April 2020 Moms

GTKY: Holiday Fun

Mixing it up a little here-
what is your favorite holiday tradition and what tradition are you excited to continue or start with your kids. Any and All holidays!
TW: 
1 infant loss
8/17: Our daughter was born
8/18: Our daughter kicked open heart surgery ass
2/19: We lost our son to Prader-Willi/Paradoxical Vocal Cord/ Noonans at 6wks old 
4/26/2020: EDD for baby #3!!!

Re: GTKY: Holiday Fun

  • When I was a kid we would pick one present to open on Christmas Eve and then Christmas Day we would have a good breakfast and then Mexican food (enchiladas and tamales) in the afternoon. Last year, I brought back the Mexican food and I really enjoyed it. I’m hoping my family here will keep embracing it as a tradition.

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    Me 34 DH 34 
    PCOS

    DS1 born September 2017
    Baby number 2 due 4/11/20
  • I think next year we are going to start doing xmas eve at our house so the kids can wake up in their house with their tree. I really want to do a PJ/movie xmas eve tradition. DH's parents and sister etc will probably still come for dinner and his parents might stay over, but that's what I would love.
    @mercury94 we do crab and shrimp enchilladas on xmas day for dinner! 
    Also making sure my kids celebrate channukah- usually small gifts each night with a bigger one on the last night.
    TW: 
    1 infant loss
    8/17: Our daughter was born
    8/18: Our daughter kicked open heart surgery ass
    2/19: We lost our son to Prader-Willi/Paradoxical Vocal Cord/ Noonans at 6wks old 
    4/26/2020: EDD for baby #3!!!
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  • @smallbutmighty77 I like that you can work in both Christmas and Channukah. I know a few couples where one is Christian and the other is Jewish. It seems like they frequently choose one holiday instead of finding a way to embrace both. 

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    Me 34 DH 34 
    PCOS

    DS1 born September 2017
    Baby number 2 due 4/11/20
  • My parents had this calendar thing that my grandma made, it had a felt tree on it with Velcro spots and then a calendar of 1-24 where each day you’d “hang” another “ornament” from the calendar to the tree. The last being the star for the top on dec 24 that my siblings and I would always try to get to do that before anyone else.  The thing is starting to fall apart but my parents gave it to me. I’ll need to make a new one but hope to continue that with my kiddos. 
  • Love hearing all the traditions! 

    When I was growing up we did a Christmas lights drive on Xmas eve that was always a lot of fun. I live in the city now with no car, so maybe a lights walk? On Xmas morning my mom always “had to make the coffee” before we could run down the steps and it built up such suspense as we sat at the top of the stairs waiting for her to tell us it was time. I have such distinct memories of it I’d love to do something like that when my kids are old enough. 
  • So, I'm Jewish, but DH is not. I'm raising any kids Jewish, but they'll get some of both holidays.
    Being Jewish and raising DS Jewish, I make it a point to make latkes and Hanukkah cookies every year. We light the menorah every night and do 8 small gifts.
    For Christmas, we have a tree up and do Christmas morning gifts. We try to make a holiday light drive sometime during the holidays every year.
    BabyFruit Ticker
  • As a kid, I always enjoyed having an advent calendar to countdown, making Christmas sugar cookies for Santa, and picking out the tree and decorating it! My mom would always read the Night Before Christmas book on Christmas Eve before bed. I look forward to having kids to experience the real magic of Christmas! 
  • I love reading all the different traditions and ideas! It’s nice to see how our own childhoods will translate into our kids’ lives. 

    My family would have dinner with my mom’s side on Christmas Eve and then dinner with my dad’s side on Christmas Day. It was always fun because we had so many cousins of similar age. I would sleep downstairs at home with my brothers while my parents played Santa upstairs. 

    I moved really far away and have 2 kids that are both really excited for Christmas this year. It’s hard to be away from our families but we are trying to find ways to make new traditions. This will be the first year we’re not visiting family for the holidays and the first year we have to figure everything out for ourselves. Definitely hard but also kind of fun to make it up as we go. 
  • MH is Jewish and I’m Christian so we are exposing our kids to both. 

    We do one gift on the first night of Hanukkah, light the menorah each night and usually do a big dinner the last night of Hanukkah. 

    December 1st, Santa comes and gives the kids a treat, their ornament for the year, and a new Christmas book. We always visit Santa, zoo lights and this year Disney on ice. Christmas Eve, we go to church and have a big dinner with family and friends. Christmas Day we open gifts from
    Santa and go to my mom’s for Christmas Day dinner. 

    Diagnosed PCOS 2013
    7th Round of Fertility treatment (Femara + Ovidrel + IUI) 12/14 = BFP. DS born Sept.15 
    Natural BFP Feb 2017. DD born Oct. 2017
    Natural BFP Aug. 2019, EDD April 2020

  • @korthouse, we do St. Nick on December 6th with our son every year. My mom is Dutch, and it was something we always did growing up. 
  • As kids my Mom always gave us one present early to open on Christmas Eve, and it was always pajamas :)  More recently, our family started doing the white elephant/yankee swap/dirty santa present swap thing which is really fun
  • @sbc56 I love the wooden shoes! I got a little ceramic one for DH to surprise him our first December together, but I'm going to hunt down a bigger one for bean 
  • @literatureandink it's hilarious. the way we do it is, everyone buys a gift (usually a $20 limit, and sometimes the gifts are slightly outlandish- one year my mom filled a gift bag with the "as seen on TV" burger stuffer, a pound of ground beef, and spices lol), then everyone draws a #. the person with the lowest number picks a gift, and so on until everyone has opened a gift. then each person gets another turn and you either keep your gift or steal someone else's! lots of laughs. and sometimes you end up with the burger stuffer ;)
  • @phinzlabyrinth we do it too and its so much fun!  I ended up with an Ove glove one year which was really exciting lol, and then another year my aunt boxed and wrapped a 24 pack of water.  The best is when you wrap creatively so no one has any idea!  
  • @phinzlabyrinth That's awesome - we do something similar although I've never heard it called Dirty Santa! We do a "good" swap and then a fun swap where the limit is $10 and the funnier/crazier, the better!

  • Our Christmases have been so different since being married and moving to different locations that we haven't set any traditions in stone.  Some of the traditions I'd like to carry on for my kids that I did as a kid are that instead of cookies for Santa we made jigglers (jello that we would use cookie cutters to make christmas shapes). On the way to the Christmas Eve service we'd play a game and yell out Christmas lights when we'd pass houses that had their lights out each trying to be first to see them. Every morning my mother would make a breakfast casserole and then we'd pile in the car and go to my grandparents house that night and have a 2nd opening of gifts. They had a set of playing cards with a christmas theme with elves, christmas trees, reindeer, and snowmen instead of the suits and I'd play a simple matching game trying to collect pairs. I just inherited those cards and I can't wait to teach my kids to play that game one day. Oh one thing my husband and I have done is pick out 1 ornament each year we've been married and we'll continue to do that and let our kids pick one out too.

    Other things I'd like to incorporate is doing pj's as a gift to open the night of Christmas eve and also a book. I'd love to do a monkey bread type thing in the morning too along with the breakfast casserole for a sweet and savory element. And I'd love to incorporate some kind of charity work into the holidays and teach my kids that Christmas is about family time and giving to others. 
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