Traditions by the Wayside
Posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Ashton and London in their Christmas outfits
I love the Christmas season. I love the decorations. I love the baking. I love the shopping. I love the friendliness of people around me. I especially love the traditions I set with my family. Hopefully I’ll remember all of those traditions for next year because they’re not happening this year. Usually at the beginning of the Christmas season, London gets a new nativity to use as part of our Christmas decorations. They don’t do much as far as decorating goes, though, because she’d rather play with them. I haven’t decided yet what Ashton’s yearly decoration will be. I’m open for suggestions. Anyway, she doesn’t have a new nativity this year. And I’m not sure if she’ll get one. A tradition we have always had in my home growing up was counting down with the advent calendar. I was so excited last year to make a lovely advent calendar, but that hasn’t even re-surfaced this year. In fact, the only Christmas decoration in our apartment this year is a tea light holder that’s been on the piano all year because we forgot to put it away with the Christmas decorations last year. Of course, London still has her nativities (or as she calls them, her “baby Jesus”) that she plays with. She would never let us put those away with the rest of the Christmas things.
This year is different from most. We’re moving right before Christmas. In fact, we’re moving this Saturday. We’ve been putting off buying Christmas gifts because we don’t want to pack them. Because our escrow has been pushed back so much, we’re moving our stuff on Saturday, but won’t move it into our new place, since we won’t be finished with the repairs yet. So we’ll move our stuff into the garage and spend Christmas with Taylor’s family. Santa will have to stop at Granny and Papa’s house this year instead of ours. Taylor and I will be back and forth between his parents house and our house, working on painting and floors and ceilings. So much for time spent with family. Next year Christmas is at my house. I’m going to get a tree and put up lights and bake and bake and bake.
Christmas came way too fast this year and with flying out to CA for 9 days, I feel like I’ve missed out on doing most of the activities I had planned this year with the kiddos. Oh well, there’s always next year! Good luck with the move!
It’s an off year for a lot of things. No matter. Time flies and it’ll be Christmas again.
Granny and Papa just can’t stop looking at that picture. We just keep smiling. Those are 2 of the cutest kids on the planet!
Thanks Ashton and London for smiling at us. We love you.
Last year we closed on our house on the 13th. We were desparate to be in by Christmas, and were so sad to loose our traditions, like making a gingerbread house, and all of the advent and countdown stuff.
One thing that we did that made a big difference for the kids, was that we picked a room in the house that wasn’t having repairs done and set up our christmas decorations there. Each day we took the kids over and “checked on Christmas.” The rest of the house was a disaster, but it was my little way of still having something and showing the kids that this place would be our new home… even though it was a disaster!
First of all, that is the cutest picture of your kids!! I love Ashton’s tie, and that jacket!..so cute! I wish we could be there to help you move. I wish we were in our house too. I see everyone’s Christmas decorations and I wish I could decorate too. Next year will be fun because we can decorate, and we’ll buy our first tree!!
Christmas is different for us this year too. We’ve done hardly anything this year. In fact, I feel a bit of a Scrooge.
P.S.
I love the Christmas photo!