It is no secret that our family loves Christmas. I just love sharing this special time of year with my children and watching the magic of Christmas fill their hearts. We have developed traditions over the last 7 years that just mean so much to our family. One of our traditions is to attend the annual Christmas tree lighting at our local mall. Some years, we have more fully participated in the celebration by arriving early and participating in games, riding little Christmas trains, and making crafts while often experiencing one of the first cold days of the year. This year, we decided to just go see the tree a little later after eating dinner and did not experience the rest of the festivities. From the looks of things, I don't think we missed out on too much this year. Most years, they have shown a Christmas movie on the big screen after the tree lighting, and they didn't even do that this year. We took our annual pictures in front of the big tree and then went home to get put on our comfy Christmas pajamas, drink hot chocolate, and watch a Christmas movie in the warmth of our home.
 |
| The big tree all lit up again. |
 |
| Daddy and his boys. I was a total slacker and didn't even dress the boys in their Christmas attire for the night. Mommy fail! |
 |
| We are ready for Christmas! |
 |
| The boys enjoyed cuddling in their jammies, drinking hot chocolate, and watching The Muppet Christmas Carol at home. |
 |
| I just love the way these little red and white striped footie pajamas looked on him. He was super cuddly in them! |
 |
| Evan loves hot chocolate. |
 |
| Showing me his hot chocolate and big marshmallow. I just make the boys' hot chocolate with milk, chocolate syrup, and add a big marshmallow. |
The Christmas tree lighting actually took place the weekend before Thanksgiving so we didn't fully get into the Christmas spirit until the next weekend. After Thanksgiving, we truly got into the Christmas spirit by getting our Christmas tree and decorating the house, inside and out. We do like to decorate as soon as feasible to enjoy the decorations longer. We usually put our decorations up the weekend after Thanksgiving and keep them up until the New Year. The weekend we decorated for Christmas, we enjoyed seeing some of our old favorite Christmas lights again. One of our favorite houses is close to one of our favorite pizza restaurants so we stopped by and saw it after eating dinner.
 |
| This house was actually next door to the main Christmas house. It had lots of these lighted trees and some lighted reindeer. |
 |
| This is the main Christmas house on the street. Later in the season, you can drive by and listen to Christmas music and a "real" Santa will greet you. He accepts donations for St. Jude's. |
 |
| It even has Santa's workshop. |
The mall Christmas tree looks so pretty! I think this is such a good tradition. I also love the Christmas lights. I think it's one of my favorite things about Christmas. They just make me happy. =)
ReplyDeleteTheir jammies are adorable! I had the hardest time finding Christmas jammies that I loked for my boys this year, but I finally did. You'll see them in a post soon.
ReplyDeleteI think it's totally fine to sometimes "slack" on traditions. It just makes the times that you do everything more special.
I love your new blog design!
ReplyDeleteI also love Brody's pjs. They are adorable.
And I agree with Natalie that sometimes we don't need to do every tradition as we've always done them. Changing it up a bit is good. As we've discovered this year it leaves room for new ones to form too.