Every other year we trade off spending Christmas with either Dan’s family or my family. We love being with our families on Christmas, and so we’ll probably keep going for as long as we can. So, when we’re with my family, we do my family’s Christmas traditions, and when we’re with Dan’s family, we do his family’s Christmas traditions. But I do feel that it is important that our little family have some Christmas traditions that are unique to us, and that give our children things to look forward to during the Christmas season.
But before I go any further about our traditions, we needed to get the house ready first! Dan had the day off today, so he put the lights up on the house. They look great. Between me being a perfectionist and Dan being an orthodontist, you better believe that those lights are dang STRAIGHT!!! 
We went out on Monday night for FHE to get our tree. We’ve had some serious luck in the past with finding the perfect tree, and this year was no exception. We headed straight to our favorite Home Depot (does it count as a tradition because we go to the same Home Depot every year?), found the 6-7 foot Noble Firs, looked for a taller and fuller one with a teardrop shape, cut it open, and voila! The perfect tree! We didn’t even cut any others open to look at. We just took this one, strapped it to the top of our car, and drove home. And this year we didn’t even forget that it was on top of our roof before driving the van into the garage! A successful night indeed:) Today we finished decorating and put the final touches on the tree.
So, this tradition has been slowly forming for the past few years, and this year we finally gave it a name . . . . our Christmas Kick-off Party! We’ll have a little party on December 1st to kick off the Christmas season and begin our advent calendars. The girls were so excited and kept asking us all day, “When are we doing the Christmas Kick-off Party??” It’s so funny how kids just get so into things and everything is so exciting to them.
Dan and I found a really cute Playmobil nativity set, and decided to give it to the kids in an advent calendar sort of way. We wrapped up the stable part of it in a box, and then dropped the other pieces into red paper bags and labeled them with the days of December. We “kicked off” our Christmas Kick-off Party by giving it to the kids. 
Here I am explaining to the kids that they’ll get to open up one bag each day to discover a piece to the nativity set! 
They got to open up the main box today. They are really excited about getting to add on to their little set everyday! We did this for our Christmas present to Scott and Elisha’s family as well:)
Next we opened up Chris and Amy’s present to us, because on the tag it said, “Open on November 30th.” Oops, we’re a day late:)
I LOVE it!!! I’ve always wanted one of these kinds, and inside each door, Amy wrote a cute little message . . . either an inspiring quote or some kind of cute instructions on something special to do that day. We can’t wait to see all the fun things she’s going to have us do! Thank you so much, Amy. 
My grandma used to buy each family an advent calendar every year, but the past few years my mom has taken over the tradition for her kids. This is the one she bought for us this year. We keep it on the fridge and the kids love opening a little door each day.
As you can see, we definitely love our advent calendars around here! We actually have another one that our Primary presidency gave to us where we have to put a little ornament on a Christmas tree each day and then read the scripture that’s written on the ornament and answer a question that corresponds with that scripture. AND Leah brought home a Christmas chain from preschool where each day you take a link off the chain. So, we’ll have 5 advent calendars going this year. There’ll be no mistake as to how many days until Christmas in this house!
And last but not least, the kids opened up . . . . their Christmas pajamas! We started out giving them their Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve, but now we give them to the kids on December 1st . . . . that way they can wear them all December!
Hugging his new Christmas jammies:)
So, let the Christmas season begin!! We are ready! And excited:) It’s definitely the most wonderful time of the year!
And tonight I hosted the Annual Relief Society Progressive Dinner at our house . . . . which is the real reason we had to get the house decorated, the tree up, and everything done today! It was actually really nice having a reason to just get everything done and it forced us to do it quickly, instead of dragging out the decorating over a week’s time. Anyway, the Relief Society started out at my house and I just ordered soup and breadsticks from Olive Garden (which is what we did last year, and it was really good and easy), and the Presidency each brought a salad. Then we headed on over to Stacie Leyva’s house for desserts and a little program. Callie Bowers read us a Christmas story, and then we busted out the chimes again (we did this last year and we had many requests to do it again this year:). It was a really fun night, and it’s kind of nice getting our December activity over with on the very 1st of December . . . . so now I don’t have to worry about my calling until after the holidays!
