Christmas Traditions

One of the traditions that we started with the kids was giving them an ornament every year.  I also try to find them Christmas pajamas and we try to add a couple books to our Christmas book collection.  The last couple years we have let the kids open these gifts at the beginning of December and I am loving that change.  It is fun to have new Christmas pj's to wear all of December.  We love having new books to snuggle on the couch and read and they love having their new ornaments on the tree for a couple weeks. 

Opening these gifts was one of the Christmas countdown activities and the kids were very excited. 

You can tell by the girls reaction that they loved their Nutcracker ornaments!

The boys thought their ornaments were pretty cool too! We of course got some oohing out of Max! 

The girls each got a Nutcracker ornaments which is to remind them of their first performance in the the Nutcracker.  Shane's ornaments is the golf ball and clubs.  He loves going out with his dad to hit the golf ball and it also is to remember our time at our new house right on hole 1 of the golf course.  I know Shane will have fun memories of hitting balls with his dad on the green after the golf course closes down.  Max loved his airplane.  This of course is to remind us of the year we brought our little boy home from across the ocean! 

Max wasted no time in ripping off the paper!

The kids each opened a new book that we added to our collection of Christmas books. We will enjoy plenty of nights curled up on the couch reading in the next month.  It is one of my favorite things to do with the kids during the Christmas season! 

They then dove into their packages to see what their pj's looked like! 

This year I was a little late on trying to get the right sizes in pj's that all matched.  I need to remember that  I now have four and need to plan ahead and may not be able to wait until they are on sale to get them all matching.  I did find some cute ones though and everyone was more than excited to be matching.  Shane is pretty excited to have a brother to match with now.  It is so fun to see our four little blessings together in their Christmas pj's. 

The night wouldn't be complete with out a silly face picture.  It was so cute watching the kids teach Max how to make a silly face! What a bunch of silly monkeys we have on our hands.