Decorating/Christmas Traditions

We love decorating for Christmas, so we did not waste anytime this year and got our tree up this past weekend! Our plan was to go cut down our own tree this year, but after driving by a local farm on Sunday, we could not wait and pulled over and bought one! James is beyond enthralled and impressed with all of the decorations, especially the tree. With his love of pulling himself up on things and his passion for cords, we were pretty sure that the tree+James would be a complete disaster. But so far, James has been satisfied with admiring the tree from afar. Everytime we walk into the living room, he points to the tree and does his pterodactyl screech that he has not used in months. He likes it when we walk by it when we are holding him and points out all of the ornaments that he likes. His favorite is a Grinch one that lights up and sings.

My favorite decorations from growing up were the Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Rudolph that my mom made. I am now the proud owner of them, and so far James seems to enjoy them just as much as I do!

I have always loved Christmas, but having James makes me even more excited because we get to share all of our favorite traditions with him now. One of my favorite traditions is a Nichols' family tradition. Tim's mom gives us a bell every Christmas Eve with the year engraved on it and then the most special event from that year. She and Dave have a bell for every year that they have been married that Dave's mom started for them, and she now shares the tradition with us and Steve and Amberly. We have 3 bells, 1 for each year that we have been married. Our 2005 bell has our wedding date on it, our 2006 bell has Tim Nichols, DDS on it, and our 2007 bell has James' name and birthday on it. We always have fun speculating what the bells will say each year and look forward to opening them on Christmas Eve. I can't wait to collect these bells as our family grows, and then continue the tradition with James and any other kids that we have and their future familes.

The other tradition that we started last year with James' first Christmas is something that I shamelessly stole from the Roulier family and have been waiting to do since I was probably in 6th or 7th grade and first saw it at my friend Erin's house at Christmas time. So shout out to Georgie Roulier who inspired this tradition-I am so excited to do it now that I have my own family! We cut off the bottom 2 inches or so from our Christmas tree each year and put a picture of the family/child in front of the tree on one side and burn in the date on the other side. We put the bells and Christmas logs on our mantle along with some other holiday flair that we got at a cute store in Old Town Longmont. So our living room is our nicely decorated room, and we will save our tacky decorations for the basement. Stay tuned for pictures of our vintage plastic light up figurines-loves it!