Christmas Traditions

Ahh......it's 10:30 on Christmas Eve and the elves are done wrapping, setting up, and eating Santa's cookies. I think I wrapped more presents this year than I've ever seen. I'd really like to forget that Scotch tape exists.

We have a whole bunch of Christmas traditions that are now nicely checked off/almost checked off the list:

1) Tamales for dinner on Christmas Eve

2) The reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

3) Everyone gets to open one gift the night before Christmas......no shocker there though because everyone gets Christmas jammies.

4) We make a gingerbread house. It's very far from perfect but it does come from a 6 year-old, a mom who was trying to deal with a toddler throwing a tantrum, and a dad who hates the plastic icing bags as much as I do. We're getting better though....here's to next year!

5) Doughnuts for Christmas breakfast (I know - really healthy and like the kids need any more sugar).

6) We don't tear the kids away from our home on Christmas Day.

7) A new one this year: we're doing prime rib for Christmas dinner. Manny is the executive "meat" chef and I think he is sweating bullets right now.......we had no idea how expensive it was and he's really hoping to do it justice. I have total faith - I know he'll do a great job...and if not, we'll make it into jerky (just kidding!)

Anyone else have any fun traditions that you can't live without at Christmas?

Just for Manny's and my own sanity, evidence does exist that our house was clean before the whirlwind of kids rips through the living room (literally):

Can't wait for tomorrow. Not sure how we will deal with an extremely early bird (sleeping in to Matt is staying in bed until 6 a.m.) and a kid that I have to drag out of bed (Meghan will gladly sleep from 8 p.m. until 8:30 a.m.). Hopefully the new baby will "fix" both of them!!

Hope everyone has a blessed and joyous holiday.......as I was wrapping gifts tonight I was really thinking about how grateful our little family should be, not just because of the things that I was wrapping up, but because of all of the things that we can't wrap that are even better than the material things.