Our Family Christmas Highlights & Traditions

We went to the the Colville National forest to get our all natural Christmas tree for $5. Lincoln and I tend to be perfectionists and it took us forever to find the right tree. After a while the younger kids got really tired and we sat in the car while Lincoln and Luca got a special tour of a different part of the forest with some nicer trees. The ranger was so nice to take them there. At the same time we looked at a couple of house rentals for this coming summer.

We went to the "Nativitifes from Around The World" festival that has been going on in our church stake for a few years. Lots of people lend their nativities, so we ended up having close to 700 nativities to look at. They even had a room full of nativities for the kids to play with. Of course I had my German Ostheimer nativity in it, too. The organizers put a lot of work into this and it's always a success. During this time our stake has a lot of visitors from different faiths that even participate in the musical programs. We had a wonderful spiritual experience. Here we are all dressed up.

The kids liked Santa at our ward Christmas party.

Our new tradition is a mediterannean dinner for Christmas Eve. Something Jesus might have eaten. Last year was the first time we did it and we liked it so much, that we decided to make it our tradtion. We had a Greek salad, hummus, pita bread, olives and sugar snap peas. It's so easy to prepare. I can imagine finding lots of wonderful recipes for future dinners, but this year we didn't want to have left overs, since we went to Lincoln's parents for Christmas.


After dinner we read the Christmas story by candlelight and had cookies


After the story the kids got to unwrap their presents, juts like in Germany. I love continiung some of my favorite memories as a kid. It was very special to have our very first Christmas Eve together with our little family.

The doll house: Inspired by this article, my goal is to give homemade gifts every year. It's not limited to that, but I like to not overdo things and rather skip the hassle of running through malls. It helps me to experience a more Christ-like Christmas. The kids know I worked hard on this for a long time and I want them to realize how special it is to give something home made, that's especially designed for them.

Here's a little video of the finished product.

Other traditions include:

• advents calender
• advent candles
• making home-made cookies
• Nikolaus on the 6th of December: The kids wash one of their boots and put it outside by the front door, expecting Nikolaus to put little toys and sweets in their boots. I like to tell the true story of St Nick on Nikolaus Day. Christmas I just like to focus on Christ, which is hard, because there are Santa's everywhere, of course. But I think the kids know that we give each other presents, because we love each other. It never felt right to me to mention Santa during Christmas.
  
  

Don't you love Leea's underwear sticking out from underneath her leotard? Ooooh, and the low-fat milk for Nikolaus?

Luca with graham crackers for Nikolaus.

All the boots are ready to be filled. One of my favorite traditions...Sorry, no after pictures, because it kept raining.