Christmas Traditions

I LOVE Christmas and everything about it!  As the girls are getting older, I can tell that they love it just as much as I do.  I don't remember any specific Christmas traditions from my childhood except for putting the tree up on Thanksgiving night.  I don't want our girls to grow up and not remember how we prepped for this important holiday.  Here is a list of our Christmas traditions (in no particular order).

1) Put up our tree and decorate the house (usually the weekend before Thanksgiving)

2) Visit Crown Center and see Santa (We usually go there a couple times, but only see Santa once.  The girls love to climb on the outside decorations, visit the toy store, eat at Fritzs, and see the waterfall at the Westin.)

3) Elf on the Shelf

4) Drive around looking at lights

5) Make a gingerbread house

6) Read the Christmas story from two of our children's Bibles

7) Weekly pajama party watching Christmas movies (Current favorites are The Polar Express, Home Alone 1 and 2, and Jim Carey's How the Grinch Stole Christmas)

8) Read "The Night Before Christmas" and other Christmas stories

9) Make Christmas cookies (This is new this year.  We usually make some for Santa, but I'd like to make more than one kind this year.)

10) Visit Union Station

11) See the Plaza Lights (new this year)

I want to add an advent calendar to our traditions, but I'm not sure if it will happen this year.

Crown Center visit #1

Crown Center visit #2

Holiday Express at Union Station

We did better than I expected this year and completed almost everything on our list.  We haven't made Christmas cookies yet, but it will be happening tomorrow (Santa needs cookies).  It looks like we won't be making a gingerbread this year.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!