New Traditions...

I come from a traditional, tradition-based family. :)  Does that even make sense?  We love traditions in my family and have quite a few of them.  I went to Texas A&M...a school that's middle name is tradition.  I love the consistency and continuity of traditions.

So now it's time to start some of our own, in my little family of 3.  Now that I'm home more often I have more time to think up AND complete little projects.  So we started two new Christmas traditions this year and I'll think they'll stick around.  I'm in love with both of them and I'll tell you why in a minute.

Tradition #1:
I taught first grade for 4 years and you would be shocked at the amount of books I accumulated.  Hundreds.  Literally.  And I gave away A LOT of them when I gave up teaching last year...still came home with hundreds.  Every time there was a holiday I would use my Scholastic bonus points (I MISS THIS SO MUCH) to order holiday books.  Long story short, I've got a plethora of books for every single holiday.  Christmas is my favorite, so the amount of Christmas books I have is embarrassing. 
Moving on...I picked out 25ish of my favorites and wrapped them up and put them under the tree.  Each night I let Elizabeth open one and we read it together for her bedtime story.  I say 25ish because I couldn't narrow it down enough so some nights we read more than 1. :)  Anyways...Elizabeth LOVES this.  She loves to read so much and opening presents every night is an added bonus.  I keep the books in a basket under the tree after she has opened them so we frequent the basket quite a bit throughout the day so we can reread the books. 

This morning...see what I mean about rereading them...

Tradition #2:
After reading our Christmas book(s) we read a story about Jesus from the scriptures.  Christmas is such a fun holiday but I want to make sure we're always teaching Elizabeth the reason we celebrate Christmas and keep Christ's spirit in our home and in our hearts.  So after our fun story comes our Jesus story.  I found a great printable from Pinterest (linked up to this page) that tells you what story to read each night.  There is also a picture from the Gospel Art Kit (www.lds.org) that accompanies each story. 

I love these traditions because each night I feel like we have such an amazing spirit in our home before we go to bed.  We all participate in the stories and I can feel the closeness of our family as we celebrate Christ every night.  Why wouldn't we want to keep these traditions?!