Christmas Tradition #8 Handmade Christmas cards

(this years card and pics)

This is something I have done since Mathias was born. They are nothing fancy and I am still slowly learning about the world of scrapbooking, but it is a start. I am not sure how long I will keep this tradition up since it is pretty time consuming . Maybe I will just start making them in the summer or something.We also have been including a family picture, as well as one of Mathias. If you did not get one this year, I am sorry. Let me know if you would like one next year and I will put you on the list.

Christmas traditions #7 Christmas ornaments

When I was growing up, my mom would get us a new Christmas ornament every year. They could be things that you were into that year or things that you like or just things that you want to collect. I love this tradition for the fact that when we moved out of the house, we got all of our ornaments to put on our own tree. It also makes decorating the tree more special to me since every ornament has some kind of meaning or memory behind it. This is another tradition that I am continuing with my family.

Dev is slowly getting his ornament collection going. His ornaments are very him. He has a couple hockey ones and he has also been collecting scenes from his favorite Christmas movie, "Christmas Story." His ornaments from this year are the leg lamp (it also says quotes from that scene in the movie) and his initial.

Mathias has been getting two a year (one from mom and one from mema). From top left to bottom are the ones he got from his first Christmas to this one. Oh, and nope, I have yet to put his picture in his first ornament. These are so much fun because they are exactly what he is or was into that year. Last year he was way into "Thomas" and "Cars" and this year it is all about "Little Einsteins" (this ornament also plays their theme song).

(this is not how they were on the tree but I clumped them all together for easier picture taking purposes)

I have a lot of random ornaments from growing up of things that I liked at the time. However, since I have been married I have been collecting certain ornaments. For instance, the first couple of years were snowflakes and some snowmen and the last couple of years have been these beautiful cracked glass ball ornaments from Target. The first few are really heavy and hard to hang and I think Target has caught on to that because they are making them a lot lighter this year. The ornaments I got this year are the ball with the design on it and my initial (we all got our initials this year).

Tradition #6 Christmas books

Growing up we did 12 Days of Christmas stories, we had them in a binder. I don't have that binder of stories, and a bunch of them would be a little too old for Mathias anyways, so we read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve. We have done this for the past couple of years and I think Mathias is starting to get the whole Santa Clause thing this year, even if it's just a little bit.

Tradition #5 Christmas Eve Jammies

We always did this growing up and I love doing it with our own little family now. Every year on Christmas Eve we got to open one present, and it was always a pair of jammies and occasionally some slippers. When Mathias opened his jammies, I think he was kind of disappointed they were not toys, he just kind of looked at them and then handed them to me and ran off. It was kind of funny. I love getting new comfy jammies and just lounging around the whole next day in them.

Tradition #4 Cookies for Santa

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It was so much fun to make cookies for Santa this year. Mathias actually had a pretty good attention span this time around. He was really excited to leave carrots for the reindeer as well. He thought that it was pretty cool that they were all gone the next morning and that Santa and the reindeer really liked them (he told mommy and daddy). Santa thought that this was so nice he left an extra present or two for Mathias.

Tradition #3 Temple Square

We always went to Temple Square growing up to see the lights and watch and listen to the Nativity scene. The past couple of years, we have added to the tradition by riding up on the trax and walking to Gateway and eating dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Mathias absolutely loves riding "the train" and looking at all of the "pretty Christmas lights." He loves the ones on the trees, he says that the Christmas lights are making trees. It was pretty cold this year but not near as bad as it was last year. As always, the Temple is just stunning!

Tradition #2 Gingerbread houses

I don't really remember doing this as a kid, however we started doing this last year with Mathias and will do it every year from now on.

It was so much fun building a gingerbread house with Mathias this year. He was so excited to build it, he could hardly contain himself. Last year he lasted a couple of minutes before losing interest, and this year he decorated most of it by himself. He also did not eat much of the candy, to our surprise. As always we take too many pictures and I can never decide which ones to post, so here are a bunch. I also added some with me in it, just for you, mom.

Tradition #1 Taking a picture with Santa

Since Christmas is so close, I thought I would post some traditions (thanks for the idea Jeri). Some are traditions from my childhood, and a few are new ones. When I was little, I remember my brother and I getting pictures taken with Santa. Now, while I hate to stand in the crazy lines, I love to see what Mathias' reaction will be and I love having the pictures to compare year after year. It is also fun to see how much he can grow up and change in just a year.

(10 months old)
This was Mathias' first Christmas, and as such, this was obviously his first time seeing Santa. He absolutely loved him. He loved to feel his soft Santa suit and I think was memorized by his beard. This visit went a lot better than I thought it would.

(22 months old)
Mathias' second year of visiting Santa. Since he was a bit older, I was curious to see his reaction. He was terrified and clung to me for dear life. So we ended up having a family picture taken. I love the look and body language on Mathias. "Get me out of here! I am not even coming close to touching this guy!"

(2 1/2 years old)
This year, Mathias is obviously a bit older and since he can understand more, we tried to talk Santa up. We told him that if you are a good little boy, Santa will bring you toys, however you need to sit on his lap and tell him what kind of toys you want him to bring you. When we walked up he still kinda clung to me like, "I don't think so." When I set him down he just kinda looked at us like "I am really not sure about this but I want new toys." When Santa asked him what he wanted this year, Mathias told him, "I want cars and trucks." So like Mathias! I will be excited to see what next year brings, and if we are lucky, there might be another little one on Santa's lap.

Disclaimer: We are not pregnant.

A visit to Santa

(there was a guy there taking the pictures and then he posted them on a link to walmart and I just copied them off of that page so they are kinda grainy and not the best quality, sorry)
A couple of weeks back, my mom's real estate friend, Kenny Parcel, had a Christmas party for all of his clients. We took Mathias because we heard there were treats, gifts, and best of all, Santa. I was really curious to see how Mathais would react to Santa. Last year he was a little scared of him. So this year we tried to talk him up and tell Mathias that he was really nice and since you have been pretty good this year he is going to bring you toys! But you have to sit on his lap and tell him what kind of toys you want. He seemed all right with this and while we waited in line he told us that he was gonna ask Santa for cars. Once we got up there though, Mathias clung to my neck for dear life. I pried his hands away and set him on Santa's lap and he did not cry or anything, he just kinda sat there with a funny look on his face, as you see in most of the pictures. Then Santa told Mathias that he liked his hair and then took of his hat to show Mathias his hair. Mathias kinda thought that was funny. He was such a good Santa! When Santa asked him what he wanted, Mathias very quietly said "cars" so I had to get him to say it louder. All in all it was a pretty good experience, I think. We are gonna go to the mall Santa next because that is a tradition in my family, we did that as kids growing up. Hopefully we can get a better picture there.

A new house

This past weekend we decided to build a fort for the first time at our place (he did it the day earlier with his mema and had a ton of fun). He took in his Tonka truck full of all his little cars and called his fort his "new house". He would not let daddy go in there, apparently this was a "Mathias only" fort. As you can see, he had just as much fun tearing it down as he had playing in it. Little boys are so much fun!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

This was the first year that Mathias helped us decorate the Christmas tree. We had to show him a few times how to hang the ornaments but once he got the hang of it he had a blast. It was pretty funny though because he tried to hang his second ornament on the first one and then every other ornament that he grabbed all went on one branch. I think he had 5 on one branch before we caught on. So daddy picked him so he could decorate the top of the tree as well. He thought this was pretty cool. Now only if we can keep him(and the cat) away from the tree until we take it down.

Sickie :(

So a couple weeks back, Mathias absolutely refused to eat his dinner. So, for not eating, we put him to bed about an hour early, and surprisingly he did not put up much of a fight. Well, he woke up at about 11:45 screaming and crying "Mama". So I went in to see what the problem was, and he had thrown up red juice (go figure) all over himself, his bed and a little bit on the floor. Poor guy! I felt like the worst mom ever, getting mad at him for not eating hardly even a bite of his dinner. He was not acting sick at all though, I really had no idea he was not feeling good. He is just like my brother when it comes to that. He could not keep any thing down for the rest of the day, not even water till that night. We watched him closely though because we have already dealt with dehydration once and I never want to go through that again. Luckily it only lasted about a day to a day and a half before he was back to normal.

I just thought that this looked funny. He fell asleep with his head buried in his pillow

I just love when little kids sleep. They just look so peaceful and innocent.

I would like to know how this could possibly be comfortable. How can kids sleep in all sorts of weird positions.

Christmas decor

I love this time of year. I get to pull out all of my decorations, maybe even get a few new ones. I love it because it makes my house look less empty:). Here are a few of the decorations that we have out.

Mathias got his first cold of the season this week. I thought we were in for another winter with the nebulizer, but much to my very happy surprise this cold was very short lived and went away with out any breathing problems!! Yippee, this is a first for us. In this picture, I told him that I was going to take his temperature and he ran screaming and crying to hide under the kitchen table. Weird, I have never had him react like that for just a temperature check. He must know that with a temp check usually comes medicine, which he HATES!!

Yummy

As I mentioned in a previous post Mathias is an extremely picky eater. However he thinks that daddy's cereal is the absolute best. What two year old(or adult) in his right mind loves grape nuts?