Traditions

I thought I'd post what our family does for the holidays. I think that family traditions are really neat and I'd love to hear about yours!

Our family traditions:

• There is a legend about animals speaking at midnight when Christ was born...when I was a kid, my family would go say goodnight to all our critters and probably the neighbor's critters, too. I thought that was fun when I was a kid.
• We always get our tree together as a family
• We don't open presents on Christmas Eve, just Christmas. We open presents first, then stockings.
• We always have cinnamon rolls for breakfast- I did even on my mission, though they were out of a can!
• We hang Santa letters on the tree
• Laura and I are big kids, and there are no grandkids, so we still have to be the "kids", so we still put cookies and milk out for Santa (and carrots for the reindeer!).
• Mom and I collect nativity sets, we enjoy putting them out each year.
• My grandma used to play Nat King Cole's record LOUD to wake up my mom and her sisters when they were kids, now we play "Happiest Christmas Tree" to walk out to the tree to.
• We read the Christmas bible verses together as a family on Christmas eve before we go to bed.
• We like to shop at the mall together as a family one evening before Christmas. We usually see a movie around the holidays (this year we'll go see Marley!).
• I have a dvd of a fire in a fireplace with cheesy music...we play it while we hang up stockings on Christmas Eve.
• We meet in Mom and Dad's room and walk out to the tree as a family.
• Dad usually goes out of town in Dec- he just got back yesterday after a week in Texas!

We had to figure out how to do things in our new house last Christmas...where do you put the tree, etc?

Hope everyone has a great Christmas! Happy New Year!

Love Liz