Holiday Plans and Traditions

My goal was to post on this topic BEFORE Thanksgiving, but a little "distraction" called Pneumonia changed those plans...

Here's a little peek into some Holiday plans and traditions at our house:

Thanksgiving:

• We always watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade while eating yummy appetizers.
• We usually have my parents and one set of my husband's (divorced and remarried) parents over for an afternoon dinner.
• We put up our trees and decorations either a few days before or the day after Thanksgiving.

Christmas:

• We rarely open gifts ON Christmas Day... Honestly, I'm the one who can't wait that long!  Last year, we would be away on Christmas so we opened our gifts on the 22nd.  
• We have appetizers for lunch while watching a Christmas movie, playing with our gifts and cleaning up.
• We usually spend the day with just our family.
• For the month of December, we've had a Christmas Chain- green and red construction paper links with a fun activity for each day of the month.  We usually have things we're already planning on doing and then fill in on other days with things like watching a Christmas movie or roasting marshmallows.  Now we have a "house" with numbered doors and have activities printed out inside each door.
• We go out to eat with my parents to celebrate my mother's birthday at a wonderful local restaurant that decorates beautifully for Christmas.

Now for the reality of this year....

• My husband had to work Thanksgiving this year for the first time in probably 5 years so we had to change a few things up.  In fact, he worked Monday-Saturday of Thanksgiving week so there was no time to postpone the big dinner to another day.
• We continued the parade and appetizers tradition.
• We waited to have our Thanksgiving dinner with just the 5 of us until my husband got home from work.  Thankfully he was ON TIME for the only time all week so we were able to eat around 6:30.
• We put our trees up the day after Thanksgiving.  I decorated less than usual, partly because I was still exhausted and also because my dining room, foyer and living room looked so beautiful from my friend helping me decorate that I didn't want to mess with it too much.  So, instead of taking out my 10+ nativities, I brought out my favorite few and used only those.
• We still have quite a few trees: the tall one in the living room, the police one (blue lights and police ornaments) in the dining room, a table top with colored lights and JESUS ornaments in the living room, a lit tabletop "Places" tree in the kitchen and unlit tabletop in our bedroom, and one in both kids' rooms.  Technically, that's 7 trees!  But we love them all!
• My husband is working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and every weekend in December.  We have to rethink our celebration time as a family as it's now greatly diminished from other years.  We'll still have fun, though, because we like spending time together.
• I imagine we'll open presents on Christmas Eve so that my husband can be there for it... If he gets home from work on time!  Hopefully even the criminals will decide to take Christmas off!  ;)  I doubt any of us will complain about opening presents early!
• We'll probably have a low key day on Christmas.  I might see what a fellow LEOW whose husband is working that day is doing and maybe we'll meet up sometime that day... 

With my husband working so many holidays this season (he's also working New Year's Eve!), we will have to adjust some of our traditions, but we'll still have a wonderful holiday season spending time together as a family when we can!