bye-bye babyhood...onto new family adventures: Christmas traditions

I love Christmas. I don't mean Christmas Day (although it is pretty great). I love the decorations, the music, shopping (of course!), wrapping presents...the list goes on and on. But my absolute favourite thing about the holiday season is enjoying it with my kids. It's now two weeks until Santa makes his appearance and we are very much enjoying all of our usual holiday traditions.

* watching as many Christmas specials as humanly possible...very thankful for my PVR over the holidays and a 10 year old who is diligent about checking the schedule and setting them all to record. The classic cartoon Grinch is my personal favourite.

* wrapping presents...I love that my kids are now older they are choosing what they want to get for each other and for Dad, which makes the presents that much more special

* advent calendar/link chain...I got the idea of an activity link chain from my awesome friend Cathie and started doing it many years ago when Kyle was a preschooler. We start December 1st and do a countdown to Christmas with a new activity for each day. So far this year we've done a new holiday shirt for each of the kids, read Christmas books, hot chocolate and marshmallows for breakfast, Christmas crafts, etc. Of course this year I was ambitious and thought I'd make an actual advent calendar with some spare felt I found at IKEA on clearance for $1. It is now December 10 and it still looks like this...I'm hopeful it will be done by next year (but don't be surprised if it STILL looks like this Dec 1, 2012!)

* Christmas pageant...our church has an amazing children's program and the youth minister and his team do a great job with the pageant each year. We also have the holiday music night coming up at school, Jillian is in the choir and I love seeing the choirs and band perform.

* giving...I want to make sure my kids know Christmas and the holidays are about giving and sharing. We filled Christmas shoeboxes for children in third world countries, put scarves and mittens on the tree in the school lobby for donation, donated new toys to toy mountain and filled a box of their own used toys to donate to Goodwill (which I will admit is partially for selfish reasons, I love to get rid of some toys before the influx of new stuff on Christmas morning!)

* gift lists...yes, as much as we talk about giving and sharing, my kids are also all about the Christmas list. Kyle's big ticket item on his list, which is ranked 9.5/10 (yes, he ranks each item on the list), is a laptop/netbook, and I've already warned him Santa is NOT bringing him a computer. The next highest ranked items include beyblades, ds games, wii games and books. Jillian has a list a mile long, all of it involving something pink (including a pink stuffed owl as owls are her latest favourite animal). Leah has been consistent bless her little heart...Princess Tiana dress, crown and shoes along with Barbie stuff. Wouldn't you know Santa just happened to find a Tiana dress, crown and shoes on clearance at the Disney store a few months ago, hmmm, I wonder where she got the idea (gotta love impressionable 3 year olds).

* visit Santa...this has been especially fun for Leah this year, she is fully into Christmas and loves to visit with Santa. I took her to the mall last week for a visit (ah the joy of shopping in the middle of the day with a 3 year old, absolutely no lineup for Santa). The girls also saw Mr. and Mrs. Claus at the annual holiday party for Jeff's work. Sadly, Kyle chose to play video games in the gaming room over lining up to see Santa...thank goodness I still have a 3 year old, I can't imagine the day when none of my children are willing to line up for a visit with Santa.