Creating family traditions

We put up our tree yesterday--still need to dig the skirt out. :)

We still have a young family so we're definitely still figuring out what traditions we want to have. Last year we spent Christmas in Florida with my family and didn't even put up a tree since we left almost a week before Christmas. This year, we're staying here and Mom and Dad are coming up.

We went to our very favorite local farm to pick out a tree on Tuesday evening. It was our first time getting a real tree (we've had a Charlie Brown-esque artificial tree that was the cheapest one we could find our first Christmas married...kind of glad to retire it!).

Yesterday afternoon we set aside a few hours to decorate and enjoy some family time. It was so fun and I think we'll try to repeat it every year.

Katie and I made some cookies. We started with an oatmeal cookie bar recipe, but it turned out more like granola and didn't stick together *at all*, so we tried again with my old stand-by oatmeal cookie recipe from Good Cheap Eats. Add-ins were raisins and chocolate chips. Yum! They aren't particularly Christmas-y, but they are so tasty and relatively healthy as far as cookies go. I subbed whole spelt flour for all-purpose and sucanat for the brown sugar.

In between munching on cookies we decorated the tree. It was so fun to go through all our ornaments and reminisce about each one while showing them to the children. Some I've had since I was a little girl. The clear and gold beaded ones were made by my sweet Grandma who went to be with the Lord this spring. She made some for our wedding and some she gave us for our first Christmas in Virginia.

After we got the tree set up, we made hot chocolate and watched a Christmas movie. This year's choice was Home Alone. Ben and I hadn't seen it since we were kids. It had us in stitches the whole time and the kids seemed to really enjoy it too.

I love the idea of having our own little family traditions and I'm thankful we had a chance to create some sweet memories together yesterday.