would be really cool to make it into a fancy advent calendar, but we enjoy the simple paper chain that we make together every year!

good things:
family time
December
New Years coming up!

3 comments:

JAMIE said...

so going to steal that tradition idea from you. Thanks for the idea...I am going to make it sound like it was my idea.

We have a new tradition of giving one gag/sneaky gift...meaning that we find something that is already the other persons, and wrap it up...then they have to remember if it is theirs, guess if it is the gag gift in other words ( like a shirt they never wear, so they think you bought them a new one....fun stuff)

The Ridings said...

I love the paper chain idea. Family traditions are the best.

MamaBug said...

Very fun tradition!!