3 ways to a better Christmas season

This is the time of year I usually get a little Scrooge-y.  Oh, I love the real Christmas.

I just hate what the world has made Christmas into.  Greed, money, expectations...


I like thanksgiving so much better.  Food and gratitude!  Perfection.  BUT, I have children, and a couple still have the magic gleam in their eye.  I must embrace the goodness of Christmas for their sake and keep it special around here.  I am changing my approach in an effort to help us all.  Here are the things I'm implementing this year.  Nothing new, maybe, but I'm sharing in case you could use some direction on purifying the season.

1.  White Friday

The pic is self-explanatory.  As a family we will take the day after Thanksgiving to connect to the temple.  For our girls, who are too young to enter the temple, we will visit the grounds with them and have them touch the temple and we'll partake of the spirit there.  The rest of us will take turns attending and serving in the temple.

2. Handmade gifts?

Ok, not all gifts.  Santa will still be stopping by.  But normally the kids earn sibling gift money thru extra chores, and then we take them out shopping and it's lots of fun, actually.  They only have one sibling to buy for and they put a lot of work into it.

This year we're challenging them to make it a homemade gift for their person.  Gift supplies can equal a maximum of $5.  Preferably $0. Mom and Dad can help if requested, as long as it's completed by Dec 22 (we're trying to encourage the procrastinators to get in gear).  I am very curious to see how this will play out.  We introduced the idea at Family Home Evening this week and it got mixed reactions.

3. Straw for baby Jesus

This story has circulated for a while, and can be found HERE and HERE.  Basically, service you provide as a family creates the soft bed for baby Jesus to lay his head.  

I don't have a manger, but I found this little basket at the thrift store for .50.  We have plenty of straw from the fall porch decorations, so I just need to make tiny baby Jesus.   

I look forward to reporting back on our Christmas changes for 2015 and evaluating what we'll incorporate into our permanent bank of family traditions. 

December Round-up

I wanted to take a minute to catch up on our wonderful week of Christmas.  

   It was a cold, cold December.

We got a great snowstorm and the kids had fun building their first snowman of the season.

I love watching them do projects together.

We had family over for dinner & games on the Sunday before Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we went to my mom's house for the traditional sibling gift exchange.  As usual, it's the best gift-giving of the holiday.

Bugs' gift was special this year.  He made a horse statue in art class for his sister.  I loved how happy he was to give it to her.

In fact, all these photos speak for themselves.

Rosebud about to burst as she waited for him to unwrap his present.

Then it was time for pj's.

My mom got us all Penn State shirts.

All we wanted was a decent picture.  Not happening.

It's more like 20 minutes of this.

We drive home sleepily, and Santa came!

It felt different waking up in a different house this time, but it was still great.

I'm so lucky to be a parent.  The magic of Christmas cannot be duplicated!  We are so blessed in every way.

Seasonal happenings

Potter's choir performed some of their Christmas songs at Temple Square so we went down to watch them.  Here they are in the Assembly Hall.

And we met him outside afterward for a couple pictures.

Here he is with friend Christian.  He's also in our ward - good kid.

The boys thought wearing rivalry gear on church grounds would be funny.

The nativity near the North Visitor's Center is so beautiful.

Princess finished her semester of choir with an indoor concert.

She did great.

I put out a few more decorations, this time in the kitchen and laundry room.

This one was placed strategically.  This is the bar where the kids eat breakfast every day.  I wanted the message that they would read the most often to be the most meaningful one for this time of year.

Maybe it will sink in.

We got a couple decent storms, and with frigid temps, the snow has stuck around.  

Think we'll have a white Christmas?