Show Us Your Life -- Christmas Traditions

Today Kelly is hosting Show Us Your Life -- Christmas Traditions. I have to say I loved this linkup last year. I found some new traditions to incorporate into our family's holidays and they were a lot of fun. If you want to read my post from last year you can find it here, but this year I wanted to write about some of the traditions I didn't write about in that post.

When I was growing up, my parents started a tradition of giving each of us kids an ornament in our stocking which signified an important event in the previous year. Last year we got Sam and Rachel caught up on this tradition and gave them some ornaments retroactively.

These are Sam's ornaments. From left to right: 2009-- He was born in Edmonton so an ornament from the NHL hockey team seemed appropriate! 2010 -- a wreath of bears representing all his friends in our New Mom's Group whom Sam played with every week. 2011 -- Sam became a big brother. 2012 -- Sam discovered "Mad Birds" as he calls it! 2013 -- Sam started full-day, every day, Junior Kindergarten this year.

Rachel only has two and we haven't yet decided what we're getting her this year. We'll have to work on that! 2011-- Rachel was born in Edmonton! 2012 -- Rachel definitely latched on to owls as her favourite animal. This year we want to either get her a book since she's discovered a love for books, or something to do with speech since it was a significant milestone for her.

Another tradition is that last year my parents sent me the Nativity Set I'd bought for them when I lived and worked in Israel-Palestine. I like putting it at the kids' level so they can play and interact with it. Last year Sam mostly just looked at it but this year he has gotten a little more creative!

2012

As you can tell, Sam doesn't necessarily have it wonderfully set up but he does enjoy playing with it!

Another thing which wasn't meant to be a tradition but has happened two years in a row now, is me decorating my Peace Lily with mini ornaments. It's a little quirky but Hey! I might as well have fun with it, right? :)

And two other things which we haven't done yet this year but are planning on doing are going to look at Christmas lights. Last year we all put on our pjs, grabbed drinks (water for the kids, hot tea for Dave and I) and drove around and looked at the Christmas lights on some of our nearby streets. I'm looking forward to doing that again this year.

Also, last year, we went to the light display in our local park, called "Wonders Of Winter." I am really excited to take the kids there again this year.

And those are some of the traditions which I didn't introduce you to last year. Thanks for stopping by and I'm looking forward to reading your posts and, maybe, discovering some new traditions to add to our holidays!