11/14/11

Holiday Traditions

Well, with only a little more than a week until Thanksgiving, dinner planning is in full swing.  I know that Thanksgiving in my parent's house was always about family, eating, and dessert. :-)  Well, now that I have my own family and we live out of town, going to visit the grandparents for every holiday just isn't feasible.  Loading up the 4 of us and heading in the car for 5 hours to spend 2 1/2 days with family and a LOOOOOOONG car ride to get home, well... it just isn't EASY.  So, we've decided that every other year we are going to stay in Savannah for the holidays.  It wasn't an easy decision but, I really think that my kids need  to experience our family traditions and waking up in their own house.  



For Thanksgiving:


Gratitude Rolls- As guests arrive, they write something that they are thankful for on a piece of paper.  The paper is rolled into the crescent rolls and cooked.  When everyone eats their rolls, they get to guess who wrote what.

For Christmas:



The Elf on the Shelf- I have seen  this in action.  When I was teaching, kids talked about their elves and what mischief they got into.  The kids REALLY loved it and interacted with it.  We'll DEFINITELY be doing this one!!


Christmas Pajamas- This was a tradition that my mom did and I LOVE it!  We always got to open ONE gift Christmas Eve.  It was ALWAYS Pajamas (matching of course).  It honestly took us like 7 or 8 YEARS before each of us caught on that the gift was ALWAYS going to be pajamas.  But, our pictures Christmas morning were always cute and matching. :-)

So, those are really the only for SURE ideas that I have.  What about you?  What's something fun that you do around your house for the holidays!  Let's Chat....

2 comments:

  1. We do the Christmas Eve pajamas, but we have also started buying one board game every year and wrapping that up and letting the kids open that on Christmas Eve as well. The kids put on their new jammies, and we sit and play the game together until it's time to go to the Christmas Eve service at church. It's family fun, builds our stash of family games and builds special memories for us together.

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  2. We are a military family and end up doing the drive each year (so far...haha). However, when we got married, my husband and I started a tradition of doing our "own" family Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations before heading to Georgia for the "real" celebration. So the Saturday or Sunday before Thanksgiving and the Saturday/Sunday before Christmas I get up and cook a big dinner (turkey/ham, dressing, corn casserole, PLENTY of desserts!! haha, etc.). Now that we have a child, I am so grateful to have our own traditions because I feel like she still gets the experience of family holidays but doesn't miss out on ours! We got an Elf on the Shelf as a gift last year so we will be starting that this year. We also do the pajamas! I look forward to finding new traditions to start as well!! Thanks, Handy Housemom for the ideas here and I can't wait to get on pinterest for more. haha. =D

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