Holiday Traditions

We have all been so sick here, that I have meant to post this for a while, but I haven't felt like it. I took Ellie and Nate to the doctor yesterday and got antibiotics for both of them (bronchitis) so hopefully we will be over the sickness soon.

When the Christmas season comes around, often the question gets asked, "What are the traditions that your family does for Christmas?" I think about it and come up with nothing. I think the simple things are the traditions that everyone remembers, so upon further reflection, I realized that we do have some traditions in our family. For the past few years, every year we have made a gingerbread house. This is simply from a kit I buy at Michaels, but then I go and find some other candy to spruce it up. We do it as a family home evening, but it ends up me doing 98% of the house and occasionally the kids stick a piece of candy on. They do get very excited about it, however. Here's the finished product:

We also have 3 advent calendars that we do. The kids get all excited about the calendars and negotiate who gets to do which one and what day. They have some sort of rotation set up. The first thing they do when they come downstairs in the morning is their advent calendar. This is the first year they have gotten every day without falling behind (since I wasn't involved at all...I usually forget). I guess I will have to find another one when Nate starts to recognize he is being left out. I made this one when Adam was a baby. I would never have the time to do it now. They pull the ornaments off and stick them on the fake tree, when they are done it is all decorated.Aunt Kayti gave us the lollipop tree. It is quite a favorite. The other one I made in RS one year.

We also have one more tradition. Every year for neighbor gifts, we make homemade freezer jam. This year it was persimmon since we had a tree full of the fruit and nothing else to do with it. I have never made persimmon jelly before (before we bought the property with the persimmon on it, I had never even seen one before), and I think I might need to tweak the recipe a little since it isn't quite as sweet as I would like. The fruit next to the jars is persimmon.