Christmas...so far

We don't really have established Christmas traditions. Every year I wish that we had done more. This year, however, we started celebrating right after Thanksgiving, and this has made a big difference! It has given us a lot more time to just slow down & enjoy the holidays. We put our tree up at the end of November and decorated it - leaving room for all the new ornaments that get created by the kids during the season:) Another secret to our success this year: I've signed us up for group Christmas activities, rather than just planning to do it on our own (which then never happens, LOL). We went to the library last night for their annual Gingerbread House Decorating Night. We each brought our own frosting & 1 bag of candy per child. We all shared candy and had a lot of great decorations for our houses. One thing that is sort of my own personal tradition: I try to memorize all the words to one Christmas song each year. Last year I memorized Frosty the Snowman, since my youngest DD was enchanted with snowmen:) I got lots of singing practice as the kids constantly asked "sing the snowman song!" This year, I am helping both girls learn Jingle Bells. I don't think we will be able to memorize all 4 verses - the girls are having enough trouble remembering "bells on bob-tails ring". But it is a lot of fun & then next year we can sing the song with pride, knowing we memorized it the year before. This year we attempted celebrating Advent. This was really tricky, since our dinner never happens at the same time every night, & some nights it is very rushed. If we could do it over again, I think we'd have Advent at lunchtime. Another thing we did this Christmas season was attempted to study Christmas around the world. I would like to do this again next year, but start it earlier. We've had a wonderful Christmas so far, this year. This is our first Christmas in the new house. The countryside is completely covered in layers of snow. We've already spent more time sledding this winter, than we did all of last winter. And I think this will be our first truly white Christmas in years.