More traditions to think about...

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Some of you have posted, some of you have emailed, and I've found some other great ideas for traditions and wanted to share them all with you.

Joesette shared these traditions from her family. Love the ornament idea too, although our tree would get crazy fast! *grins* And helping out as a family is a wonderful idea.

• Each year we make a Happy Birthday Jesus cake...year 1, child 1 (6months old)...footprint in top of cake. Year 2 (same child) hand print in top of cake (lost her balance and fell in...sigh...)


• Each child gets a new ornament (this year, I'm cross stitching them, what was I thinking????)
  
  
• We ring the bell for the Salvation Army as a family (mental note, pick the Mall NOT an outside location).
  

Val at 3 little munchins shared this additional tradition. It sounds like fun!

• About 2 years ago we started having a Christmas Eve picnic in front of our Christmas tree. We spread out a blanket and eat your normal picnic style meal. We talk about Christmas, why we celebrate it... we just have a wonderful time together as a family. The kids love it. This is one we will be doing for a LONG time.

Erin emailed me to tell me that she and her husband sit down together Christmas Eve and she makes him he lovingly offers to help her wrap all the presents while they watch Christmas movies (some lovely classics) until they are all done...but are usually still watching movies til the wee hours of the morning.

We also have some friends whose children are a little older now and they have a lovely tradition of waiting up until midnight to open their presents. Then they can all sleep in nice and late Christmas morning. :) Someday when our kids are older and don't wake up at 6am, I'm sure that will be a lovely thought!

Some other things that Rick and I have talked about (but have yet to put into action) are caroling together as a family (nursing home, etc...). This of course would involve having children that knew all the songs so that they weren't just la-la-laing along with us. :) So this is a "for the future" tradition to start.

Today as I was visiting some other blogs I stopped by An Ordinary Mom's blogsite and she has an amazing tradition that we will definitely have to implement as a family. If you would like to read the entire post you can click here. During the month of December she and her family write a note to one other family member each night until Christmas (taking turns writing to each one). It can be a "thank you" for helping with something, a long letter to another, etc... When they finished the note, it is put in that person's stocking - not to be opened until Christmas. Then Christmas morning, everyone "opens" their stockings first and read all the notes.

I think that this would be an amazing family-building tradition to start. We don't do stockings right now (we figure the kids have enough toys already) but this would definitely be something I would run out and buy stockings for!

Hopefully that gives you a few more fun ideas for the Christmas season. Have fun!