Christmas Traditions

One of the traditions we have in our family is to make decorate a gingerbread house. Josh puts the house together and Haylee (with the help of both Josh and I) decorates it. This year I think Haylee was more interested in eating all the candy then putting it on the house.

Oh, and all the candy the ended up on the floor? It wasn't there more than 2 seconds.

We all had fun, and the gingerbread house turned out adorable!

Another tradition we have (that I carried over from my childhood) is that every year Haylee & Jackson (and all future children) get a new ornament for the tree. Haylee enjoyed putting her new "3" ornament, for her "3rd" Christmas, on the tree.

Other traditions we have in our family include-

*Buying Haylee a new snow globe every year. This year we got her a Snoopy snow globe because she fell in love with Charlie Brown's Christmas. We try to get her one that has something to do with one of her favorite things that year.

*Haylee gets new pj's to wear Christmas Eve, and they are usually Christmasy.

*And of course we attempt to go see Santa. Which this year was a success!

We also started some new traditions this year-

*Fred (the elf) joined us this Christmas to make sure Haylee behaved and then he reported back to Santa. He was a little mischievous himself getting into things. I kept up with this for only about a week, but I wish I would have done more. There is always next year!

*We wrote Santa a letter telling him what Haylee would like for Christmas this year. And to everyone's my surprise, she got a letter back from Santa. I thought this was most thoughtful thing. The fact the someone took the time to do this amazed me.

*Also we left cookies out for the first time for Santa. Haylee liked putting them on the Santa plate, but she thinks Jackson ate them.

Traditions that my side of the family have (most I have blogged about) that we have fun doing each year are-

*Looking at Christmas lights.

*Going to the Celebration of Christmas.

*Mother-Daughter baking day. Okay, so maybe we all don't enjoy this, but I sure do.

*Zoo lights. We usually do this after Christmas.

What are your Christmas traditions?