Christmas Traditions

First of all I just have to tell you that both my husband and I LOVE Christmastime! We will start watching Christmas movies before Thanksgiving because we love it so much. But we wait to turn the Christmas music on until after Thanksgiving. But here is a list of Christmas Traditions that we have in our family.

1. National Lampoons Christmas Vacation: We watch Christmas Vacation after Thanksgiving dinner every.single.year without fail. It is my dad & brother's favorite Christmas movie and one of James's favorites so the boys always want to watch it together.

2. Christmas Tree Adventure: We go and cut our own tree down every year at the same Christmas Tree farm every year. We love the adventure of going out and picking out the perfect tree and then cutting it down ourselves, {well James does that} I just watch. ;) That is one of the perks of living here in Oregon because we grow Christmas trees like crazy out here. 

3. Decorating: We decorate {actually I decorate} the day after Thanksgiving every year. I like to have the decorations up as long as I possibly can because of how much we love Christmas. I decorate using mainly white, red & silver just because I like the traditional'ness' {I know I just made up a word} of it. I only use white lights both on the inside and outside of my house. I grew up in a house of just white lights and I love the simplicity of it. We did add some red lights this year around the banister on our deck in the front but that's all. We have also decided that each of our children will be designated with a certain Christmas "character" if you will, like Santa, Snowman, Elf, Reindeer, Angel, etc. Depending on how many children we have. Their stocking will be their character {Zane is Santa} and then his grammy will be buying him a new santa every year so that he will have a collection of them when he gets older and has his own wife, family, house etc. 


4. The Family Stone: I will watch The Family Stone about 100 times from the beginning of November to the end of December because it is my all time favorite Christmas movie. I love it more than any other movie. I dream of having a big family just like in the movie with a beautiful house in the country with snow and all my children and their families coming to visit us when they are grown and out of the house. It just is such a great movie and has such a great story to go with the wonderfulness that is the family in the movie. 

5. Books & Movies: James and I started this tradition on our very first Christmas together 5 Christmases ago. We buy a new Christmas book every year and write our names, the year and if anything big happened that year in it. {Like last year was Zane's first Christmas} We also buy a Christmas movie every year, whether it be a new one or one of the Classics. We want to own all the Christmas movies we can. Because we try to watch one almost every night during December. It's something we love to do with each other during this time of year.

6. Christmas "Morton Family Strata": {from the Family Stone} This is something I make on Christmas eve and put in the fridge for Christmas morning breakfast. We just started this last year but we decided that it was so good that we wanted to do it every year from then on. You can get the recipe either from the DVD special features or you can go here for the recipe.

7. A Christmas Story: This is James's favorite Christmas movie ever. He could watch it a million times and still love it. So on Christmas day the 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS is one of his favorite things. It is pretty much on all day and if it's not on on the TV we will watch it on DVD because most of the time he doesn't have Christmas off. {Police officers don't get holiday's off, that's one of the downfalls to his job.}

8. Twas the Night Before Christmas: James reads Twas the Night Before Christmas every Christmas eve to us right before we go to bed and put out the milk and cookies for Santa.

9. Christmas Music: We love Christmas music but our favorites are Jessica Simpson {both of her CDs}, Michael Buble, Lady Antebellum, She & Him, Rascal Flatts, SheDAISY, and any of the classics. It's the only thing I will listen to starting the day after Thanksgiving until New Year's day. Love love love Christmas music.

10. Visiting Santa Clause: Now that we have Zane we have been going to see Santa at the mall the last two years and we don't plan on stopping anytime soon, especially since we are going to be having more kids in the near future {as in we are going to start trying in March}! ;) It's so much fun to take him to see him and see his reaction to being put on a strange old man's lap. We had success both this year and last year! No crying at all. Hopefully that will continue with him and with our other future children. 

11. A few little fun extras: So there are a few things that we have done in the past or want to do but haven't had time yet for. The Christmas tree lighting downtown Portland in Pioneer Courthouse Square each year on the day after Thanksgiving. We wanted to go this year but decided against it because of the stupid Occupy Portland thing that is going on {they had just moved to the square a couple days before and we didn't want to take Zane down into that}. Zoo Lights of course we want to take Zane to Zoo Lights because he loves Christmas lights and would love to see all the lights at the zoo plus you get to ride on the train and he loves trains. So this is something we are hoping to do this weekend. The Polar Express on The Mount Hood Railroad it's a fun little trip for the kids {and adults too!} where the kids wear their pajama's and they give you hot cocoa and you meet Santa Clause at the end of the ride.

I find it funny how quite a few of our traditions involve movies. We are big into movies I guess. Oh well it's part of what's so great about Christmas are the movies.