Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas night and the day is coming to an end. I absolutely love this time of year! The lights, the joy, the gift-giving, the music, the questions and conversations this season brings and even the extra family time. This time of year cannot come fast enough and flies too quickly by. My Christmas tree is up the day of (or before) Thanksgiving and is not taken down until after the New Year.

I was really thinking this season of all the traditions we have started with our kids and even those we hadn't realized we had created with our own family. As the kids would mention little things that they were looking forward to is when I realized that traditions had been formed. The kids sleep together every year on Christmas Eve. We used to have walkie-talkies and they would radio us when they woke up on Christmas morning. This year since Cameron has his own phone, we were able to just use that. We also sit at the computer on Christmas Eve and track Santa online. Even after the kids are in bed, Jason and I continue to track him, lol. Did you know that Santa takes a break and moves slower over Reindeer Lake in Canada? Donder and Blitzen have relatives there!! The kids also write Santa a note. It's not tradition to just leave milk and cookies, my kids need to write to him. Can you guess whose idea this is??? We also always make a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas morning. This is so fun and a perfect reminder of why we are celebrating the holidays. We sing Happy Birthday aloud and have the best time. We also do not leave our house on Christmas Day. I grew up constantly on the go during Christmas time and hated it. I'd open gifts and have to get ready to go somewhere else, never really getting to enjoy my gifts until later. Jason and I, as well as grandparents, have enjoyed doing this as they get to see them in their Christmas pj's (and their nice clothes) and seeing them with all of their goodies - decorating their room, playing with their toys, eating the cake they made. We also only give our kids 3 gifts under the tree because when Jesus was born he too was given 3 gifts. And if the holiday is about him, we try to mimic the day of his birth in everyway possible This has probably been the best thing we have done as parents.

A fun memory for this year..... the kids didn't wake up for Christmas! They never have really gotten up early but this year they actually slept in. It's true, Jason had to call them to get them moving. We were just laying in bed waiting for them to call us and finally Jason sent Cameron a text asking if they were awake and he was the only one up, patiently waiting for his brother and sister to wake up. Again, being the sweet guy he is, Cameron let his siblings sleep while he patiently waited for them to get up.

The kids were super excited about their gifts Santa left them and even more about finally being able to open the gifts under the tree. After this, they made their calls to grandparents to excitedly tell them of their gifts and to know when exactly they were coming over for the day.

Here are our Christmas pictures on our online photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/bran0224.