Holiday Happenings

I'm having a hard time deciding whether to use my childhood Christmas memories or current ones with my kids. Ummm...Ill go with current Holiday Happenings. And since I'm a slacker and was hoping to get this posted this morning and now I'm racing the clock until it's no longer the December 3rd deadline...bear with me!


I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas! Every single thing about it (of course, most especially the birth of our Savior).

Ok...some of the fun stuff we do with our kids is Stan takes the kids every year to go get our (real) Christmas tree. It's always a "secret" from mommy and the girls love bundling up, getting in the old beater pickup, picking out just the right tree, and surprising mommy with it. (I'm sure sometime they will start to wonder why when they get back the livingroom is somehow already rearranged to make room for the tree.) Anyway, I know the kids will have great memories of going out with dad to get the tree.

I love the idea of the kids having their own tree to decorate (from other posters of the Holiday Happenings)! I may have to start doing that! (I do have a little cowboy tree in the kitchen with red chili pepper lights and cowboy decorations.) But what we usually do is I give the kids each some ornaments for them to put on the tree...so they dont fight over them. And I hang the breakables up high with the ladder. Yes, we need a ladder...did I mention they get the biggest tree possible? Our ceiling is about 13 feet tall and we use every inch of it. I love it!!!!! But every year I get each kid an ornament and one for the family and I write the kid's initials and the year on their ornament. Then when they leave home I'll give them all their own ornaments to start their own tree with (and the reason I get one for the family is so when they all leave we will still be able to decorate a tree...and each one will remind us of each Christmas with the kids). I get all the same kind of ornament...like one year I got angels and they were all the same kind of angel but one was holding a tree, one a candle, etc. So they were all just a little different...but the same. Did that make one bit of sense?

One thing we started last year and I really liked was Stan and I each took two kids and gave them each a little money to shop for all the other kids. So each kid got to pick out gifts for their siblings. They loved picking out just the perfect gift for each one and they were so excited for them to be opened. And of course we always have tons of little "presents" under the tree that the kids have made for each other and us out of paper and stuff around the house. I didnt count them last year but I'm guessing there were at least 30 under there.

Well, there's SO much more I'd love to write about but I better stop here. Check out more Holiday Happenings at Conversations With My Hairdryer!