Tradition

Tonight at Enrichment, our Bishop talked about Christmas traditions. He told us about some of the things his family does and asked us to reflect on some of the things that we have as holiday traditions. Emphasizing that we should make sure we incorporate Christ into our Christmas traditions. Here are a few of the things that our family does: (random order of course)

1. Visit the DC Temple Festival of Lights
2. Read Luke 2 while setting up the nativity (I traditionally spend this experience praying that we can get through it without fighting over who gets to hold the baby Jesus.)
3. Take the kids to pick out Angel Tree gifts (They pick names off the trees of kids that are similar in age to each of them and then help me shop for those kids.)
4. 24 Days of Christmas Book--read a scripture and Christmas story with a Christmas song each night of December.
5. Deliver cookies to friends and neighbors.
6. Attend Christmas parties with our extended family members whenever possible. (The weather is looking sketchy for this Sunday Clauser family.)
7. Drive around town a few times each week to look at the Christmas lights.

What are some things that you do as Christmas traditions? I'm always looking for new ideas.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

Unfortunately, our camera was acting up the night we decorated our tree so we didn't get a lot of clear photos of the whole operation but suffice it to say, there was a lot of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. As is customary, the Osmond Christmas album played the majority of the night so Kassie and Mitchell enjoyed a lengthy--and I assure you quite giggly--dance around the room prior to beginning the task which as you can see...some took more seriously (Anna) than others (Mitchell.) As we drew near the bottom of our ornament boxes, the kids located a miniature Disney character train that my mom gave us a few years ago. When I say miniature, I mean each of the five cars is smaller than a golf ball, but size is not an issue with my kids. They insisted on crawling under the tree to place the tiny train around the tree stand. (At one point Kassie even stuck her head under to supervise the project.) The following day, Bing was greeted by cheers as he made his appearance. We spent several days rocking out to 'White Christmas' and 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' before I insisted that he spend a few days at Matt's office...actually suggesting a joint custody agreement in which we care for Bing on the weekends and the office staff gets to revel in his company Monday through Friday. (It's incomprehensible to me, but the people that Matt works with love this thing and occasionally request it in the middle of summer.)