I have a prize, and believe me, it's a good one!!! But I think I should begin by apologizing to those of you who never got your treat bag for the "Thanks for That" game! I'll do my best to get those to you...but I'm going to let you know, it may be a while. And Jessica, I still have your card that I keep thinking I'll give you, but I'm going to just have to mail it. :)
Anyway, back to this game...it's my favorite prize I've ever given out...but it's a secret!!! I'll reveal the prize in 2 weeks...but believe me, it's a good one that I know you'll want!!! So, lets play!
I love this time of year! Fall time is my favorite and Winter is my second. Christmas has definitely come to Crestwicke Drive as I've tied, hung, sprinkled, and lit up my Christmas decorations! I was just telling Marcia B. how I LOVE traditions...I'll make the silliest traditions, and if I never have children, I'm afraid my neices and nephews may just have to humor me in them.
One of my silly traditions began when Heidi and I would get the Christmas tree (Rebekah was already married) and we'd name the tree...but for some reason, every year, the tree looked like a "Winston" to me. So Heidi and I would rename our tree Winston each year as if it was the first time we'd thought of the name and we'd drink a toast to the tree with sparkling grape juice, and wish it a happy, long life! I'm guessing that tradition has not been carried on in the Rinkenberger home, but it lives on in mine. :) Heidi was always very good at going along with my quirks!
Another tradition we've had ever since I can remember was started by my dear mother. After we'd get the Christmas tree set up, someone would make the popcorn, another would turn on the fireplace, the third would get the ornaments, and we'd decorate the tree to the Christmas CD of Mahalia Jackson every single year. My mom knew how we loved a real tree and promised to get a real tree as long as we lived at home...so that's another tradition that will be carried on in my home...decorating the tree while listening to Mahalia Jackson sing. It doesn't get much sweeter than that.
I've realized that I love traditions because it lets me travel back to the sweetest days of my life and lets me touch memories that I've shared with the dearest people in my life.
So, what's a Christmas memory or tradition
that you or your family has?
If you leave a comment, your name will be put in for the drawing of this most amazing prize!!!
19 comments:
What a fun post! I love Christmas tradition... it fits right in with my love of systems and routines. : ) I think my favorite Christmas tradition is decorating for Christmas. We usually do it the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. I make a special meal, we listen to our Christmas mix on the ipod (used to be Christmas cd's- usually Amy Grant), I wear a Santa hat, and we decorate to our heart's content. It's a little more difficult with kids. We started a little earlier in the week so we could finish on Wednesday night. But it's one of my favorite parts of the season. We have two trees- one a beautiful one (Cade calls it Mommy's tree) and another one not so beautiful... with the kid's decorations on it. As a kid I used to lie underneath our Christmas tree and I usually try to do that once a year as well. Corny, I know, but it's sort of magical to stare up at the lights and listen to Christmas music. Can you tell I'm really into Christmas?
Favorite Memory/Tradition from years past (one of them anyway): every year we would get to open one present on Christmas eve - it was always PJS. Always looked forward to those!
Always loved/love the coziness of Christmas. Christmas movies, christmas music, christmas lights. They are all so cozy!
Tradition I will be starting this year: I have decided to hide the baby Jesus from our nativity. Then on Christmas morning the first gift the kids will open up will be Baby Jesus! I figure, he is the BEST gift of all,so what better way to illustrate that then have the kids open him up and place him in the manger!
What fun!
I just read about the "missing baby Jesus" tradition Megan - but hadn't heard of opening Him up. That's a fun one we may have to add next year!
A tradition Ryan and I started is that each year, before we go buy our tree, we go purchase an ornament that best "sums" up the past year - either with a major event or just a general description. We've had everything from a house ornament, to books (the year of finishing up school and studying for the cpa) to a new born picture of Ava. Even with just 5, it's already fun to pull each ornament and think of that corresponding year. And it's a great way to add ornaments to our collection at a budget friendly rate.
I was super excited this year because when we bought our tree, I had some gift card left over and got two small fake trees - one for Ava's room and one for the twin's room. I want to start the ornament tradition with them as well that they'll be able to decorate their own tree with each year. The idea becomes (and I stole this tradition from one of my aunts) that when they get married, they get to take their ornaments with them. So I guess next year we're buying 4 ornaments! : )
And I married a man who considers buying a real tree a christmas tradtion must . . .and I've grown to love it too. : )
I'm kind of envious of everyone's fun traditions! Since we've been married, we typically have the conversation: me: "we need to have some traditions. What should we do?" Andy: "I don't know." okay then... so nothing happens! Hopefully we can change this now that we have kid(s)!
My childhood memories that are special was the magic of waking up on Christmas morning and running into the living room to dig into our stockings... Mom always had (okay, she still does it) the perfect little things in there- church toys, candy, lip gloss, etc. Some practical silly things and some fun... And then we'd get to get dressed up and go to church and see our friends and family... a warm and fuzzy kind of day!
I LOVE Christmas... Kirk, well, lets just say that he isn't so jolly about it. But he is sweet to humor me and act like he loves it as much as I do. He started our first family tradition actually, see I love Christmas songs so our first Christmas season he came up with this....
Every night starting Dec 1st as we lay in bed we sing a Christmas song together. We sing with as much cheer and gusto as we can and it is silly but so much fun. Of course now Ella has to join in too:)I love my sweetie for coming up with a tradition that he knew I would love!
nothing real elaborate, but we would always open gifts at night. often we would wait until it was dark, even if there was no real reason to. i loved the coziness of the fire burning and setting a cozy warmth in the living room while it was cold and dark outside. so far we've kept this tradition alive with our kids, too.
~shar
Great post Tami!
One of our traditions is to make Michael's FAVORITE Christmas cookies a few times before Christmas. I have to use a specific recipe or it just won't do. Last year Noah was able to help cut out the cookies. We had on Christmas music and our Christmas lights and it was so fun to spend time as a family doing something creative and fun. Michael is already begging for cookies so we'll probably be doing our first batch in the next week or so!
As a child my family was very tradition oriented. We always had the same meal on Christmas Eve. My Dad would make a fire in our fireplace and make it so hot in there that we were all in tank tops and shorts. :) We would all sit in the same spots every year in our living room to open up gifts. We took turns opening our gifts and showing everyone what all we got. With four kids in my family this seriously took hours and we LOVED it! We always had Christmas cookies to munch on that my mom would buy at a local cookie walk. Then on Christmas morning we would all having stocking to open!
I hope to start more of these special traditions with our boys but at this time of our life we're always running to one family or another's on Christmas Eve and Day so we haven't been able to implement them yet.
One tradition we've started is to bake Christmas goodies and then put them on plates...make homemade notes that say something simple about Jesus and Christmas...and then deliver them to the neighbors.
Last year we went out on such an icy day that Darci fell right as we were leaving and we delivered cookies with a child with frozen blood on her face...lovely don't you think? The neighbors still took the treats...probably out of pity more than anything.
anyway, we enjoy it and hope that our neighbors do too.
I have zero christmas traditions, except the last two Christmases which I worked on Christmas and Christmas so that the other ICU nurses with children or families could be home with them to open presents.
So my tradition involved going to Peoria church and everyone trying to figure out why I wasn't with my family. Then I went home and slept all day.
Now I live in Florida where it is still summer, and I have zero Christmas decorations up, because it is impossible for me to have any Christmas spirit when it is 80 degrees. You have to at least have a couple of snowstorms to get in the mood. People in Naples have isicle lights up and those huge plastic snow globes in their yards and I am thinking...these people are delusion. There hasn't been ice and snow in Naples since the last ice age 225,000 years ago.
Here's a fun memory...
Now, I don't remember this myself, but I've been told it to be true. Let me just say, I was a pretty ingenious little kid.
Mom had carefully decorated the Christmas tree. Ah, the care and love she put into that tree...all decorated so nice. She even put candy canes on the tree. REAL ones. REAL ones without the wrappers on them. REAL ones that she "didn't want me to touch"
So I didn't touch them.
Not exactly.
But if you came to our house, saw our tree, you'd notice that all of the candy canes that were oh, on the bottom portion of the tree, were a bit peculiar, because they had pointy tips.
Yep. Apparently, I didn't TOUCH the candy canes, rather I painfully licked the bottoms of the ones I could each. I licked them to a point!
I love Christmas! Thanks for the post, Tami!
Ive had many great family traditions when I lived at home with my parents, but as we move out of the home we must make room for new traditions with our own families and so I decided to share that one with you. Its simple, but yet we love every minute of it and make sure to do it each year...now we even have the boys asking if we get to have our Chocolate Fondue. Yep, thats our tradition. The boys get to sit on the table(which I don't normally let them do and they think this is fun) and get close to the pot of chocolate and begin dipping large strawberries, banana's, pound cake, pineapple, apples, marshmellows and whatever else I think up for that year into the chocolate. Its so yummy and its a great family bonding time for us. Elijah is already asking when we will do the "fondue".
Thanks for the great fun post tami. Now if only I could just win this great prize. Maybe someone other than Mindy:) could win since it seems she wins alot of the blogging prizes. She must have some luck!!!
Growing up we also had lots of traditions--the first is my mom made a candy chain with a messge and she put a piece of candy tied on a string and we were able to eat one treat each day and when it got down to day 25 it was Christmas. I've made these chains now for our kids and they LOVE it! Our family also did fondue on Christmas eve. I always LOVED this as a child. We would open our gifts on Christmas Eve in the afternoon and then do fondue for dinner (evening meal--that's what we called it in Oregon--I've never understood why the midwest people say supper?--that's a blog post in itself. :)) Anways--then we did our stocking on Christmas morning before church. We didn't fondue with the kids though until about 3 years ago. I guess Kyler was about 7. I found a new recipe thoguh that uses broth instead of the oil and it's so good! We do a cheese fondue and also a dessert one. It's so much fun with the kids and they look forward to it each year!
So much fun! I am getting so many ideas from you other girls!
I adore traditions more than anything! But Like Brooke, we dont have that many right now. We are starting a few this year. One is that we will be doing some sort of Christmas thing with the kids each day in December. Some will be just fun like bake christmas cookies and a birthday cake for Jesus' birthday, gingerbread house, ect...
Fun post Tami :)
Fun contest!
Okay. This is really cheesy, but it was a tradition nonetheless! It was a something Seth, Leah, and I did for years (when we were YOUNGER - keep that it mind:))
My mom had this really small wooden Nativity Set that she kept in a Christmas tin. Every year, when she'd get it out, we'd play a game with it.
Each member of the Nativity was rated into points (ie Joseph=50, Mary=50, Jesus=100, sheep=5) One of us would hide each piece in the Living and Dining Room. (Of course, since Jesus had such high points, we'd hide him in a really HARD spot.) Then, the other 2 kids would try to find each piece. We'd then add the points at the end to see who got the most points and won!
Wow, now that I write all that out, it seems really weird. Oh well, it was fun and definitely a high light! :)
We have been adding traditions every year as our family grows. We count down the days with a little craft, read the Christmas story, make monster cookies, decorate our gumdrop tree, and if it snows (snowball fight and making a snowman indoors).
tam, will you teach me how to make cool headings for my blog?
~shar
I love the post! We don't have too many traditions yet either. Jarod always makes Christmas cookies that we decorate together. Jarod usually does one and then eats it and then just pumps frosting onto the next 20 cookies and eats them without trying to make them look pretty. I decorate about 20 also and Jarod eats all those too. So by time we are done he's eaten most of them.
ONe tradition Jarod's family had which I always think is so funny is they would leave cookies and milk for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph and then Kenny (Jarod's Dad) would eat the cookies and drink the milk in the middle of the night. He would make some crumbs and spill some milk and then in the morning he would cuss Santa for making such a mess. I guess he did this every year and the kids thought it was funny every year...I think Kenny thought it was the funniest. :)
-Heidi
Ok, Tami...hope it isn't too late to get into the drawing...do you mail overseas??
Our tradition is doing Advent every year. We start the Sunday after Thanksgiving and light the first of 5 candles and each night we go through the story of Jesus, starting with Adam and Eve. The kids love to light the candles and we also do a play with silly little paper puppets they make each year (we keep them all so we can see how much they have changed and grown in their workmanship) of King Herod and the three wise men.
The other tradition is that Jeff and the kids sleep under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. We are running out of room so we are going to have to stuff some kids in their stockings if we keep having more kids...(NOT that we will!)
oh, oh, I hope I'm not too late!
This is a Kellenberger tradition adapted from my Mom's Doorneweerd family...
Each Christmas we draw names-adults & kids alike. And then when we get together, we begin the name guessing "[enter name] do you have my name?"...it's great! Each year it was always a detective game to figure out ahead of time exactly who has your name, that way you could open up your gift first!
One Christmas my cousin Betsy & I (we are 6 months apart & literally AnnE and Dianna from Green Gables) decided quite by chance to take matters into our own hand...we "helped" place presents under the tree as parents, relatives, etc. were unloading cars...so at around age 10 or 12, we quickly process of eliminated family names who couldn't have our name, and as we started our name guessing...what did you know? Betsy & I went one and two for guessing right! Needless to say, our families were NOT pleased with we two sneaks :)
Arlan's family has since adopted the name-drawing, but haven't quite taken in my name-guessing tradition...they open gifts by age, so after the nieces & nephews and tag-a-long Amber, yours truly is next! (hee-hee_
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