What Christmas Looks Like at Our House

Happy Birthday Jesus - A couple of days before Christmas we bake a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake. This is something our family has done since Alec was 2.

I love the look on Hanna's face in this picture

Yummy, I can't wait to taste it

Christmas Eve shopping - Every Christmas Eve we all go shopping. This is something Jon has done since he was a child. His Dad would take him and his brother and sister out to the mall Christmas Eve to buy a present for their mom. Their mom would stay at the house and prepare food for Christmas Day. I don't stay at home and cook. I join in with the shopping. This is the day we set aside for the children to buy Christmas presents for one another and for Jon and I. We always either eat lunch or dinner out somewhere special. This year we decided to stay in our hometown (which doesn't have a mall) and we ate Mexican food out. Yummy!!! We met Jon's parents at the Mexican restaurant.

The Christmas Code - to keep my very bright children from guessing what they get for Christmas, we have something called the Christmas code. Every year I chose a specific way to wrap each of their presents, i.e., color of bow, wrapping paper, sometimes on the tag I will put a number. I never, ever put their name on their presents. If they are able to guess which method of wrapping paper is theirs and why, then they bust the Christmas code. The reward - they get to open one present (chosen by Jon or I) on Christmas Eve night. They have only busted it one year. This year, however, the baby of the family, Hanna, busted it.

Their Christmas Eve present they got to open was PJs (I think they were slightly disappointed that it was not a toy they got to open)

My sweet hubby on Christmas Eve

Interactive Manger Scene - This is something "Family Life" puts out. It is entitled, "What God Wants for Christmas." You can get them at Christian bookstores. Each character in the manger scene comes inside a gift box that the children open. You tell the Christmas story with each gift that is opened. At the end is present #7. It contains what God wants for Christmas. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. But this is such a very special and precious thing. I love it!!! I also do this with my Wednesday night class at church I teach.

Alec put the wise man face down worshiping Jesus.

Advent Jesse Tree - This was a new tradition for our family this year, but it will be something we continue for years to come. You start on December 1. Every day you do a devotional and each day has an ornament you place on the tree that coincides with the devotion for that day. The devotions all point out to how Jesus is the Messiah. It weaves in both Old Testament and New Testament. It is WONDERFUL!!!!

Christmas stockings - I LOVE the stockings at Christmas. I always put Reese's peanut better cups in Jon's (his favorite). I guess I am so predictable because when I went to fill up the stockings I looked inside my bag and found out someone had gotten into the Reese's cups. They come 8 in a pack, and only 5 were left. Gee . . . I wonder who could have gotten into them . . Ahem . . . Jon?

Christmas morning - Our Christmas morning begins with the children waking up (this year Alec set his alarm clock to 5:00 AM, then he woke his sisters up). They all come into our bedroom filled with so MUCH excitement. Before we head into the living room we all bow down and praise God and thank Him for sending Jesus to live and to die for our sins. After our prayer, we go into the living room to see . . . . .

Strings and Strings of Yarn - Each child gets a certain colored yarn. Each string begins at the Christmas tree. They have to follow their string and they end up with a present at the end. I get pretty carried away with the yarn. I put their presents in kitchen cabinets, behind couch cushions, in the oven. I just try to be really creative to place their presents in unexpected places. I have so much fun doing this every year. It is a lot of work and pretty time consuming, but well worth it. I just giggle every year as I am up preparing this "spider web" of yarn. To be totally honest, it aggravates Jon just a little bit especially as he was trying to maneuver himself upstairs through the yarn to go to bed, but the kids LOVE it (and so do I)!!!! It makes Christmas morning last extra long, rather than them just tearing into their presents.



They all bring their presents to the Christmas tree and when all have found their presents they start to open them.
I don't have any good pictures of Ash to post, but TRUST me, she was having a BLAST!!!

After the kids open their presents and play for awhile we light our "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake, sing "Happy Birthday" and blow out the candles. We chose 5 candles for the 5 people in our family. We eat this for breakfast. I also made a breakfast casserole too (per hubby's request).

Nontraditional Christmas meal - We are always super-duper busy on Christmas. We are very blessed and have lots of family. This year we stayed home ALL DAY LONG. All of our families were coming this weekend, so we are celebrating later with them. We all made our own pizzas. I took Christmas tree cookie cutters and candy cane cookie cutters and cut out some pizza dough. Here is a small sample of our lunch.
Later that evening we all made our own gingerbread houses. This was really a lot of fun! After we finished we watched the National Gingerbread House competition held at Grove Park Inn on the Food Network.
These are the order of our houses - Jon made a shack. I made a house full of children. Hanna made just a regular house. Alec made a church (see his peppermint steeple and cross? That kid is so dang creative!!!) Ash had a wide variety of things on her house - Santa Claus, his reindeer, bag of toys, Christmas tree with ornaments, candy cane, Santa's sled, Christmas lights, smiley faces. (Her roof actually collapsed because of all of the weight of the candy).