Our Traditions

Everyone has their holiday traditions, and when I look back I think about how mine have changed, but I love it. When I was younger and we lived in Chicago my dad would put lights up every year on the house, and we would get real trees to decorate.  We lived near my dads side of the family and everyone would gather at our house to make the dinner and open the presents.  The kids would play in the snow before dinner and after we opened our presents and we would take them downstairs and play all night. My cousins were my best friend and My grandmother would make the best deserts in the world. It was like that for me for almost 12 years. I loved every single year.

Then my family moved to Las Vegas. Holidays started to suck for me. No family. No snow. Not even cold enough to have to wear jackets. The spirit of Christmas in Vegas doesn't even compare to the spirit in Illinois. The only people I knew at the time were the people that I would go to school with, and the people that lived near us. My parents tried to keep the tradition by adding lights to the house and decorating the tree on Thanksgiving. Even by waking up at 5 am to see what Santa had brought - I have a younger sister, so we did this up until last year when she turned 11. But instead of cooking dinner, we would go to a buffet for lunch, and then to our neighbors house to have desert. Over the years these neighbors turned into family for me. We would go to their house for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I started to enjoy the holidays again, even though I didn't feel the strength of tradition.

So now I have my own home, for the second Christmas in a row. I am married, and I have a new family. I am ready to set some traditions of our own. I want to set traditions we can carry on with our children. This will be the second Christmas my husband and I are spending together. We decorate the house early for Christmas, we will go to Magical Forest the weekend before Christmas, finish up our Christmas shopping and wrap the presents we got for each other secretively. We will watch A Christmas Story over and over again on TBS. I know I will get no sleep Christmas Eve night. I will be up all night too excited- I know I'm still a little kid. Then I will get out of bed around 4am and set out his presents, fill his stocking, turn A Christmas Story on in the living room, make him something to snack on in the morning and then pick out what I am going to wear that day. Then at 5 I will wake his ass up, and we will open our presents(: Then we will shower and get ready for the rest of the day{quickly}.

 Now both of our families mean the world to us so we didn't want to make one family feel left out during the holidays, so we have come up with a perfect solution. Right after we open presents from each other we will load up the car with EVERYONE'S presents and then head to my parents.- Get there pretty early. I have a key so I will let myself in and wake everyone up! (: We will open our gifts and play around for a little bit and maybe even sneak some Cinnamon rolls in. Then we will go to my in-laws house. We will try to get there around 8 or 9. Everyone in that house likes to sleep in a little bit, which is good because they don't want to open presents without us. While we are opening presents at their house my parents will be getting ready to join us in a couple hours to exchange their gifts and then to have dinner. It worked out really well last year, and I felt as if everyone was happy.

I love that we are able to spend time with both of our families, and that we are all able to come together. I feel like  I have my big family back. Of course I miss everyone in Illinois and nothing will ever replace the amazing Christmas's I had as a kid, but I love the Holidays again!

When we have kids, I would really like to make it a tradition that we see Santa every year & have that picture framed every time.
I also think next year we will start and ornament tradition, where together we pick out a new ornament or two each year. I wanted to do that this year, but too much has been going on lately.