Half a dozen: Merry Christmas!

K. so Technically it’s now New Years, but it wouldn’t be a post on my blog if it was done in a timely manner now would it be?

First of all, I am truly appreciative of my best Christmas present, little Kaden. Love how you can dress infants up in whatever you want to and they don’t say anything about it. I had found a ton of Christmas outfits over the summer at garage sales and such and was so excited to deck the little man out in his festive attire.

We had been looking for a Christmas eve tradition. Typically we went over to my Aunts home, but last year was crazy and we didn’t. Instead we went to the candle light service at the Treat church and my family refused to let me do that ever again. Growing up I used to go to a performance called the “Living Christmas Tree” and so in googling it I came across a performance in Tacoma. It wasn’t on Christmas eve, but close enough. Let’s just say it was amazing! The lights and music and dancing, and the spirit felt there brought me to tears. We will most definitely be going every year from now on!

After setting up the Christmas tree, which I can never decide if it is fun or torture, the children slept under it the first night. Not sure where that tradition came from, but they beg for it every year.

Back when we had only a few children, surprised I can remember that far back…… Anyhow, I once had a perfect tree. Tons of ornaments. Each child had one for each year…. The tree was meticulously put together. As we added more children it got stressful to add an ornament for each (and expensive) and the ornaments we did have were always being broken. I have now gotten over most of my attachments to our ornaments and am happy just to have anything on the tree.

Last year we were in charge of decorating for the Ward Christmas party which left us with a ton of decorations. This year after not being able to sell them on Craigslist I put them to good use.

I truly loved driving up and seeing how festive our home looked. The only problem was that it was a very windy month and we lost a lot of the little ornaments that we had decorating the two trees in the yard.

One night we woke up to this mysterious banging and couldn’t figure out what it was. It was coming from outside and was very rhythmic… We finally found out that it was these ornaments banging against the garage door with the wind. Our bedroom is right above the garage…. Once we figured out what it was we were able to sleep right through it.

One night I decided I wanted to hold an old fashioned caroling party and so I did. It was so much fun. Not that many people showed up. Two of my reliable friends came, thanks by the way! We weren’t sure what the reaction would be from our neighborhood as our neighbors never really communicate with each other and most are Russian, Indian or Asian.

We stuck to singing to houses that were decorated and ended up only singing to two houses that were obviously home but wouldn’t answer the door. The other ten or so houses were really enjoying it and it was so much fun to spread holiday cheer. Sariah was so cute at one house that the little Asian guy gave her a twenty dollar bill!

Instead of our traditional sugar cookies, we made rice krispy wreaths because mom thought these would taste better, and they did! Thanks to the Tylers for the inspiration.