Holiday Traditions......

I started this blog post on Nov 19th.....

Since we have had kids, I have tortured myself with creating traditions that they will look back on and remember with a happy heart.  I have memories like that and I want it very bad for them.  The problem is that we travel for holidays so often that it has been impossible to create those traditions. I don't want our tradition to be that we were never home for Christmas.  Although, it will be interesting to hear how they feel when they realize what we had to do to get those HUGE christmas gifts to Nana and Granny's houses for so many years!!

Big Daddy and I have talked about this often and we know what has to happen.  We need to stay home and create our own traditions.  I want to bake holiday treats and decorate the house and go to every Christmas related activity we can squeeze in. We will search for the best neighborhoods for light displays. And we will anticipate Santa with every ounce of holiday spirit.

This is how it really worked out........

We stayed home.

We saw Santa's Christmas Clown at The Crown Uptown.

The kids decorated the Christmas tree and I did not re-arrange even one thing!

We did not drive around to look at lights, but we noticed them and oooohed and ahhhhhhhed while we were driving around doing other things.

We listened to Christmas music every time we were in the car and a little bit in the house.

We made gingerbread houses, fudge, and baked a cake.

We did a very speedy "Santa" visit at the mall.

The kids anticipated Santa with a greater gusto than ever before.

Christmas morning was magical and everyone was happy.

Here is what I learned:

Relax............I try too hard to force traditions and memories on us. If we live our lives and do things that make us happy every day, those are the things that matter.  I cannot re-create "my" memories in my kids heads.  And I know for 100% sure that I do not want their memory to be that I  forced them to do stupid stuff nobody cared about and then cried when they were not interested.  That would be crazy :)

Moving on to the New Year!