Christmas Traditions

I recently became aware of this life size gingerbread house from the fine folks at The Fairmont in San Francisco. I've never been there, but would you look at that?! Can you even imagine a tradition of decorating something that size? We can't even manage the little gingerbread houses.

Our traditions actually start at Thanksgiving. We make sure the tree is up and ready and the kids decorate it with Busha (Dax's Mom). I readily embraced this tradition because when they were little and they decorated the tree with me they always got into an argument about something. They didn't do that with Busha so it was a great tradition to go with......although at 17 now I would like to hope that would no longer be a concern.

From Thanksgiving until just after Christmas the Trail of Lights is set up at The Emily Ann Theater here in town. The light displays are set up by different groups and organizations in the area. It's always fun to see what they come up with each year. We usually walk through once or twice during the Christmas Season to see the lights, listen to the band, sit around the campfire roasting marshmallows, and drink hot chocolate. The weather has been very agreeable this year so it was packed.

Somewhere along the line the kids managed to talk us into letting them open a gift on Christnas Eve. That one gift is always pajamas (Dax loves this one pair if pajama pants so I occasionally wrap them up and give them to him again.) We usually open those pajamas and them watch Christmas Vacation together.

This year we were blessed with a visit from 'Cousin Eddie'.
 

We generally head to bed far too late and then get up far too early to see if Santa has come. Dax likes to open the last gift, so our challenge is to sneak one aside to have it to open once he is through. Some years he's paying more attention and it's a tough thing to do.

After all of that, we start what usually turns out to be an all day eat-a-thon. There is always too much food, but we do our best to eat it all. A few years ago we decided we just didn't want turkey again so close to Thanksgiving so we've opted for steaks cooked out on the grill. I can't tell you what an amazingly great choice that has been.