i didn't want the year to pass without recording a few of our family's
christmas traditions.
baking sugar cookies together for santa {and ourselves} is one of them.
we don't make cookies from scratch, we simply buy the betty crocker mix,
add the few ingredients and roll them out.
the fun for the boys is using our many christmas cookie cutters
i've gathered over the years and then covering the cut-out shapes
with as many sprinkles as the possibly can.
we eat some right as they come out of the oven,
put some in the cookie jar and leave a few on a plate for santa.
another tradition is building a gingerbread house.
i picked one up from trader joe's this year and finn
did a great job decorating it.
{scoutie preferred eating over building it}
my favorite of all our christmas traditions is the special ornament.
every year, the boys get an ornament that represents something
that was important to them during the year.
since the wizard of oz was the first large chapter book scout read
completely outloud last school year {in kindergarten},
i gave him the tin man, his favorite character in the book.
finn was given a mars rover toy.
i couldn't find a traditional ornament for him and since he studied
mars and the curiosity rover in particular this past year, i had to get it.
c devised a clever way to hang it and finn was beyond thrilled with it.
i made sure to write the year on the bottom of each ornament.
i found myself smiling at our christmas tree every time i walked by it.
the silver and blue ornaments are pretty, but it's the boys' special ornaments
{the ones they make and the ones i've given} that are so meaningful.
they represent the boys, their childhood and their uniqueness.
we spent christmas eve together and this year we
had auntie jen back with us. {last year she was in florida}.
we had our traditional meal of chili and cornbread,
and the boys had a blast tracking santa through nordasanta .
we discovered this a year ago and since then,
christmas eve is more exciting than ever before.
it's seriously the coolest thing!!
where was this when i was a kid?
when santa was just over the cape of south africa,
we got the boys away from the television and into their
new christmas jammies {another tradition},
so we could watch home alone 2.
before the boys went to bed,
finn's note warned us we would be awoken christmas morning
with him playing christmas music on the piano.
he didn't warn us that it would be 5:30am!! *sigh*
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| finn's post-it note, 2013
when i heard him the next morning,
i convinced him to go back to his bedroom for an hour
we could all sleep for one more hour.
he said he was "too excited to go back to sleep",
but when i allowed him to go on the computer for an hour,
it gave us all an extra hour of much needed sleep.
i'll post out our christmas day shortly.
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