Last year was such a depressing Christmas to me. Not because anything traumatic happened to our family or anything, but because I let myself get so caught up in buying gifts and everyday life that Christmas came and went without holding any special meaning for me. This was the one time of year specifically dedicated to family, reflection, and most importantly, my Savior's birth. And I felt stressed and rushed the whole month! What good is a holiday if you forget the main reasons you're celebrating it for!?
This year I vowed to make it a better Christmas. One where we could ALL look forward to the special day with anticipation and one where we would remember WHY we were celebrating Christmas in the first place.
I realized that in order for me to have a stress free Christmas and have time to create traditions and memories with my children, my first step would be getting all my Christmas shopping out of the way early! That way I didn't have it on my mind and didn't have to spend my precious time fighting crowds. My goal was to finish by Thanksgiving and for the most part, I did! I still had a few last minute gifts to buy, but what a huge difference it has made! I have had sooooo much time to do the fun stuff, and NO stress!
(Well, there was a few days where I was having the worst time finding boy suits, but that's another story)
Another thing I did was, I thought about what I really wanted my children to get out of Christmas. I wanted to create special traditions and memories that they would be able to look back on fondly. And above all, I wanted them to learn to serve others and not just to "get" at this time of year.
So that's what we did! We decided that one of our new Christmas traditions would be to do extra service this month. Since my children are still very young I tried to keep our service age appropriate :) One of the things we did was make Great Grandma Brown cookies and surprised her with a visit
The boys love their Great Grandma Brown.
We've also been watching as many Christmas movies as we can! We are so blessed to have family close by to do this with :)
Perhaps the hardest thing for me to do this year was to let Collin decorate the Christmas trees. He was soooo excited to do it all by himself! At first, it was the hardest thing for me not to go and fix it! But this is just as much his Christmas as it is mine, so I left it just the way he wanted it. After a few days I've come to realize there is nothing about our trees that need fixing. They may not be perfectly decorated and the ornaments certainly aren't evenly spaced, but they are the most beautiful trees to me and I can't look at them without smiling.
It's probably a good thing I didn't fix it the way I wanted it that first day anyway, because I don't know how many times my little perfectionist has decided to rearrange the ornaments. They have to be in just the right spot after all :)
And while we're on the subject of trees! We went to downtown Winter Garden for the Christmas Tree lighting! I have wanted to do this ever since we moved here 4 years ago. Collin was very impressed with how large the tree was. He keeps saying he wants to go back.
Of course he probably wants to go back so he can play in the snow and ride the train again.
The First Monday in December we had a special Christmas Family Home Evening. Collin and Michael decorated this Santa countdown. (which Collin actually colored most of it by himself! We couldn't believe he stayed in the lines!)
Every day Collin adds one cotton ball to Santa's beard. Once the beard is all full, it's Christmas! This has really helped him understand time and has even helped me anticipate Christmas more!
After they decorated the countdown we talked about how Santa will come and how it's nice to get presents, but that the real reason for Christmas is to celebrate Jesus' birth. We then took it in a more spiritual direction :)
Once we got to 12 days before Christmas, we started another countdown. I wrapped 12 Christmas stories (6 fun ones and 6 spiritual ones)
Every night Collin gets to open a book and we red it as a family under the tree. I saved the more spiritual stories to read these last few days leading up to Christmas.
I also LOVE the picture above. It shows our kids personalities perfectly. Tate the inquisitive one one who has to be in the middle of everything and Collin, the more serious one who is mad because his brother keeps blocking the book with his big head. (his words, not mine) It takes some longer to get into the Christmas spirit than others ;)
Michael and I hosted our first ugly Christmas sweater party! Do you know how hard it is to find a Christmas sweater in Florida!? Next time we might just have to do an Ugly Christmas ANYTHING!!!
All the guys wore red!
(Torturing Tate by putting a bow on his head and making him sit in a basket for pictures) Right after this the basket tipped backwards into the tree. He said that was the last straw!
My aunt Patti took us to this one house in Winter Park that was COVERED in lights!
The boys LOVED it!
We still have one more week until Christmas and we have tons of more fun things planned. So far, this Christmas has been great! It's just what I wanted. We've had fun as a family, created traditions, and celebrated the birth of our Savior. It's been perfect!
So, an early Merry Christmas from the naughty and nice ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment