It's 5:55 AM on Christmas Eve. In about 25 hours my kids will be ripping into their presents and spoiling their breakfast with candy- and I am so excited. Christmas is just simply way more fun with little kids. Doing stuff for Santa, passing on old traditions and starting new ones, getting them excited about making and giving presents to others, Christmas specials on TV that are old to me but new to them... I love this season!
It's so easy to get caught up in my tangled web of a to-do list and only see the 'work' part of Christmas. Last night I was up until 11:30 (extraordinarily late for me) sewing the play food that my mom made on her embroidery machine for the kitchen set they'll be getting, and wrapping presents. If I'd been up that late doing anything else, I'd be a grumpy person right now. But while they are anticipating getting new toys, I am just as eagerly anticipating the looks on their faces when they open their presents! Their excitement and glee is my Christmas gift from them. (My gift from Ken is going to be a Belgian waffle maker- I'm pretty amped for that one, too!)
I've spent a lot of time thinking which of my Christmas traditions I want to pass down. Technically I want to pass down all of them but with 3 kids, some of it would be too much. For instance, every single year my dad and I would go shopping at the mall for my mom on Christmas Eve where we would buy Shalimar perfume and a cookbook and an article of jewelry. Then we'd have lunch in the food court and go home to wrap presents. To this day I think it's so weird to wrap presents before Christmas Eve even though it makes way more sense to get it out of the way. Wrapping presents on Christmas Eve is great when you have, like, 4 presents to wrap. It doesn't work when you have about a hundred presents to be split up and wrapped in 3 different wrapping papers! I am just beginning to clearly see this. Next year I'll wrap earlier because I still have a bunch more to do tonight!
Another tradition that I just loved (and I mean LOVED, I made my mom do this long after I was "too old" for it) was how my mom would hide my presents around the house and I'd get to find them. I know. Where did she come up with that? I have no idea but I remember the first present I ever "found", sparking off about 13 years of present hiding. When I was 5, my mom called me in to the kitchen to open the oven for her so she could put breakfast in. Five year olds don't ask questions regarding why she couldn't do it herself, so I opened it and Santa had stuck a present in the oven!! And it was the doll I wanted that peed itself and you got to change its diaper!! So probably til I was 18 (or slightly older...) some of my presents would be hidden here and there every Christmas. I wish I could do that with the boys, but I know with absolute certainty that it would be a madhouse of tearing through my stuff all over the house, looking for presents. I'm thinking some of the coolest traditions work best with an only child.
This year we have a new one though. I can't remember where I read it, but I think it may have been All You magazine. We are leaving a "Santa key" outside with a tag on it that says "Evan, Christopher, and Noah's House". That way since we don't have a chimney, Santa will be able to get into our house via the back door. I imagine he will park his sleigh on the deck and use the key we leave out there to let himself in. I am also thinking- spoiler alert!- that his reindeer are going to leave hoof prints on the deck while they eat their snack of carrots... hoof prints that will wash off when it rains. Then, (another tradition I started a few years ago) Santa will come in, leave gifts, and eat chocolate covered strawberries. That is what we leave out every year, and though I can't remember why I started doing that I'm glad I did because I think it's pretty unique.
So, I hope everyone has an incredible day tomorrow! Enjoy the magic of the season and I will be back with more posts and pictures on December 26th.
Merry Christmas!
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