and the tradition lives on...

For the record, in case you all do not know this about me, I love traditions.  All the old traditions that are around the Holidays, any new ones I can come up with and even silly fun ones, I love them all. 

For example:

Old Tradition

Waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa has come to visit BUT before we start opening our stockings/gifts one.person.at.a.time, Mom and Daddy make their coffee and Dad cooks sausage balls for us all to eat while opening gifts.  I love this tradition.  The fire is going, the lights in the living room are dim, the chirstmas tree and mantle is twinkling with white lights and the smell of coffee and sausage is in the air. Love.

New Tradition

I, as I am sure yall know, love to write and record my memories.  So, to help me remember special holiday memories not only do I have a Christmas and New Years keepsake memory book that me, Bret and our families fill out together, but I also have a little book that I put a picture of our pumpkin we carved in every year.  So, I have 2007's witch, 2008's haunted house and now I will have 2009's pumpkins! I think it is so fun going back and reading what we did over Christmas and New Years since we change it up a little every year and then I really enjoy seeing our pumpkins from the past years!  It's books like these that I hope our kids will appreciate one day.  I want our children to be able to see what Mommy and Daddy were like, what fun we had, and how the traditions that we will pass down to them actually began.

Silly Tradition

I have a very deep and profound love for Christmas Ornaments.  I was brought up in a household that treats a Christmas Tree like a scrapbook so getting ornaments every chance you get is a must.  This past year I learned about the Christmas Pickle.  I had never heard of it before and was super excited about starting a new silly tradition with Bret. (PLUS, I love, love love, pickles!) For those of you who were like me and had never heard of the Christmas Pickle, I shall explain.  The Christmas Pickle is an ornament in the shape of, you guessed it a pickle, and when the Christmas tree is decorated someone hides the pickle deep into the tree.  Whoever finds the hidden pickle first on Christmas morning gets a special gift from Santa.  Fun, yes?!

So, continuing on with tradition, last night Bret and myself headed over to our friends, Jennifer and Robert's house to partake in our 2nd annual pumpkin carving extravaganza!  Last year we carved pumpkins and mine and B's place while watching Hocus Pocus and eating pizza and then this year, we moved over to Jenny and Robert's house to first, take Maddie to Pumpkin Patch to get ADORABLE pictures of her dressed as a pirate and THEN we continued the tradition of pumpkins, pizza and hocus pocus! Yah!  Have a look...