A Monumental Christmas

After Christmas Eve service at church.

This is Chris and my 5th Christmas together - wow sorry, seeing that in text just blew me away!  We have celebrated Christ's birth as a married couple Five times!  However it is a Christmas on the verge of change.  This is our first - and last - Christmas with just the two of us.  Every year before now we have made the trip North to visit lots of family on both sides and to ultimately spend Christmas day with my immediate family.  With Eb so close (we are 38 weeks now!) we didn't feel like it was safe to make such a big trip with the risk of him arriving early.  Also with Eb so close our families wanted to wait to come and visit until after he is born.  So that means Chris and I are having our first Christmas with just the two of us.

So what are we going to do with this once in a lifetime Christmas?  Well we have been discussing traditions we want to implement in our little family for a while and thought this would be the perfect year to start some!  While we haven't quite settled the 'Santa Debate' (more to come on this later!) we do know that we want to focus ourselves and our children on why we celebrate Christmas in the first place - the birth of our savior Jesus!  We have lots of big goals in mind, one I'm really excited about but didn't have time to start this year is a Jesse Tree.  I just learned about this option a few weeks ago and love it!  It helps the family to focus on the reason for Christmas by recounting the story of Christ - starting all the way back in Genesis!  Every day in December you read a passage that helps recount why Christ came and the saga of Israel through history as they anticipated the Messiah's arrival, after reading the passage you hang an ornament representing the passage on the tree - and if you have time and eager little ones you can make new ornaments every now and then too.  The tree itself is also a representation of Christ because it is supposed to look like a cut off stump with a new shoot growing from it - like the sprout of Christ from the stump of Jesse (David's family line).  As I said, we didn't get to start this one yet, but I'm excited to lay it out next year.


This year we did start some smaller traditions.  We decided we want to go to Christmas Eve service every year is the church we attend offers it - and the one we are at does!  It was a sweet surprise to find they do a candle light service, I haven't been able to attend a service like that since high school!  We decided our 'traditional meal' will be a ham and are tackling preparing one on our own today!  Sweets are a must and we started making some great ones earlier this week and decided whether we do Santa or not we are definitely still baking/decorating cookies on Christmas Eve.  To help us focus on Jesus' birth we started singing Christmas hymns last Monday and tried to sing one a day all week leading to Christmas.  Of course decorations are part of what make Christmas so festive and exciting for me, and while we tried to stay small since we have a new little person on the way decorating with Chris was still very precious for me this year.  Because we don't have much room we decided to decorate a (fresh) Christmas wreath instead of a tree (I love the smell of fresh cut conifers and Chris found us a wreath at a bargain price!).  Finally, it's not Christmas without the nativity.  My mother in law got us a huge beautiful nativity for our first Christmas present as a married couple.  It is the full (and I mean FULL) Willow Tree set and I adore it!  We never would have been able to afford this set on our own, but if you know me it is exactly the kind of set I would want! While I didn't feel like I could get the whole set out this year, pulling out the basic nativity always brings joy to my heart!


Here are a few pictures of our Florida Christmas.  What made your Christmas special this year?  Do you have any special traditions?

NOM!

Nom, nom, nom!!!