(Or at least it was, a month ago...)
I really, really enjoyed this Christmas season. It's not like I usually don't, but Dane is getting to the age that it's really fun to pass along the traditions that Tommy and I both loved as kids, and it's actually meaningful to him. I tried to consciously think about what traditions I loved as a kid, and which ones I want to try to pass along to our kids. I definitely didn't want to get super over-committed to doing things and I tried to keep it low-key. This was the first year we really decorated for Christmas and I just loved it. When I was thinking about my favorite traditions, I really kept coming back to when we would go pick out our Christmas tree--in the Home Depot parking lot, of all the super special places--and how happy that made me as a kid. And of course, decorating the tree while listening to Christmas music. I loved handling all of our old Christmas tree ornaments and helping with all of that. So I was really excited to do this with Dane this year. And we finally managed it!
We also did a gingerbread house and baked Christmas cookies, and went to look at Christmas lights. We did a Christmas nativity advent calendar (I had one growing up and always loved it). We watched some Christmas movies like Elf, Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and the Grinch with Dane. We baked some poppyseed bread for home and visiting teachees and neighbors (and for ourselves), which I love doing because it is my favorite thing to bake in the world. (Funny story: the second batch I made, I forgot to put in the poppyseeds. So it was just... bread. I still gave it to people because it tasted fine and we had six mini-loaves. I had to figure out an alternative name for it so they didn't wonder where the poppyseeds went!) Most of these activities we just did here at home and didn't take too much effort. I think that's one reason it was so enjoyable and relaxed. We only did things we really wanted to do, and left off the things that didn't matter so much. I know once our kids are older we won't have the choice about keeping things so close to home and so calm, so I'm happy to be able to control things so much right now in this stage of our lives.
Picking out the Christmas tree at Lowes.
Super excited!
This tugs at my heartstrings. Seriously one of my favorite memories from growing up--and passing it on.
Dane got his own Christmas lights and mini-Christmas tree in his room this year.
We even got Christmas lights for the outside of our house! We didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars all at once so we just got a few, and it still made me really happy how it looked. (And we went to Lowes on New Year's Day and got 10 strings of icicle lights for the roof for 75% off--so we will have even more next year!)
Eating cookies and drinking egg nog after decorating the tree. Bummer that it's such a blurry picture.
I also remember always going to look at Christmas lights, which is something that I always love. We went to this neighborhood south of us that is super famous for its crazy Christmas lights. It was totally freezing but really fun. We went there last year too, and we got to see some repeats--like this blow-up Thomas with a Santa hat.
A Rudolph they could sit on!
We made Christmas cookies a few times! A favorite tradition for many reasons...
Is there anything as cute as two matching brothers?
I always loved decorating our gingerbread house growing up too. This year, we just bought a gingerbread house kit at Costco. Maybe next year we will figure out how to do it on our own. But this was perfect for Dane and he had a lot of fun putting the candy on (and stuffing his face).
Tommy's work also had an event with Santa there. The lines were SUPER long and it took forever, but the boys managed to not lose it and we lasted through to the end. Dane was very excited to wear this crazy Santa hat in his picture with Santa.
The Gingerbread Man was sadly not as interesting and had no line to take a picture with him.
Our ward party had Santa available for pictures too--and Dane was the FIRST in line this time! He was very solemn sitting on his lap and informed Santa that he wanted "more trains." (Santa was NOT bringing him more trains. He has about 55,000 trains in his toy room. NO MORE TRAINS.)
Graham was pretty tired out and started crying the minute he saw that crazy beard. Poor guy.
The night before we left town for Christmas in California, we opened the presents we already had under the Christmas tree so that we didn't have to cart them to California. (And to space out the presents for the boys, so that they didn't have too many to open on Christmas morning. Of course, it still turned out that there were too many and Dane was done before we was halfway finished with his stack.)
A great way to get ready for Christmas! Great presents from their great-grandparents and Aunt Kiki. Graham was sporting his Santa suit and looking pretty festive.
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