Traditions {New & Old}

 Good Morning Friends!

How is everyone doing? Wonderful I hope! How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was nice, not as many people at the family gathering as used to be and that was a bit of a bummer, but still great! We made way too much food and ATE way too much food. Everyone totally got into football (I've got a great video of my lil guy doing a victory dance on my Facebook page). 

We continued on with our Thanksgiving tablecloth except this year we did fabric blocks the leaf shapes were a BLEEP to sew on and I didn't like the raw edges regular fabric allowed so blocks it was! What are some of your family traditions that you do for Thanksgiving?

Now on to Christmas (did you really think I WOULDN'T with this post title??), what are your traditions? What are their origins? Have you started any new traditions since becoming a family unit? Which ones have you carried on from your childhood? I would love to hear yours either post a link to your post in the comments and comment them in the comments; here are some of ours.

1) Ornaments - every year littles get an ornament that represents their life or a significant event in their life that year. For example this year Buckeroo joined Boy Scouts and L-U-V-S it so when we were at the boy scout store they had a 3D ornament that we got for him. One year it was a John Deere tractor, another it was Lightning McQueen from Cars (the original - nothings better than the original). The thought behind this is that when they get out on their own and they want the ornaments for a tree of their own they will have a start with ornaments.

We take a day in December to go have breakfast at an old iconic diner from the 50's here, called the 59 Diner (again only the original - are you sensing a trend here with me?! lol!), and spend the day shopping for our yearly family ornament. They used to have those old photo booths that have the curtains and Buckeroo would take a ton of shots by himself in it and just have a blast and we would use that as our Christmas picture card. But alas, the last few times we've gone they haven't had it, I've been wanting to find one and we can just add that stop to our outing.We usually end it with a Starbucks trip.

This is similiar to the ornament Buckeroo will receive just not with an eagle and it has three sides. I'm wanting to get one of those ornament hangers that turns for it.

 



2) Christmas Lights - We try to decor the outside with lights every year but last year it just didn't happen and that's ok. We decided to make the tradition about going and seeing lights around the neighborhood with homemade hot cocoa in special thermoses that we only use at Christmas time. That way if for some reason we can't decorate the outdoors we don't have to throw out our traditions or make ourselves crazy with trying to do it all. Buckeroo goes in his jammies and I bring blankets just to be cozy.

3) Christmas Jammies - I always get Buckeroo jammies for Christmas, we don't do the traditional Christmas Eve jammies though. He gets them right before we go and look at lights - those are the jammies he wears that night. This actually happened by accident one year, he needed new pajamas right around Christmas time one year and well everyone has pajamas on sale now so me being me, well it was a present and he LOVED it! Hence a tradition was born.

Lil man LUVS footed pajamas - although I'm hoping our Walmart has the angry birds one, as he already has Phineus and Ferb from last year.



4) Presents - Santa brings three, to represent the three gifts the wise men brought baby Jesus, these are left unwrapped under the tree. Plus Daddy and Momma give him gifts too, usually about three or four.

5) Jesus's Birthday Gift - We have an ornament that is a birthday cake that opens and we always put our yearly charity dollar gift in there and as a family we choose the charity. We talk about why we do this, and how we can be a blessing and why we choose that particular charity.

 

I'm going to have to ttake a pix and load it when we put our tree up, I can't find it anywhere online.

Most of these are new ones we've started, except for the ornaments, although my folks didn't start that one with us until we were grown and married so I put a new twist on it. Although Gma and Papa now also get the grandkids their own ornament each year too.

A new one that I want to start is for extended family also. We have the traditional Christmas Eve party with extended family and I'm going to make a Thankful Christmas Tablecloth this year. It's the same idea as my Thanksgiving Tablecloth, just with a Christmas theme. A big angel with her "wings" as the place people write their thanks for.

What are your Christmas traditions? New, Old? Where are they from? Ones that you are trying out but just not sure of? I love to hear of others traditions and see if they are something we can or would incorporate into our family traditions.

Much Luv!
Michelle