Christmas Traditions - Hopefully

For Enrichment night in December, we talked about and shared family traditions of Christmas. It made me think about what traditions we have. Basically, we have none. I really am so boring and don't celebrate holidays well. Now that I am a mother of TWO, I must do better. These are some little things that I did this year that hopefully will become traditions - maybe with a little variation.

Instead of an advent calendar, we made a chain in an attempt to help Cadence be able to see that Christmas is getting closer.

Every day we took a link off, we also added to our paper nativity set that we taped to the wall. We want the kids to know Christmas is about Christ. Santa is just a fun part of his birth celebration. (Cadence painted all the animals, star, stable and everything else.) We also made an ornament. This year, I just bought a kit from the store. On the back, I wrote the name of each kid, age and year. When they move out, they can take their ornament with them. Maybe next year, we will make some from scratch!

Also, we made a bunch of meat pies (to last us many meals throughout the year.) This yummy dish from Louisiana makes my belly have a happy party! We also open one gift under the tree on Christmas Eve. The gifts under the tree BEFORE Christmas morning are from family members. Cadence received a slinky from Cooper. She LOVED it!!! Cadence gave Cooper some dinosaurs and stacking turtles. Cooper loves to chew on them and Cadence enjoys playing with them!
We may add to these traditions next year. I want to make a little book with a picture of our family at each Christmas so we can see how our family grows and changes over the years.