Friday, December 12, 2008
Family Traditions
This holiday season I have been trying to teach the girls that they are very fortunate to have the things they have from toys to friends and family. So Greg and I have been trying to come up with some new family traditions to instill this. I love the idea of finding families in need or going to shelters, hospitals, or nursing homes to visit, but my girls are to young to be able to help at these places. I was wondering if any of you could share your family traditions, even if it doesn't involve charity-like finding the pickle on the Christmas Tree (I know some of you do this)! Let me know what you and your family do because I might just steal your ideas. Thanks and Merry Christmas!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
We just went shopping last night for 3 kids that were on the angel tree at Jaden's school. The boys each had one that was about their age and they picked out their present. I am going to call our bishop as well to see if there are any families in the ward that need help this year. Then we can do the same sort of thing for them even not knowing maybe exactly who they are, we will know we helped someone close by.
You could still be santa to someone. My mom would park us down the street to watch her and dad or just dad ding dong ditch gifts to someone's home. As we got older we got to ding dong ditch and hide somewhere with dad or by ourselves. We also would make gifts for eachother. I talked about how we called the bishop to see who needed help and still do today. The kids can help you pick something they want to give away or go to the store to pick something out. We would make dinner or just different foods for a family we knew needed cheering or needed food and we got to take it there. It was amazing to be so little and feel like you have helped so much.
OH regular traditions, we always made snowflakes and dingdong ditched or just gave goodies to people. sometimes we had to carol, but that ended quickly. we read the polar express, night before christmas and bible christmas story on xmas eve. We make homemade doughnuts and hot chocolate and play games. Days before christmas we read The Forgotten Carols. Christmas morning we have stickybuns.
Christmas Eve our family has a traditional christmas dinner with food like they would have had at the time of Jesus-like fish, grapes, olives, torrillas (unleven bread) grape juice, ect...we all sit on the floor and sometimes dress up. Its pretty fun. Then we read the nativity story. Hope your having a good holiday season!!
this is totally not charityish but, every year we as a family go and each kid picks out an ornament for the tree. We write their name and the year on them and they each have their own storage box of ornaments to put on the tree (this way the 2 yo has 2 ornaments, the 4 yo 4 - the number of ornaments matches their attnetion span - and when they leave home they will have a box of decorations to take with them.) Anyway, it is insight to their individual personalities year after year. Like Kaids hot pink car that he LOVES! I'm personally fasinated by what we come home with when the kids are given free reign.
since jonas was one weve sat shoes out a few weeks before christmas to be visited by st nicholas. last year we decided to celebrate christmas as if we were in a different country each year. last year we had a traditional dutch christmas, this year german. its fun to learn about different cultures and get a chance to celebrate them.
Post a Comment