I was going to give the basic Christmas play-by-play, but there was so much more for me internally. This felt like our first real Christmas as a family and I want to remember the inner workings of the beginning. I want our family to look back and laugh at or appreciate all of my/our 'good intentions' for our family.
Tim and I had been talking a lot about what we want Christmas to be like for our family. And when I say 'talking' I mean, I talk and he listens to all of my ideas and thoughts on celebrating for our family. What is Christmas going to be like so far away from home? What will our Christmas celebrations be? What will our traditions be? Will we travel? Will our tree be filled to overflowing with gifts or just a few? What will we teach them about Christ's birth and Santa? What will we teach them about giving to others? Now that I have my own children I find myself taking parenting far more serious than I ever thought I would. Everything Tim and I do teaches them something, EVERYTHING. I want to be an intentional parent, not a reactive one. Part of that intention is to create traditions and memories around holidays. I don't want to look back and wish we would have done more/less. I may have.... been desperately trying to create some of this because I am away from everything I hold dear when it comes to Christmas. All of my memories and traditions are in Minnesota. So here I am without extended family or tradition. The one benefit to being away from everything and everyone, is that we are able to create traditions that suit our family without the input and obligation of previous traditions. I don't mean for that to sound as horrible as it does, but there is a level of freedom we have that we wouldn't if we lived closer to family. That freedom {obviously}created a lot of questions for me about what I want Christmas to be for our family, now and years to come.
Two of the three weeks before Christmas Tim was out of town on business. Having him gone definitely effected how and what we did this year. Having a 1 1/2 yr old and a 3 month old may have also been a deciding factor between what you want to do and what you actually do :) When all was said and done I think we did just enough Christmas-y things for our little family. We got our tree {the smell, ooooooo the smell!!}, decorated the house, baked cookies together, read Christmas books before bed, went to a few Christmas parties, visited Tim's family in Jersey and went to Christmas Eve service at church.
Baking cookies proved to be more of a form of entertainment than an actual means for cookies. There were many quality control issues as TJ picked and licked his way to happiness. That being the case, I would say it was extremely successful. One of the Christmas parties we attended asked everyone to bring a bag of groceries and a gift card to a grocery store for the local food bank. I loved this. Obviously TJ is a bit young to understand this, but I had him help me choose the groceries for "the kids who don't have food" to which he referred to as "no foo" when I asked him to put things in the cart. We were able to visit Tim's family the weekend before Christmas. Being in a house bustling with family, kids running around, siblings laughing.....it was like a Christmas miracle :) it reminded me of home.
On Christmas eve, we kept with our "tradition" from last year; we went out to dinner before church, candlelight Christmas Eve service at church, came home, read the birth of baby Jesus, put the babies to bed and watched a Christmas movie by the fire. On Christmas morning TJ decided 5:30 was a good time to get up {bah humbug}. We got the dough ready for some homemade caramel rolls and snuggled into a warm fire. Our day was quiet. We opened presents, sat by the fire, our neighbors {that have become our family} stopped by to give the boys a mountain of gifts, ate a big ham dinner and best of all, never got out of our pjs.
Being far away from home makes it hard to 'feel' like Christmas. This will become my new normal and in a few years I'm sure it will 'feel' like Christmas. I am not one for rushing childhood, but I am looking forward to the next few years when the boys are a bit older to understand and experience Christmas. I can't wait to tell them more about the beautiful story of the birth of our Savior, bake cookies, decorate gingerbread houses, anxiously await presents, experience the joy of giving to others, feel the nostalgia that Christmas music brings and most of all the love of family. I've already started working on an advent calendar for next year.......it may be a bit more ambitious than it needs to be {but let's be serious, of course I would do that to myself}.
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