Our Family Christmas

With having to split our time between both of our families during the Christmas holidays, life can get a little hectic! We find it extremely important to 'share' our children with both sides, so every other year we are with my family on Christmas Day, and then the next year with Brook's family. This has worked out great, but does make it very interesting to try to fit everything/everyone in. We want our children to grow up enjoying everything about the season, but also don't want our times as a little family to get lost in the shuffle. After having exhausted, grumpy, and un-thankful children last year, we were determined to do it different. Brook and I discussed it at great lengths, realized that it really wasn't the kids fault, but rather the fact that we have run them ragged in the past and expected them to still be their happy go-lucky selves, and this was not fair to them or to us! Our solution was to spread Christmas out and not pack it into 3 or 4 days. This way they could and would enjoy each and every gift, party, family gathering, etc. This was our year to be at my parents so we decided that on the Tuesday , one week before Christmas Day, we would have our own little family's Christmas. This allowed there to be several days to be in between the next 'Christmas' and they were able to enjoy the new things that we had gotten them before being giving several others. It was wonderful!!

It has always been a tradition with my own family that before opening gifts we celebrate the REAL reason for Christmas! We have a birthday cake for Jesus, sing Happy Birthday and then quote from memory the Christmas Story from Luke 2. We have carried this tradition over to our own little family. We all love this part and always look forward to the quoting of Luke 2. Brooklyn knows almost all of it by memory and Brittan, well he always joins in on,"there was no room for them in the inn." After talking about the First Christmas we start opening presents. We always start with the youngest, that being Brittan, and then take turns going around, allowing us to be able to watch as each person opens their gifts. If the kids want, we stop for a while and let them play with whatever toy it is that they have just opened and then resume when they realize that there is more. We are in no way in a hurry, we take our time and it is so enjoyable. Then after we are finished, we always put on our new Christmas pj's, clean up everything and then resume playing with everything for a while and then it is off to bed. Ususally the next morning we wake up to open our stockings, but this year with Brooklyn having to go to school the next day we put that off. We are planning on doing that tomorrow morning. Until my next post...