My grandparents started buying me the collectible Barbie ornaments every year since 1991. I still have each and every one. I cherish them all. I think it is such a fun thing to do so I started buying an ornament every year for the kids. I don’t have a theme such as “Barbie” but I pick ones I think represent us in that moment. For the past few years, Jazzy has been the one to deliver them to the kids on her first night back home. This year, we went with simple initial ornaments to represent our new family members, Harper and Mason!
I love collecting any type of book. So we have quite the collection of Christmas books. The girls and I love to read one book a night up until Christmas Eve, when we read The Night Before Christmas. Our favorites this year are The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Polar Express.
We have done this since McKenzie and Kasey were very little. We usually get the cheap ones from the grocery store that are filled with chocolate. They wake up every morning, after searching the house for our elf Jazzy of course, and eat their daily chocolate.
This is my absolute FAVORITE Christmas movie. I make it a point to watch it every single Christmas Eve night after the kids are all in bed. I get my glass of wine and cry thinking about how blessed I am. That’s what this movie does to ya. 😉 I usually partake in this tradition alone because my husband can’t stay awake through the movie. Typical.
A lot of people ask me why I start putting presents under our tree so early in the month. So, I thought I would talk about how we do our Santa presents. In our house, Santa only brings one or two gifts. Everything else my kids receive, they know is from us. I’m sure many people have different feelings about this but I think it’s important to limit Santa gifts so no one’s feelings are hurt. What I mean by this is, if Santa brings Johnny an Xbox, iPhone, etc. he is going to go to school and tell his friends. Well, Santa only brought little Sarah a stuffed animal. She is going to wonder why Santa wouldn’t bring her such extravagant gifts too. It ruins all the magic! Elves don’t make iPhones people.
I have actually been slacking at doing an “official” Santa visit the past couple years, so I want to get back into it. I made it a priority to visit him this year since it is Mason and Harper’s first Christmas. I was SO hoping to get a great crying picture of the babies but of course that didn’t pan out. They seemed very uninterested as you can tell by the photo, haha!
I would love to hear what your family’s favorite traditions are! Leave them in the comments!