Christmas traditions

On this special day of Christmas, I'm truly grateful for my family, my friends and my Heavenly Father. For me this day is the happiest of the year, not only because of the presents and food overdose but because of the special occasion to celebrate the birth of my Savior. 

In a more secular perspective, I'm grateful for blogs and cameras (especially the hot new DSLR camera I got for Christmas!!). If it wasn't for this blog and the pictures, I know I'd forget all the great memories we've created this week-end. Since we were by ourselves for the first time this year, our goal was to create our own Christmas traditions. We managed to do quite a bit, but there's still a lot of cool traditions I want to try next year.

Fun things we did (and liked... but might not turn into a real tradition):

- Visit Santa, ride his horse carriage, take pictures with him

- Decorate cookies (I'd probably keep that one if I had girls... but the boys were not big fans)

- Wear matching Santa costumes on Christmas morning (I recycled our Halloween costumes and turned them into Santa costumes, I thought it would be a good idea to teach the kids we're all Santas... but it didn't work as well as I was hoping. Russ was a grinch the whole time, and Josh loved it but he sounds a little confused when he talks about Santa now.)

- Chocolate advent calendar

Fun things we did and would like to keep as traditions (at least I do):

- Caroling with friends

- Acting out the Nativity Scene for FHE

- Sledding/snow/outdoors activities (if weather permits)

- Singing Christmas songs before bed time

- Reading parts of the Christmas story in the scriptures every night

- Driving through the town to look at Christmas lights

- Eating tons of good food

- Ward Christmas party with Nativity Scene, songs, dinner and Santa

Things we had planned but didn't end up doing (definitely on the list for next year):

- pipe chimes / bells / playing music together

- Singing at a retirement home (the Primary had organized it and it was on my calendar but I spaced out)

- Spiritual Christmas program for our family (other than the one we had at church)

Other things I want to try next year:

- Different kind of advent calendar (scripture based or build your nativity scene)

- Involve the kids in gift making/offering

All in all, we had a great week-end and hopefully we've learned a few things so that next Christmas can be even better.

Another reason why this week-end was so cool is I tried snowboarding for the first time, and I liked it. We went to a park close to our apartment to do some sledding, Josh loved it, William hated it. When the kids got tired of sledding and wanted to play at the playground near by, Russell got my snowboard and gave me a snowboarding lesson. I was afraid we were going to meet lots of people we know there, since we'd chosen that park, and it ended up being true... but helpful. Joshua's cute friend Elsie was there and her parents ended up watching him and William while Russell was helping me. Afterwards they invited us for some delicious cinnamon rolls at their place and we had a very nice chat.

I was dreading having to prepare all the Christmas dinner by myself but Russell insisted he didn't want turkey, Ham or chicken, which helped reduce my work load a ton. I made Salmon tart, Russell's favorite green beans, potatoes (left over from our ward Christmas party I had in the freezer), foie gras (thank you Maman et Papa), a few other appetizers, a yule log... and that's it. Super simple, but tasty.

On Christmas morning we all dressed up as Santa and opened one present before church. Then we went to church for a very nice musical sacrament meeting. We opened the rest of the presents when we went back home, ate leftovers and spent the rest of the day talking to family on Skype and on the phone, and playing with the kids' toys (I had a blast with the legos).

I still want to emphasize that we missed our Family A LOT, despite Skype and the phone, and I hope we won't have to spend Christmas alone too often...
Merry Christmas to all! We missed you and we love you.