Snippets of My Family, Faith, and Crafting: New Christmas Tradition

As a mom with young kids, I want to incorporate good traditions into our family time -- things that our kids can look back on and say, "Every year we would do ____________" or "Remember how we would always __________ to celebrate Christmas/birthdays/summer?" It is such a heavy responsibility to mold a family and create, choose, and develop ideas to form your very own family traditions!

I know Christmas is over, but I wanted to share the one new idea we tried this Christmas that turned out very successful! I imagine it will become a special tradition for our family throughout the years, especially as parents of three girls! Now, I can't take credit for this idea, (I think I saw it on pinterest at some point) but Scott and I spent time tweaking the details, and some unexpected events made this night really special for our family. We decided to indulge in a Hot Chocolate Bar the night we put up our Christmas Tree! Our girls LOVE hot chocolate (especially Brooklyn!!!) and who can resist the abundance of fun toppings to embellish a steaming cup of that creamy, dark brown liquid?!!

While Scott got the tree up from the basement and lugged up the bin of Christmas ornaments and decorations, I ran over to Woodman's to pick up the needed items. We ended up with colorful Christmas marshmellows, red, green and silver sugar crystals, whipped cream (from the bottle!), and hershey's mint candy canes.

After arriving home, out-of-the-blue I noticed a flyer rolled up and sitting on the back of my counter. I flattened it out and read that our town's Christmas parade was going right past our house that very night, ending at the park down the street! While Scott put all the limbs on our artificial Christmas tree (yes, it is one of those agonizing processes!), the girls and I bundled up and sat in our front yard to wait for the parade. Scott finished just in time to watch it with us! The parade was short, but that was a blessing considering it is winter! The girls got to go to the park and bring a letter to Santa while I went inside with Selah and started boiling the water and setting out the goodies. The girls came in with red noses and pink cheeks, ready to be warmed up with their drinks. They enjoyed it as much as I imagined they would! Yay!!!!

Even Selah got in on the fun!

After we had our fill of hot chocolate and candy toppings, we got to work decorating the tree. Scott and I put up our special blinking lights, and then FINALLY the girls were able to put the "instruments" (i.e. ornaments) on the tree as fast as they could be unwrapped from the tissue paper! Scott was quickly trying to shift them around to different spots whenever their backs were turned. {lol} It was funny to see them decorate the bottom half of the tree with ALL the ornaments!

Every year I get each family member an ornament that expresses an interest they had that year (like a princess shoe, nutcracker, Elmo, Barney, sandcastle, chocolate-covered strawberry... etc.) and it was fun to see the girls recognize "their" ornaments from past years and find special spots for them on the tree!