Christmas Revisited

Christmas was very fun, but I'll just revisit it very quickly because there has been so much going on lately...I'm way behind.
I loved having Christmas on our own (though that doesn't mean I wouldn't love to do it with family again sometime in the future!) and I also loved having a fireplace! It reminded me of growing up and the magic of it all- you just have to have one. I realized I have a ton of traditions this time of year. Let's see how many of them I can recall...
1) Visiting a care center and giving Christmas cards to the residents.
2) Playing music for the care center.
3) Making cookie plates for friends and delivering them.
4) Big Christmas eve dinner and Nativity play
5) Drinking hot drinks :)
6) Writing a family Christmas letter
7) Santa's secret wrapping paper
8*) Slept under the christmas tree the night we decorated it.
9*) Giving each child a new ornament.
10) Sitting on Santa's lap
11*) Service goals during from Thanksgiving to Christmas
12) Stockings- what's in the stockings is so traditional: orange, nuts, chocolate anda candy cane. We always had these things in our stocking growing up along with maybe a toy or two or stuffed animal.
13*) Baking a "speical" cookie for Santa. This year we decided to make the tradition of doing a giant gingerbread cookie (thanks to Grandma who bought me a special pan) and write everyone's name, including Santa, on the cookie. Then Christmas day everyone got to eat the piece with their name on it, Santa having been the first to dig in. :)
14*) New pajamas for Christmas eve night. I'm not sure we'll make it a tradition every year, but the kids definetly LOVED it this year, so maybe we will.
15) Writing new year's resolutions and putting it in the bottom of our stocking. We always did this growing up.
16*) Having a New Year's Goal Fireside Picnic! Maybe I'll do a separate post about this one. :)
17) Taking a picture of each child with all their gifts (like below). We also always unwrap gifts one at a time from youngest to oldest. We did this growing up.

The traditions with the (*) mean that this was the first year we did it, but hope to make it a tradition.