Cotterville Christmas Eve

Yes, I'm still alive! I have not posted on my blog in so long and I hate that! I would like to be able to say that I do daily post but as you can tell, I'm lucky if I do monthly post! Over the next few weeks I hope to catch you up on everything that has gone on in Cotterville since Thanksgiving. We have Isaac's actual birthday, Christmas, New Years, and of course all the post about Isaac. He changes daily. He's walking, (running) and saying a few very cute words. Today I want to share some of our Christmas traditions with you.

Since we spend Thanksgiving in Arkansas we decided to stay here in Texas for Christmas. I very much enjoy spending the very special day with family but at the same time I feel it is important for "my" family to have create our own traditions and memories. We continued old traditions and started a few new ones.

One tradition that I did as a child was baking sugar cookies. Making the dough (and eating a ton of it while you work), rolling it out, using the Christmas cookie cutters, and then adding all those pretty sprinkles. This is something that I remember doing with my mom and when I had children I knew it was something I wanted to do with my kids. Jordan is old enough now to really help and the last few years we have really enjoyed this. This year we baked 5 dozen and send most of them with Chris to work. Of course we kept some for ourselves but the best part was making them with my son. Having Isaac around this year made it more interesting. It seemed like every time I turned around Isaac was grabbing stuff off the table and flour was going everywhere! That just added to the fun of it all. Next year hopefully both of my boys can help me decorate.

Another thing we do is bake a Happy Birthday Jesus cake. This is a way for us to remember what Christmas is all about and be able to have a party for Jesus on Christmas dinner. Chris is not a big fan of cake and our lives were so busy this year that as a family we voted to make a chocolate pie instead. The meaning was still there. We knew that it was Jesus' birthday pie. We sang Happy Birthday and talked about what we were celebrating. As the commercial aspect of Christmas gets larger and larger this part of our celebration gets more and more important.

Like I said earlier we started a new tradition. I have heard several of my friends saying they do this so I thought I would give it a shot. I decided to hide a family gift and then gave Jordan four or five clues to find the gift. When he found it, he opened it and found that it was something that we could do together as a family. This year it was the game Scrabble. We played a game right before bed on Christmas Eve. This is important because often we don't slow down enough to do things as a family. Obvioulsly Isaac couldn't play with us, but he had fun sitting at the table interacting. I hope that those few minutes every year will become special memories for all of us!

After Jordan found the present and we played some Scrabble (Chris beat us bad and it was his first time to ever play) it was time to open another present. This one was from Granny and Grandpa and turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of the year. Check out the pictures and then I'll tell you all about it!

My parents, Granny and Grandpa, sent the boys the book, Twas the Night Before Christmas.  What made this book so cool was that they read it to them!  Mom and Dad live 350 miles away so that was very special for everyone.  Hearing my Dad start off reading brought back many memories for me and actually brought tears to my eyes.  Watching Jordan listen to them read the story was something I will never forget.  I look forward to many more years and listening to that! (at least as long as the batteries last)  I hope to next year get some video of it so we can keep it forever!  Thanks Mom and Dad for the awesome gift!

It was at this point we realized that the 24-hours of A Christmas Story had begun on TV and quickly turned it on to watch the first of many times through the movie.  Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would not feel right without this classic movie!  It can be heard not only on the TV but being quoted but many members of my family!

By this time it was getting late and it was time to get the milk and cookies ready for Santa.  I had a ton of gifts to wrap and was very excited to get to bed so morning would come!  I think I was just as excited if not more than Jordan.  Since we had baked sugar cookies earlier in the week we decided to bake Santa some chocolate chip cookies.  I promised Jordan that when I went to bed I would set it all out (we didn't want the milk to get to warm) and with that Jordan went to bed.  I will leave you with a few more pictures.  Stay tuned for a post about Christmas Day!