I've been on this "I want Christmas to be magical for our kids" kick lately.I'm sure Jeff is totally annoyed. It's not like I come up with any ideas for how to actually do this. I just keep telling him it's got to be magical, we only have a few years for it to be magical, and I remember my Christmas' growing up as well, magical.
I'm just kind of stumped on how to do this. Really, how did my parents pull this off year after year? Growing up, my Christmas' were awesome. And it wasn't just because of all the over-the-top, ridiculousness that ensued on Christmas morning. Like the year we woke up to four gigantic presents under the tree and that was it. Talk about perplexed! But when we opened the lids we found all our gifts wrapped inside of these ginormous packing boxes... AWESOME! It was just this special, magical time. I swear we spent practically the entire month of December at my Grandma's house (even though she lived 10 minutes away) surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, and loads and loads of treats. We stayed up late playing cards, games, doing puzzles, laughing, and snacking on all the candy, nuts, suckers, and chocolate that my Grandma had out on her laundry counter. We played Christmas music on her player piano, hung our stockings up on her bookcase, jammed out to Randy Travis, Alabama, and other country super stars' Christmas CDs (ok, so tapes... I'm old). All the cousins slept upstairs in the living room Christmas Eve (again wondering how and why my parents did this year after year... dragging all the gifts back up to Grandma's house at 4 am) while the adults stayed up playing cards and wrapping presents all night. At 7 o'clock sharp we were finally allowed to wake up all the adults and then Grandpa gave the word and we all scrambled downstairs to see what Santa had brought us.And believe in Santa I do. Yes, still do. My mom always told us "if you don't believe, you don't receive." Remind me to tell you all about the year I saw Rudolph's nose... I really did.
It was pure joy. Happiness. Excitement. Magic.
And that's what I want my kids to feel. So how exactly do I do this? Especially trying to balance my family, Jeff's family, and our family? That's a lot of families (and driving back and forth to Logan). As much as it pains me to think my kids won't spend every Christmas with their cousins at Grandma's house like I did (I only remember one Christmas morning at home with just my immediate family), I know it's probably something that won't happen every year. Jeff is more sensible than me and realizes it's totally ridiculous to try and get all the gifts to Logan. What are some ways we can #1 make our own traditions and #2 make them as magical as I remember?Here's the part where your ideas come in. What do you do as a family? What traditions do you have?
