tangent alert...

Ok, so now that I have gotten you up to speed on my journey of faith, I thought that I would do something fun... well fun maybe isn't the right word, light may be better. I want to walk you through my family Christmas traditions...

THE TREE

Usually we got our tree around December 15, cause that is when my mom got paid. One year however, we were short on funds and got a charlie brown tree on Dec. 24. When we got it home, my mom and dad would put it in the stand, and try again and again to get it straight. Nowadays, I help my mom. After the tree was straight my mom would put the lights, garland, and tree topper on, we had an awesome tree topper when I was growing up, it was a snowflake that had lights on it that blinked. After those things were on we would dig through the Christmas ornaments and find "ours". Every year since I was 13 or 14 we got a Christmas tree ornament. My aunt and uncle on my dad's side started it. My first one was a little elf on top of a popcorn bucket stringing popcorn. My favourite is a little shepherd boy with a sheep following the star. We would recount past Christmas' and talk about the ornaments as we hung them on the tree. Then we would all hang the Christmas balls. I loved the multi-coloured ones that we had from the 80's but most of them are broken now, I think we have like 3 or 4 left. They came in such awesome colours. After the tree was dressed, we would turn off all the lights, and if we had a fireplace in the house we were living in we would build a fire, and sit and look at the tree.

CHRISTMAS EVE

On Christmas eve night we would make hot chocolate (we sometimes had different flavours) and we would pile in the car, turn on Christmas music and drive all over MR, looking at lights. Sometimes we ventured into PoCo too. We would stop, and get out at the houses that were loaded. Then after a few hours, we would head back home.

CHRISTMAS/BOXING DAY

So Christmas morning we would wake up (usually Chris was the first one) and we were allowed to open our stockings. Then we had breakfast (usually bacon, eggs, and hash browns). After breakfast we were able to open the gifts, we usually go around in a circle, Chris, me, mom, dad. or Dylan, Daniel, Chris, me, mom. Then we would gather all our presents around us, and take a picture with all our gifts. Then we would shower and get ready to go to my grandparents. Now, when I was younger, we would either go to my grandparents on Christmas or Boxing Day depending on when people were available. We would buy presents for all the cousins, uncles and aunts (there were up to 20 people on my mom's side). We would have a potluck dinner or lunch, and then we would play games. Now these games are really lame and we all hate them (but the younger kids like it). One game is the number game where we all have numbers and then my grandma calls a number and if it's your number you choose a present or you can steal one from someone else. We keep going until all the numbers are gone. It always includes kids crying cause their present got stolen, and adults cringing cause they don't want the present they got stuck with.  The other game we play is the horse race game. My grandma has these plastic horses with bears on their backs. Each horse has a number on it. We all pick a number and then my grandma rolls a dice, and that numbered horse moves around the circle. The first horse to go around the circle wins, and the people who picked that horse win a prize. It's incredibly lame.... haha.Then after dinner or lunch (or sometimes before) my grandma or my mom reads the Christmas story. This is usually awkward because most of my family are not Christians and so they are not really interested in hearing the story, but it's important.

So that's what our Christmas' are usually like.