Personal Holiday and Christmas Traditions

Most families have holiday traditions that they pass down from generation to generation. Or maybe your parents started something when you were a child and it has remained in place until this very day. I know that was the case for our family. However, three years ago we moved 600 miles away so all of our traditions pretty much went out the window and we were left to make new ones!

It's hard to say that we have a Thanksgiving tradition anymore. We did and then my husband's grandmother passed away and they changed. They continued to change over the next few years. Then when we moved it was a tradition for the last few years that my parents came down here and we celebrated Thanksgiving. We are going home this year though so I'm not sure we can really call it a tradition. One tradition my mom and I have though is getting up at about four in the morning the day after Thanksgiving and spend the day shopping! We love it. We've done this for as long as I can remember. Thanksgiving night we'll pull out the ads and makes lists of where we want to go and what we want. We have a plan in place before going to bed that night and normally it works out pretty well. We spend the whole day shopping, then have lunch and come home and nap!

One of my favorite holiday traditions is the candy making we do at my moms house. We typically do it the second Saturday in December and we take a whole day and make candy. This has also been done for the last several years. We make chocolate covered pretzels, thin mint cookies, peppermint bark, reeses cups, chocolate covered rice krispies, pretzels with melted hershey kisses and an m&m on top and mexican wedding cakes. I love doing this more then almost anything else that comes with the holiday season. People just love receiving these goodie bags and I just love eating the candy for two weeks! We always make up bags for co-workers, teachers, the mailman and anyone else we can think of.

We love Christmas here at our house and we've started decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. The kids get so anxious and by that point almost all of us are ready to pull out the Christmas stuff. My mom has bought the kids a nice Hallmark ornament each year they've been born to represent the number of Christmases they have had. Between those and all the other random ornaments we get the kids have plenty. We set up one big tree in the family room that I get to decorate and yes, I do let the kids help. However, we also put up a small tree in their playroom and they get to decorate it all by themselves anyway they want. They love this! They think it's so neat to have their very own tree. Along with the tree the stockings, garland, Christmas statues and the lights all go up as well. We pretty much get it done in one day.

Since we've been in South Carolina we have taken the kids to a place called Eden Farms one Sunday before Christmas. They have horses dressed up as reindeer and the kids get to ride them. Santa also comes down the hill and all the kids are able to sit on his lap and tell him what they'd like for Christmas. We have hot chocolate and cookies and the kids are able to make fun crafts while there as well. This is always a fun day for all of us. We usually wrap it up by grabbing a pizza and coming home and having a picnic on the floor in the family room by the fireplace with a nice warm fire.

A few nights before Santa is set to come we make sugar cookies. I've really had to learn patience with this as the kids like to do it all themselves. They are four and five just to give you an idea of how much patience I need! We make a huge mess, but it's always followed by cookie eating and hot chocolate and Santa has his own special cookies the kids make for him too! The night before Christmas the kids are able to open one gift. It is a pair of Christmas pajamas. We do this fairly early so we can get them on and get some pictures before they go to bed. Before they go to bed they do one last thing and that is to set out the cookies and milk for Santa. We have a plate that says Cookies for Santa and they each pick two cookies. They also fill the milk glass and set it by the fireplace. Once the kids are in bed my husband and I sit up, usually with a glass or two of wine and wrap presents. We get the presents wrapped and set up just right and fill the stockings before turning into bed ourselves. We sleep late the next morning. We don't wake the kids, we just wait for them to wake us. Then we have a nice relaxing day with just the four of us. The kids always have to open and try out every new toy they get that very day.

As the kids and my husband are playing with their new toys and having such a great time I'm usually packing to head to Indiana the next day. We'll hit three sets of grandparents in Indiana and Illinois in the next six days and then head back to South Carolina. It's a very buys, very tiring time of year but we love it!