Deliberate Christmas Traditions

I am getting better at this stuff-and it makes me feel happier too! Bonus!

So  for this weekend I made space in my agenda months ago, to devote the entire two days to decorating, baking and getting excited about Christmas at the cottage. And this is what we did. Man did we all work hard.

For the first year we are having Christmas at the cottage. A bunch of family up there on December 25 and then my Mom staying on for a few days with us. I am sure we are going to love it up there at Trent. So Christmasy  to have the lake out there to skate on, a hill to toboggan on and a nice fire burning.

So this weekend we really got into the Christmas spirit. I have to say this is rather new for me-and deliberate. We always make a big deal about X-mas and do it well but often a lot later in the month when there is more rushing and more stress and more urgency.

Our attitude is usually like “Ok-we have a ton of stuff to bake and have 4 hours-hurry up everyone. Oh ya and have fun too! Where did our X-mas Cd’s go again-aren’t we supposed to play X-mas music while cooking?? Damn where are they!!”

Always been really good at the X-mas gift and stocking part and having a ton of people here on Christmas and entertaining. It’s the preparation part of it all that has been less jovial in the past. Let’s just say Advent calendars usually get on my nerves a bit. I am starting to appreciate them and the build- up to the big day.

So this weekend we did everything we set out to do:

We cooked 4 different Christmas baking recipes from Robert’s late Mother’s favorites and the kids were actively involved in each one . Cranberry loaf, dream cake, mochas and cranberry rice krispy balls. We made double recipes of everything so that we could give to out cottage neighbors and kid’s favorite teachers as gifts. You should have seen the mess of our kitchen and the amount of work this was! Thank goodness we have a big counter to cook around at Trent. The kids loved it though and was really fun for everyone. It took two entire days to do all this baking and make a nice Lebanese dinner last night. (no, no I did not cook any of it-that was Dad and the kiddies. But I planned it all out, organized it all, bought all the food, packed it all and made a schedule of what needed to be cooked with which child when. During the bake-offs I cleaned out all the closets and got organized for winter and made all the Santa lists).

We also put up and decorated a tree. Traditions is we put it up and the kids decorate it however they want. They are really good at this ..especially Beauty –she is a star. She looks carefully at each ornament and remembers where we got it from or which child made it. We aren’t the kind of family who needs a perfect looking tree-we like a perfect feeling tree. Loads of kids crafts from daycare on it, things they made us. Memories.

We played Christmas music all weekend. We watched a super funny Christmas movie in the evening “Christmas with the Kranks.”

We even made a gingerbread house today . This was my idea and I wanted to do this with the kids (did I mention how undomesticated I am?) I was all excited for this project and then my bossy husband took over. Finally we ended up letting the kids take over the project while I talked to my friend on the phone and this is how it turned out:

What a disaster! But is was sooo much fun watching them make a mess of it.

We took a long family walk in the forest. Actually Bear ran the whole path to try and start getting his strength back now that his 6 week convalescence is coming to an end and he needs to get back into shape.

We cuddled in front of the fire after dinner. That's what our family looks like most nights at the cottage in the winter. A true family portrait. I love winter at the cottage.

Hubby’s overall  comments of the weekend:

“It felt so good to bake my Mom’s recipes. So many good memories.”

(aww so sweet)

“Beauty and Bear are such good bakers-they made most the recipes themselves! Chase basically made 5 mochas, ate three of them, gulped a half liter of milk and sat there talking so much and would not shut up!” (Not a shock!)

It was not all candies’ and lollipops though. Don’t want to leave any false impressions that all we do in this family are the Hallmark moments.  Certainly don’t want to be a Mommy Blog that depresses people.

So amongst all of these close family moments you must understand that one kid lost technology privileges fro two days because he called his sister a “penis”, one kid refused to go on a mother/ son power walk and spend time together so I decided to cry and put him on a time out, and another child imprinted an obscene word on our gingerbread house and showed it while I made a video (and got sent to their room or something-I lost track by this point ). All a regular weekend overall!!!

Deliberateness is good for me and this family around holidays. It‘s a lot of work that’s for sure and a lot of planning but it really makes us all happier. It makes a big difference in our lives.

It was a perfect, crazy weekend. I was sad when it ended.  We all went back to work and school today tired, but our heart full. I particularly felt a heck of a lot more sad than when Halloween left.