Christmas Blog Challenge - Day 1

I've never done a blog challenge before, but I figure now is as good a time as ever. Plus, this one seems pretty fun to write about! Here is the schedule for the 12 Days of Christmas (even though there are currently 14 days planned??... whatev!):

Day 1: Christmas/Holiday traditions
Day 2: Black Friday/General Shopping Tips & Tricks
Day 3: Most meaningful gift/best gift you've received
Day 4: Tips/Tricks to a Budget Friendly holiday season
Day 5: Favorite Holiday Movie/TV Show Special
Day 6: Gift ideas (what do YOU want? We all have family/friends reading our blogs...so let them know!)
Day 7: Holiday Craft/DIY (If you don't make anything, what do you WISH you could make?)
Day 8: Least favorite thing about the Holidays
Day 9: Favorite Holiday recipe
Day 10: Favorite Christmas Songs/Caroles
Day 11: New Year Resolutions
Day 12: Show us your decorations (indoor/outdoor)
Day 13: Favorite Cookie Recipe
Day 14: Oprah's Favorite Things: What item(s) would you want if you were in the audience? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________   Day 1: Christmas and Holiday Traditions

This is all starting to change a bit for a few different reasons. (1) This is the first Christmas our new {little} family has been a family, so we are starting to make traditions of our own. (2) My parents have a new lake house that our traditions are becoming more involved around. (3) We are getting older and our traditions just seem to change some as this happens. Anyways, here are a few of them.

We do stockings, presents, and a yummy breakfast at my parents house on Christmas morning. I bought these stockings for us in 2004, but this picture was from last Christmas (2009).

Explanation: When I was somewhere around 3 years of age, in all my wisdom, I knew exactly which presents were movies because I could tell by the size and shape. Apparently, my mother became frustrated with adorable little me and decided to start putting all of the movies she would give me in cereal boxes so I wouldn't know what they were before I opened them. It is one of our favorite traditions that we still do each year, and of course, we always have to have our picture taken with the cereal box. Seth even gets his own cereal box now too!

Another tradition in our family is our annual Christmas card that my momma makes. One day I will have to scan in all of them (starting with when I was 3), but that task will have to be saved for another day. These were the 2009, 2008, and 2005 pictures for our Christmas cards.

We have many other traditions as well that have evolved over the years, like decorating with the thousands of Dickens Village houses my mom has collected over the past umpeenth years, the Christmas Eve candlelight service, reading The Night Before Christmas by the fire afterwards, spending Christmas afternoon with Seth's family, and having Christmas dinner with my mom's side of the family. I'm a traditions kind of girl, and I love all of the special things we do around Christmas time with our families. We have also started a new tradition of Girls Christmas with our Mommas that you will hear more about when it happens again this year. I am really looking forward to starting many more traditions with Seth and our family (as it grows) in the coming years... cheesy, I know!