Christmas traditions

Tomorrow is the big morning at our house... we celebrate Christmas in the morning... I am so excited! Jilli's big gift is all built and sitting by the tree. The girls are in cute pajamas (totally forgot to get Jilli Christmas ones... ops!) and we read The Night Before Christmas and Gigi's Christmas tonight and baked some more.

Today at MOPs the question was asked about Christmas traditions and as the day has gone on I have been reflecting on different Christmas traditions over the years... lets take a walk down memory lane... (sorry, no pics, those are all at my parents and pictures on my laptop only go back a short time)

• Christmas caroling: Our church use to go our Christmas caroling to different nursing homes in town. It was sweet. 
• Live nativity: When our church use to be in town (and for a short time after it moved to the current location) we would put on a live nativity. Man that was cold but so fun. We would do shifts and when it wasn't your turn to be outside there would be hot coco to drink! I always loved dressing up for that! 
• Christmas musicals: These were the staple of my childhood! When I was young my mom and one of her friends started directing the Christmas musicals at church. We would start working on them in the fall and as it got closer to Christmas we would spend more and more time getting ready for them. A lot of my fond childhood memories are from doing musicals and that group of people helped to raise me over the years. There are several that stick out in my mind! They sure were a lot of work and time but at the same time so fulfilling. Brent came to our church for the first time to see me in a musical. 
• Gifts on Christmas eve: Growing up my mom's best friend Sandi and her husband Todd would come over for lunch on Christmas eve. We would go to lunch at Bakers Street (as my mom if you want the reason why we went out, lol) and then come home and we would open our gifts from Aunt Sandi and Uncle Todd and then we would get our biggest gift from my parents. The highlights being the Little Tikes years! We all still talk about the year I got the doll house so large my little brother crawled out the front door. 
• Delivering Angel Tree gifts: My dad delivered Angel Tree gifts most of my childhood and some years he would bring us with. It was one of the ways my parents taught us about giving back at Christmas time. I remember always being so excited the Sunday when the Angel Tree came out and asking my parents how many angels we could pick out. It was always so fun going to the store with my mom to pick out the gifts! 
• Christmas Eve service: We still do this, but I remember singing Silent Night with all the lights off and everyone holding candles. It was so beautiful! 
• The Christmas story: On Christmas Eve when Sandi and Todd would come over Seth and I would put on a play for them. We would dress in our bath robes and retell the Christmas story. once Daniel was born he got to be baby Jesus. My brother and I would work on this together. 
• Angel on the Tree: Seth and I would take turns each year putting the angel on the tree. When we were a little bit older on year my parents took us to Marshall Fields in Chicago and we got a star for the top of our tree. Every few years my parents would take us down to the city to see the lights
• Christmas Lane: We always would go to Christmas Lane when I was little. It was so fun to see all of the lights

While most of those things are no longer a part of our Christmas traditions, our kids are now at an age when we are trying to make a choice of what traditions we are going to do with them.  Here are some of the things we do:

• We set up the tree together as a family and then next to the TV we set a pile of Christmas books and movies. They stay there until we take the tree down and we try to see how many we can read/watch. I love Christmas movies! 
• We live close-ish to the Grand Geneva so we go over there each year and look at the Christmas lights. Our plan is to do that tomorrow 
• We always open Christmas gifts with our little family before Christmas. We do gifts in the morning and then go to Starbucks for brunch. We are so busy seeing family the days right around Christmas that it is nice to just have a calm little Christmas together. 
• Not as much of a tradition but something that we have done since Jillian's second Christmas, we spread out when we see people and cut back on the amount of things we do. My memories of Jillian's first Christmas are not the best. We had a dr appointment Christmas eve where we learned she still was not gaining weight and both our lactation consultant and the dr were starting to worry. We also did way too many things, especially with a tiny baby and me healing from a c-section. Christmas Eve Jilli had an allergic reaction to a dog and was struggling to breathe. It was too much and after spending time crying from all the crazy I vowed to not repeat that again. Not everyone has loved how we do things now but we have to do what is best for our family and calm is needed. 
• We still go to Church on Christmas eve and then head to my parents where my mom has Christmas pajamas for everyone. 
• We celebrated Christmas this year with friends in the Dells and have talked about making that a tradition. It was a lot of fun to spend time with friends and have a calm weekend in the midst of all of the crazy that December can be. 
• Brent always makes Norwegian toast. He use to make it with his grandma but after he sudden death last year he has decided that to honor her he is going to keep making it every year. Tonight we made Norwegian toast and Raspberry Mergange Kisses! 

We are also trying to make it a point to teach our kids about the true meaning of Christmas. Tonight Brent and Jilli were having a conversation about the Trinity... ya know casual night before celebrating Christmas talk :)

Ok, I did find this jem on facebook of Christmas past...